Education
clock | March 31, 2008Elisabeth Montegna is quite a prolific blogger, with SECular Thoughts being just one of her virtual spaces. We finally got to meet at the second Science Blogging Conference in January and took a tour of the Museum of Natural Science in Raleigh together.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your scientific background? What is your Real World job?
I'm a senior graduate student at the University of Chicago. Since I get a stipend, I consider that my real world job. I graduated college from Boston…
terrasig | March 30, 2008In attempting to re-engage my academic brain stem, I've been doing a little continuing education the last couple of weeks at various forums hosted by the University-That-Tobacco-Built. Last week I had the pleasure of attending a forum of the Duke student organization, Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE), that featured four academic leaders (who were women) and Bora Zivkovic discussing non-bench science careers.
One of the panelists was an old colleague, Dr Rochelle (Shelly) Schwartz-Bloom, an award-winning neuropharmacologist and educator in the Duke Department of Pharmacology &…
skookumchick | March 28, 2008Ages ago people asked me what my research was actually about. Well, here's a synopsis of my PhD work as a starter.
I got my PhD in Industrial Engineering at the University of WIsconsin-Madison, and a PhD minor in women's studies. I was interested in how we keep using two ideas to understand women's underrepresentation in engineering - the pipeline, and the chilly climate - and how the programs and solutions that came from those ideas didn't seem to be increasing the number of women going into or graduating from engineering (in fact, the number is actually decreasing). I wondered if there…
nisbetmc | March 23, 2008
If you haven't seen this clip yet, above is a preview of the central message on how "Big Science" views religion in the documentary Expelled. There's little work needed on the part of the producers, since the message is spelled out via the interviews provided by PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins.
Notice the very clear translation for audiences as to what supposedly establishment science believes:
A) Learning about science makes you an atheist, it "kills off" religious faith.
B) If we boost science literacy in society, it will lead to erosion of religion, as religion fades away, we will get more…
gregladen | March 21, 2008Genie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education and author of Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction and Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools, will receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Science, from the University of New Mexico.
This will be her sixth honorary degree. Had she known that she would have been bestowed all of these doctorates, would she have bothered with the first, hard earned PhD????
(Probably)
Congratulations Genie!
Details here.
jstemwedel | March 20, 2008Since March is Women's History Month, I thought it might be appropriate to recognize some women who were a part of my history -- namely, the women who taught me chemistry and physics. (This shouldn't be interpreted as a slight against the women who taught me biology -- I simply don't remember them as well -- nor against the men who taught me science. They made an impact on me, but this post isn't about them.)
I didn't realize it until just now, but none of my science teachers in junior high or high school were women. That strikes me as kind of weird. In contrast, during my undergraduate…
drorzel | March 20, 2008Johan Larson asks:
How would you change the requirements and coursework for the undergraduate Physics major?
This is a good one, but it's a little tough to answer. I have ideas about things I'd like to change locally, but I'm not sure I really have the perspective I would need to be able to say how much of what I see is a problem with physics education in general, and how much is due to local quirks (our trimester calendar being the biggest such issue) that don't generalize well.
That said, my feeling is that most of the problems we have are with the introductory classes. I went to an…
sb admin | March 19, 2008Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard District of Columbia v. Heller, which pits DCâs handgun ban against the Second Amendment. DCâs gun law is the strictest in the nation, since it effectively all handguns; it does, however, allow for rifles and shotguns if theyâre kept disassembled or under trigger lock. The big issue is whether the Second Amendment â âA well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringedâ â guarantees an individual right to gun ownership, or only a collective right that hinges on…
oracknows | March 18, 2008Imagine you're a medical student in a dreaded "allopathic" medical school other than Georgetown. Imagine further that you're finding the grind of learning science- and evidence-based medicine a bit tiresome. After all, there's so much to learn: principles of biochemistry, physiology, anatomy (and not with acupuncture points), and neuroscience. You're reading multiple chapters a night, staying up all night cramming your mind full of minutiae of various signaling pathways and eponyms for anatomic structures. All those facts, all that evidence, it's all so...hard! It's all so soulless. Where's…
clock | March 16, 2008So, this post is almost ten days old, but I just now found some time to actually read the 35 comments on it as well as what others wrote about it on their blogs. I guess it is time to continue that conversation now.
