sciencewoman
Posts by this author
September 22, 2009
This afternoon, as I was busy working with graduate students and my daughter was napping at daycare, an email from AGU reminded me to renew my membership for next year. AGU is one of my two main societies and early renewal gives you a discount on electronic access to their articles, so I dutifully…
September 18, 2009
Welcome to the second installment of SciWo's Storytime, a low-production cost substitute for the recently canceled children's television classic, Reading Rainbow.
This week, Minnow and I have been enjoying the book "Move Over Rover" by Karen Beaumont and illustrated by Jane Dyer.
I apologize for…
September 17, 2009
While I'm loving @nparmalee, I thought I'd repost a short series of tweets where she asks a really good question, and one that I don't have an answer to.
There's a lot of talk re: women in science and accepting alternate timelines, & I think this is great. I am very anachronistic.
That reqs…
September 16, 2009
Some days the intertubes are not good for my blood pressure. Today was one of those days.
It started when my email contained a plea from the National Women's Law Center sent me an email with the title "Breaking News: Abortion at Risk in Health Care Reform"
"As you are reading this, there's…
September 15, 2009
Yesterday I wrote a post where I laid out reasons why I am opposed to night school courses in my graduate program. As I said yesterday, "I am against accommodating our full-time worker, part-time graduate student students by moving a significant number of our classes to evening hours." That post…
September 14, 2009
It has recently been brought to my attention that a subset of my department's graduate student population is unhappy with our course scheduling. Some of our part-time graduate students feel that we are not doing a sufficient job of offering evening courses to meet the needs of people who work full-…
September 11, 2009
Did you know that after a 26 year run, Reading Rainbow is no longer producing episodes? "Butterfly in the sky, I can fly twice as high. Take a look, it's in a book, a reading rainbow" is no longer enchanting thousands of young children. The series, in case you never watched it, featured the…
September 8, 2009
Those following along on Twitter know that late August became my #weeksofdoom in which I triumphed over three major deadlines on top of the beginning of classes and starting Minnow in a new school. (Hence, the unexpectedly long bloggy absence).
Now that the weeks of doom* are over, I'm finally…
September 5, 2009
Let's see if I can remember how to do this blogging thing....
Proposal 1: We started out doing it by the book. Picked a good research topic, and then found the appropriate RFP, with a deadline comfortably in the future. We had weekly brainstorming meetings to refine our research objectives and were…
August 14, 2009
Dear asshat,
When you are only carrying a small garment bag and attache case, and you encounter a mother struggling into the airport parking deck elevator with a toddler in hand, giant carseat over one shoulder, suitcase rolling behind and attache case over the other shoulder, the correct thing to…
August 12, 2009
A. Non Mouse, who blogs over at NaCl and hv, has just written a great series of posts about her strategies for successfully bringing a baby to a conference. Check out her how-to posts on childcare, transportation, gear, and accommodations.
This is a subject that is close to my heart, and one that…
August 11, 2009
I'm back to working on my class on Experimental Design and Data Analysis. One of my goals for the course is to have students work in groups to write an NSF-style proposal. So I sat down this morning to think about the steps it takes to write a research proposal. When I turned to google, I found a…
August 11, 2009
While I'm working on my course design stuff, please help some of my lovely bloggy friends conduct some research on how women geoscientists use blogs.
Over the past several years, the geoscience blogosphere has blossomed so much that this fall, the Geological Society of America (GSA) will be…
August 5, 2009
I'm heading off line today and won't have any internet access for a few days. After that I should have access again, but life has conspired to hand me the "Weeks of DOOOOM" leading up to September 1st-ish. You know, the usual start of classes (with a new prep), two grant proposals (with a third a…
August 4, 2009
A wonderful and alert reader writes:
i know you have lots of astronomer readers, so you probably already know about this, but just in case not: http://wia2009.gsfc.nasa.gov/
this is a conference whose title is "women in astronomy 2009: meeting the challenges of an increasingly diverse workforce."
i…
August 2, 2009
The ADVANCE Center for Institutional Change received an award from the National Science Foundation ADVANCE program to hold professional development workshops for Ph.D.-level women in industry, research labs, consulting, or national labs who are interested in transitioning to academic careers in…
July 31, 2009
Abel, host of the next edition of Scientiae, has asked us how we balance our summer "musts" and "needs" (work and play). I think I've come up with a personally satisfactory answer to that question: lazy summer mornings.
