skookumchick | July 7, 2009Patchi at My Middle Years has put together a great Scientiae carnival, reflecting (as it were) on Mirror, Mirror on the Wall. It's great -- go give it a good read, and share some link love for Patchi. Thanks, Patchi!
And wait until you see who the next Scientiae host is.... :-)
sciencewoman | July 7, 2009Dear student who left a 3 oz. blob of ketchup right where people step out of the stairway and into the hallway,
The dozens of people who will have to sidestep your mess this afternoon do not appreciate you and your laziness. There are bathrooms with paper towels 15 m away from the spot where you made your mess. I'm the mother of a toddler, and I know for a fact that paper towels will do an admirable job of wiping up most spilled food. Even if you didn't manage to get every last drop of ketchup off the linoleum, people would much rather accidentally step in a few smudges of it than step in…
sciencewoman | July 7, 2009Today I'm working on revisions prior to resubmittal on a manuscript that has been a very long time coming. While I'm busy with the revisions and reference formatting, I offer up this multiple choice question for your discussion.
You've got a manuscript that you think is ready for submission to a journal. It's been through a significant reworking since the last time your co-authors have seen it, but now you think it is (finally) ready for prime-time. You'd also like to get the manuscript off your desk, so that you can focus on some other science for a while. In this scenario, which of the…
sciencewoman | July 6, 2009Reader science newbie poses a great question to me and asks for the collective wisdom of our readers:
Dear Sciencewoman,
I have been reading & loving you blog for some time now. Thanks! You rock!
Ok, I have a question....
I have interviewed for, and been given a verbal offer for my first assistant professor position. We are negotiating startup funds, salary, etc right now. Due to state budgetary constraints, I have been informed that all of my startup funds (excluding salary) will have to originate from the department's funds, not university or state money. I have found some information…
skookumchick | July 6, 2009I recently got this email from Nikitha Sambamurthy, blogger at Diff-EQ (tweeting here) and undergrad at Purdue who regularly attends my department's seminar series. Nikitha is looking for some advice, and agreed to let me ask her question to teh blogosphere (below the fold).
Nikitha writes:I'm currently in the process of studying for the GRE and researching graduate schools and was wondering if you had any advice and tips on what I should do to get the process started. I'm interested in educational technology and am not quite sure how to find schools to apply to since different universities…
skookumchick | July 5, 2009Should have posted this yesterday; my excuse is that I'm still on Dutch time. Hope you had a restful 4th with you and yours. It rained all day here, but stopped in time for the fireworks. Of course, my husband and I were watching Casino Royale on TV instead of watching them... does that make us old? Or just uncool?
Here's a little snippet of giggles a propos as long as people keep shooting off firecrackers in my neighborhood...
sciencewoman | July 3, 2009After the weekend, I'll be back with a follow up to the post on my progress towards tenure, and I'll try to address some of the substantive and thought-provoking comments that you all have raised. But, here in the States, it's already a holiday weekend, and so for today, I'll punt and take on a side issue from that comment thread.
Comrade Physioprof commented:
"hir" is a total ...abomination! It is so ...distracting it totally ruins the flow of reading, because it is NOT A REAL ...WORD!
In terms of identifiability of an anonymous individual, how much difference does a factor of two make in…
sciencewoman | July 1, 2009In January 2008, a reader (Serious Scientist) sent me a query about dealing with inlaws who thought she should give up on her scientific career when her baby arrived. They wanted her to go to a baby shower across the country, without her husband, and she was dreading the trip and the questions and judgements that would certainly arrive during the party. I encourage you all to look back into the archives and read her original letter, and the wonderful advice everyone offered to Serious Scientist.
Serious's letter, even buried back in the archives, has generated a couple of recent comments.…
sciencewoman | June 30, 2009Here at Mystery U, we are evaluated on a calendar year basis, so in early January I turned in an up-to-date CV to our departmental review committee. Then I waited, and waited, and waited some more. Finally, a few weeks ago, I got a chance to see what the review committee thought of me, and I got to meet with the incoming and outgoing departmental chairs. I was actually one of the first people to see my reviews, because at the end of the summer I submit a dossier for the reappointment process. I'll be in the third year of my three-year contract, and the reappointment process for a second 3-…
sciencewoman | June 30, 2009I'm going to share a few wonderful links to ease my transition back into the on-line world.
First, there's a new photoblogger on the Scienceblogs' Photo Synthesis blog. BJ Bollender is the training coordinator for disability awareness and assistive technology in Arizona. She always travel with camera in hand, and she's got an eye for natural wonders, including rocks and minerals (yay!). Check out her gorgeous first post.