First, let me be clear about the origin of that rant: I've been teaching for quite a long time now and always graded individuals without ever thinking about that assumption. The Facebook scandal triggered the new thought that perhaps all grades should be group grades. As a blogger, I put up a rant, spiced it up with strong language to elicit commentary (which bland stuff cannot…
cortex | March 14, 2008It's long been recognized that American kids suck at math, at least when compared to kids in Singapore, Finland, etc. What's less well known is that the steep decline in proficiency only starts when kids are taught algebra. That, at least, is the conclusion of a new government report:
"The sharp falloff in mathematics achievement in the U.S. begins as students reach late middle school, where, for more and more students, algebra course work begins," said the report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, appointed two years ago by President Bush. "Students who complete Algebra II are more…
terrasig | March 14, 2008It's been a roller coaster of a week for Charles E Jordan High School in Durham, North Carolina. (Wikipedia history here).
As we noted earlier this week, Jordan's Shivani Sud took first prize in the Intel Science Talent Search for her work on biochemical markers of stage II colon cancer. The Intel (formerly Westinghouse) Science Talent prize is referred to often as the "junior Nobel prize."
Two and three days later, we learned the identities of the suspects apprehended in the murder of Eve Carson, student body president at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Both young men,…
jstemwedel | March 11, 2008Since Alice and Sciencewoman and DrugMonkey and Razib are discussing it (and because Zuska has discussed it before, including in real life), I wanted to say something about my reaction to the observation that science blogosphere in general, and ScienceBlogs in particular, seems pretty white:
I'd noticed that, too! And I'd like it a lot if there were more racial diversity among the science bloggers and the blogging scientists.
There would be some clear benefits to achieving more diversity -- but there might also be costs, and looking at who would bear those costs seems pretty important.
To…
clock | March 11, 2008POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT:
Title: Manager of Web and Publications
Reports to: Director of Operations
Project Exploration Background: Cofounded in 1999 by paleontologist Paul Sereno and educator Gabrielle Lyon, Project Exploration is a nonprofit science education organization that works to make science accessible to the public-- especially minority youth and girls--through personalized experiences with science and scientists. Project Exploration meets its mission through youth development programs, services for schools and teachers, and public programs such as exhibits and online initiatives.…
clock | March 10, 2008I had great fun meeting Rick MacPherson last summer in San Francisco, so I was very happy that he could come to the second Science Blogging Conference in January where he co-moderated a panel on Real-time blogging in the marine sciences. Do not miss out on reading his blog Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your scientific background? What is your Real World job?
Aloha, Bora, and thanks for the opportunity to chat. I'm on the Big Island of Hawaii as I write…
skookumchick | March 10, 2008In an attempt to do my part to displace whiteness from "normal" in terms of thinking about diversity and science, I'm telling my ethnic story. This is part II; part I is here.
More below the fold...
The story of my mom's side of the family is quite different from my dad's. My mom's parents both grew up in the North of England, with my grandmother's family being coalminers. My grandmother went to school until the equivalent of 8th grade, and then she came home and helped look after her 9 siblings. I'm not sure where my grandparents met, or how they came to live in London. That's where…
skookumchick | March 10, 2008Some events combined last week to make me feel like ScienceBlogs needs to have a serious discussion about race and science. Here's a place to start - how do white people tell their own racial or ethnic stories?
More below the fold...
So last week, Monday afternoon through Wednesday afternoon, I was at my university's Multicultural Forum. While it is required for some of us to go, and while it looked like a lot of the material was going to be familiar to me already, I decided to use the 2.5 days as a time to gauge this new city I'm living in - as staff, faculty and alums attend this forum, I…
gregladen | March 8, 2008Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design is a must read for those interested in the Evolution - Creationism controversy. In particular, this volume is an essential part of the personal library of every science educator, for reasons that I will describe below. If you know a Life Science Teacher, this is a perfect birthday present. If you have a child in the public K-12 education system in the US, or the analog somewhere else, donate a copy of this book to the appropriate life science teacher!
In this important book published by Oxford University Press in 2004, Forrest…
pharyngula | March 8, 2008It's quite clear what the purpose of Ben Stein's Expelled movie is — notice what they've been doing with it. They've been shopping it around at screenings that are filtered to keep knowledgeable people out; they're planning to pay students to attend; they're relying on the Big Lie to promote the movie; and of course, they had to misrepresent themselves to get interviews.
But now they've really done it: they are going to give Florida legislators, sponsored by a representative who has filed one of those bogus "academic freedom" bills, a special, private screening of the movie. None of the…
pharyngula | March 6, 2008Teachers, come to Minneapolis this summer! Not for the Republican convention, but for the other great big important meeting that will be taking place: Evolution 2008.
Teachers in particular get a really good deal: a special workshop is planned, specifically on the teaching of evolutionary biology in the schools. We've got some good speakers (and me) lined up, and the registration cost of a mere $20 not only gets you into the workshop, but into the regular meetings as well. Here are the details:
Evolution 101 Workshop for K-12 Educators
Friday, June 20, 2008
Bell Museum of Natural History…