During the academic year, mornings are a blur of getting everyone breakfast,…
July 31, 2009
I need some new teaching shoes for fall semester. My trustworthy, if utilitarian, Keens always look incongruous with the feminine tailoring I prefer for my teaching/meeting outfits. Plus, my black Keens are a bit too big for my feet, since they were purchased late in pregnancy. So I've been looking…
July 30, 2009
If she lives in New Jersey, she might be. Because apparently, refusing a C-section (and then successfully vaginally delivering a healthy baby) and acting "combative" "erratic" and "noncompliant" during labor is considered child abuse and neglect and is grounds for the New Jersey Division of Youth…
July 27, 2009
Two months ago, at the beginning of the summer, I asked Dr. Isis, the goddess of all things domestic and laboratory, for some fashion advice. My problem was one of hot outside-cold inside - which is pretty unappealing when referring to undercooked microwaved food - but also pretty obnoxious when…
July 27, 2009
Plagiarizing from Profgrrrrl, the translation would be "Oh Shit, I must write! week."
In a week and a half, I'm going out of town for a week and a half. In between now and when I get back, there are a number of important things with external deadlines that must be met.
Write and submit invited…
July 27, 2009
Sprinklers. Wading pools. Picnics. Dogs. Playing with Minnow. Hanging out with good friends. The hallmarks of well-spent summer weekends. Just don't forget the cucumbers...
One day's worth of cucumbers, after a few days of rain. This picture was from a few weeks back, and fortunately the cucumber…
July 25, 2009
This slim novel by author Bi Feiyu takes the reader inside the world of the Peking Opera, after the Cultural Revolution and at the dawn of capitalism in China. Xiao Yanqui rashly lost her place in the opera company just when her star was rising, but now, 20 years later, she's been given a chance at…
July 24, 2009
To recap, I'm prepping a new graduate level course on experimental design and data analysis (EDDA) that will serve MS and PhD students from geosciences and civil and environmental engineering. I've been working through the SERC course design tutorial, and so far I've figured out context and…
July 23, 2009
Can you spare 50 minutes to help out a graduate student desperate for research participants? If so, please read below:
Dear all,
Within the context of my PhD project at Philips Research and Eindhoven University of Technology, I am developing a questionnaire that will help me to look at the relation…
July 23, 2009
Now that things at ScienceBlogs have returned to normal, and I've drawn down my stash of reader emails, it's time to get back to work on my series on course design. For those who haven't been playing along (1.1, 1.2) I'm prepping a new graduate level course on experimental design and data analysis…
July 22, 2009
Another letter from my inbox:
Dear Sciencewoman,
I am a mom of 3 just starting my own lab. I have been thinking hard about how to recruit good postdoc talent despite the fact that I have no track record as an independent investigator. And then I remembered an article about an organization to help…
July 21, 2009
Amazing momma-scientist Janus Prof asked me to ask y'all how many hours you really work.
Janus Prof is just completing her first year on the tenure-track at a prestigious university, and in the course of that year, she also gave birth to her first child and was diagnosed with an uncurable, chronic…
July 21, 2009
Time to move hairy Ethan off the top of the page. Fortunately, there's a couple of great questions from readers qued up in my email account. And maybe by the time they get posted, I'll be ready to get back to my course design series. First up, loyal commenter GymLabRab wonders how to mentor a new…
July 20, 2009
Have you seen Ethan Siegel? He's the blogger behind Starts with a Bang. The guy has got a lot of hair!
And he's offering to shave his head if 100 unique commenters each give at least $10 dollars or 4 hours of their time to the charity of their choice. What a great way to give people a little…