sciencewoman | February 24, 2009Hear ye, hear ye. The first-ever and best-ever edition of the Diversity in Science Carnival has been posted.Read all about it at DNLee's Urban Science Adventures! There's some really fabulous stuff there and I can't wait to read those that I missed when they were first posted.
While you're being inspired by all of the great DiS posts, channel some of that inspiration towards this month's Scientiae call for posts. Liberal Arts Lady has asked us: "Who inspires you or motivates you? Who would you call your role models, at any stage of your career?" Posts should be submitted to scientiaecarnival…
sciencewoman | February 23, 2009Scene 1: a few days ago
(SW notes that most pencils in the room have stopped moving or have slowed down)
SW: OK, so moving on, we see ... (flipping to next slide)
(A hand goes up near the back of the auditorium)
SW: Yes? Did you have a question?
Stu Dent 1: Could you go back a slide? I wasn't done copying it.
SW: OK, but remember I post most of these slides on Blackboard, so if you don't get all the details in class, you can review and fill in your notes later.
(Stu Dent 1 lets out a dramatic sigh, quite audible at the front of the auditorium. There's also a bit of mumbling among students in…
sciencewoman | February 22, 2009 BBC Book Meme
As seen everywhere.
BBC Book List
Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. (I'll bold those I've read and italicize those of which I only read part.)
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
My list is below the fold.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen*
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X+
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte*
8 Nineteen Eighty…
sciencewoman | February 19, 2009Dr. Ashanti Pyrtle is an assistant professor in the College of Marine Science at the University of South Florida. She's a chemical oceanographer who studies the fate, transport and retention of radionuclides in aquatic ecosystems. Her PhD work investigated the marine distribution of radioisotopes from the Chernobyl accident, and she's currently doing work in Puerto Rico, off the Florida coast, and in the Savannah River. She's one of the first female African-American chemical oceanographers, and the first African-American to earn an oceanography Ph.D. from Texas A&M University.
Dr. Pyrtle…
skookumchick | February 19, 2009Call for Manuscripts: Special issue of Engineering Studies: Journal of the International Network for Engineering Studies on "Engineering and Social Justice"
Editors, Engineering Studies: Gary Downey (Virginia Tech, USA) and Juan Lucena (Colorado School of Mines, USA)
Special Issue Editor: Jen Schneider (Colorado School of Mines, USA)
This planned special issue of Engineering Studies invites submissions from scholars across the disciplines who study engineering and its intersections with social justice.
Engineering, as educational and professional practices often aimed at developing…
sciencewoman | February 17, 2009(to borrow a meme from La Isis)
Dear Students,
I understand that you took your exams on Monday and that our class meets next on Wednesday. I know that you are anxious to find out how you are doing in the class. Believe it or not, I am anxious to know how well I am in doing in helping you learn the material. But, unfortunately, you are not going to get your graded exams and projects back on Wednesday. You see, I am only human.
After you finished your exams, I taught another class and met with students. Then I went home to my family and had dinner with the neighbors. Afterwards, I had a wired…
skookumchick | February 17, 2009A colleague of mine sent around this link to the Chronicle (behind firewall, boo!) for some advice on how to stay healthy, even perhaps happy, while working on your dissertation. See the ideas after the fold.
By author Piper Fogg:
Learn to recognize the signs of depression and anxiety and don't be afraid to seek medical evaluation and treatment. Consider various options -- such as therapy, medication, relaxation techniques, and other forms of alternative medicine. Familiarize yourself with the campus counseling center as well as off-campus options.
Follow your mother's advice: Eat a…
sciencewoman | February 16, 2009The vexing case of the vanishing desk
Two exams given today. Two sets of projects due today. Two lab assignments that need to be returned. The usual assorted clutter: tea mugs, telephone, overheads, pens, pencils, computer paraphernalia. Where, oh where, could my desk and work table be?
The not-so-mysterious case of the nonexistent research time
My prime suspect: 12+ hours of committee meetings and work in one week.
The slightly more mysterious case of the missing texbooks
It's about time for "adopting" our text books for next fall, and the book I currently use has a new edition available, so…
skookumchick | February 16, 2009As I sit here, sending comments to a colleague on his slides, trying to figure out what we're teaching for class on Wednesday, uploading TA slides to Blackboard (BBTBOME=BlackBoard, The Bane Of My Existence), with 16 flagged emails in my "highest priority" smart mailbox, 50 pages yet to read in reading the dissertation proposal I'm supposed to attend the defense of tomorrow, and 3 pages yet to write in the grant proposal summary I said I would send to colleagues last weekend, I am reminded by a maxim I read somewhere on Teh Interwebz (Merlin Mann?) that I have written on a small index card…
skookumchick | February 16, 2009One of our research projects for ADVANCE involves doing a survey of people at Purdue asking them about their experience of Purdue's "climate." We're working on developing the survey, but one of the things we're finding interesting is that people's definitions of climate vary significantly, and tend to involve using other metaphors to define climate, itself a metaphor.