There's another new blogger 'round these parts: Eric Michael Johnson of The Primate Diaries. I know that Eric is a Sciencewomen reader, because he won a Recycled Ideas gifty…
skookumchick | June 29, 2009When I first started to go to conferences, I couldn't see what people saw in them. I didn't know anyone, I thought lots of the sessions were boring, and I found the whole thing overly stressful to deal with. Then I started making some friends who I would see at said conferences, and then started to figure out why people liked them.
Since then, I have added an aspect to going to conferences. I'll go hang with my friend-colleagues (some of them having advanced to being full friends :-) ) most of the meals, but once in a while I'll sneak off and have dinner by myself.
I did this tonight…
skookumchick | June 29, 2009
... where the wireless is cheaper than in Amsterdam. W00T! Conference starts tomorrow (really more like a workshop, I think). And I just wanted to share a photo of this cool tile I just bought. It's from the 1940s, and is of a canal and the Oude Kerk (Old Church, that's the one from the 1300s, rather than the Nieuwe Kerk, New Church, from the 1600).
skookumchick | June 29, 2009We're now at the end of the month of June, which Sheril inspired many of us to think about violence towards women and girls. We have had a few posts on the subject this month, but I can't help but think about all the stories that will never be voiced, all the violent men who will never be held accountable for their violence, all the girls and women whose terror and pain will never be healed.
If you would, I'd like to invite you to share in the comments to this post the first name (or a nickname) of a girl or woman who you know who has been abused. It could be the name of a friend, family…
skookumchick | June 28, 2009I'm in Amsterdam, we're having a great time, I'm totally jet lagged, and I have decided I love Dutch coffee. Thanks for the advice on things to do - my best decision so far was not biking. Here are some photos; I'll try to update them when we next get some cheaper internet time (20 euros in the hotel! Yeeps!) Tomorrow we leave for Delft and the work begins...
skookumchick | June 25, 2009Somehow I've survived this week with only one really big "oops" (an IRB application I should have turned in weeks ago), and I am off tomorrow to continue my conference tour. I'm heading to a workshop in Delft, The Netherlands on gender and engineering research (along with a couple of R&R days in Amsterdam - send me your best advice for things to do!), and will blog depending on internet access. Then I have a research trip to Detroit to go back to the SWE archives at the Reuther Library (a continuation of this project). Then I have another workshop in New York (state) on engineering and…
skookumchick | June 23, 2009There is irony in doing research on women engineering faculty members, and being a woman faculty member in engineering. One side of my brain tells me that the research says women (and men) who self-sacrifice for their students and colleagues burn themselves out, and instead should figure out how to say no more often; the other side of my brain tells me, "You've worked through the last 2 weekends and are tired, but your 4 students and postdoc need work plans from you before you leave for a conference in Europe on Friday, and you have 2 reviews for IJEE due Friday, and you have to read another…
sciencewoman | June 18, 2009Have you ever bought an album and discovered a song so dark, so sad that it makes you physically uncomfortable to listen to it? What do you do then? Can you stand to hear it or do you skip the track in favor of something a little lighter?
For me, the songs that twist my stomach in knots are the ones with stories of domestic violence, child abuse, or rape. And when I find one of those songs, I force myself not to delete it from my playlists and I pay attention when my iTunes shuffle pops it up. The singers recorded those songs for a reason - to tell us that terrible things are happening…
skookumchick | June 17, 2009Recall that for the month of June, a group of bloggers are trying to draw attention to the horror of violence against women and girls across the globe. Along this theme, I could write about sex tourism in Mombasa (a direct result of increased regulations in Cambodia) or the conversations about legalising sex work so that sex workers can organize , or a continuation of the discussion on mass rapes in Liberia, or the case of a waitress in China who, in self-defense, stabbed a man who, prosaically, "was trying to force himself on her". (What the hell does that mean, anyway? Talk about…
skookumchick | June 17, 2009The New York Times Lens blog is regularly fascinating, especially to a wannabe photographer. Did you see the post on the Tiananmen Square "man and tank" photo? There's also incredible photos from the protests of the election in Iran. This week, the Lens blog as part of the Second Chances series, tells the story of Terry Cummings, who finally has the courage to go through gender re-assignment surgery. Watch the audio/video here.
skookumchick | June 16, 2009Okay, so I have recovered from my visit to Washington, and my first JAM conference. Here are some highlights that are more edited than my lame live-blogging post is. ;-)
I didn't realize how big JAM is -- there were ~1200 people attending, and ADVANCE was only a very very small part. There were people from AGEP, TCUP, GSE, CREST, RDE, HBCU-UP, and LSAMP.
[Acronym dejargoner:
AGEP= Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate
HBCU=Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program
TCUP=Tribal Colleges and Universities Program
LSAMP= Louis Stokes Alliances for…