So I'm curious -- if someone were to ask you what your definition of "climate" was in the context of your work environment, what would you say? Not whether it was good or bad, but what the concept of "climate" means to you?
skookumchick | February 14, 2009Happy Valentine's Day! Voila a Facebook crossover, inspired by a friend of mine who is on the faculty at Wake Forest University. See my responses below, and consider yourself tagged if you like:
1. YOUR REAL NAME:
Alice Pawley
2.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME:(mother and fathers middle names)
Jane Binfield
3.NASCAR NAME:(first name of your mother's dad, father's dad)
Harold John
4.STAR WARS NAME:(the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first name)
Pawal
5.DETECTIVE NAME:(favorite color, favorite animal)
Yellow Dog
6.SOAP OPERA NAME:(middle name, town where you were born)…
skookumchick | February 13, 2009A good friend and colleague of mine, Alisha Wallers recently sent me an email about a new company she has founded. She used to be a mainstay of the feminist engineering education group until she "retired" to spend more time focusing on the education of her kids. Since then, she started "Learning with Alisha!" which has recently launched its first product, the Pink Polygons, designed to help kids with geometry. Read more about Alisha's company below the fold.
Dear Friends,
Learning with it Alisha! is an LLC that I formed with my dad, David Weathers. Our goal is to find the gaps in what is…
sciencewoman | February 11, 2009"Have you been following what's happening in Australia?"
That was the question I asked my morning class, even though it has nothing to do with the topic of the day's session. I was very pleased to see most of the heads nod and the hands raise in answer to my question. My students knew that the Australian state of Victoria is being devastated by wildfires that have killed at least 181 people and untold numbers of livestock. The fires have turned to ruins whole towns, with people trapped and unable to flee in time. It's awful to contemplate, but there is strong reason to suspect that at least…
skookumchick | February 11, 2009A good colleague of mine sent this video around a couple of days ago, with the disclaimer that sometimes he saw himself as the engineer, and sometimes (increasingly) like the "management dude," a fact he found alarming.
I for sure feel that one of the reasons that we see so little change in academia is for similar reasons.
The story about who created the video and why was on NPR. While it has pretty low production values, and the acting isn't award-worthy, I think we can all recognize the patterns and sentiments.
Here's a nice contrast I shared with my first-year engineering students:…
sciencewoman | February 10, 2009According to my self-declared theme, 2009 was supposed to be the year of sustainability. The year when I planned to "focus on trying to live my life that is sustainable in the long run for my body, my mental health, my family and my career." Instead, I feel like I could write another post with the title "Hi, I'm ScienceWoman and I sometimes blog around here." The last few weeks have been insane. I've been staying up later than usual, putting in less teaching prep time than I feel comfortable with, feeling like I'm not making any progress with my research, and missing time with my family.…
skookumchick | February 10, 2009I recently got an email from a colleague, Rebecca Hartman-Baker, who works at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the National Center for Computational Sciences, and who would like some thoughts from you all on the following questions and context:
A colleague and I are holding a Birds of a Feather session (BoF) at the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing in April (http://tapiaconference.org/2009/) and I was wanting to solicit some input from the readers of ScienceWomen. The title of the BoF is "Developing, Recruiting, and Retaining Underrepresented Groups in the National…
skookumchick | February 9, 2009It was one February ago, as in one year ago in February, that I abandoned my old pseudonymous blogging pad, and threw my lot in with the formidable Science Woman as a new coblogger. We were both working our ways through our first year of tenure-track, and I think each struggling a bit with keeping up the blogging (particularly on my end). She invited; I accepted; and as of now we have survived year 1.
I'm so very grateful to have been invited, and to have been welcomed by all Science Woman's readers. To Science Woman: thanks for a good year of blogging together, and even more for becoming…
skookumchick | February 6, 2009DLee has started a new carnival to highlight the contributions of awesome scientists and engineers, with the first one being focused on the contributions of African-American scientists and engineers (it being Black History Month and all).
(By the way, does anyone else think it is supercool to have a Black History Month when we finally have an African American president? I think so. Way cool. We're watching history being made!)
So. I want to profile someone I just learned about this very week, and who I have already talked about with my first-year students.
So. Have you ever heard of…
sciencewoman | February 5, 2009Another duplicate Seed magazine has arrived in my mailbox, and just in time another great Scientiae has been posted. Be the first one to identify the authors of the following three quotes in the comments, and I'll send along the Universe in 2009 issue of Seed.
It's another cool issue focusing on the all awesome innovations waiting on our scientific horizon. So far, I've particularly enjoyed the feature article on the "ecology of finance" and the Seed Salon where a physicist and a social scientist discuss how networks are becoming a dominant paradigm for investigating all sorts of phenomena.…
skookumchick | February 4, 2009... is to avoid vampire meetings. Which are any meetings which suck out your soul. And perhaps damn it to eternity. Post your horror stories here if you think it will help exorcise the effects.
Hat tip to 43folders.com.