skookumchick | February 4, 2009Acmegirl and DLee facilitated a ScienceOnline2009 session about race and science, stemming from what happened last year where the session on gender and race really focused on gender and not race. I've finally written up my notes, and what follows is a rough summary of the conversation. For those who attended, please feel free to annotate -- and note again the presence of the new "Diversity in Science" Carnival! More after the jump.
DLee started with talking about the image of scientists, and in particular the question of why images persist that scientists are white men. One way is…
sciencewoman | February 2, 2009The powers that be have declared this the third annual Blogroll Amnesty Day. According to those powers, we are supposed to be celebrate by linking to five lesser-known bloggers, and reiterating our liberal blogroll policy.
First the blogs you should be reading...hard choices here, but I'm going to go with these:
The Alternative Scientist - a group blog on alternative science careers
Life as I know it... - a new blog by thoughtful commenter Jenn PhD
I love science, really - by the wonderful Mrs. Whatsit
Mrs. Comet Hunter - if great bands can self-title albums, why not bloggers?
Chick with…
sciencewoman | February 2, 2009The February Scientiae is up at Fairer Science. Pat picked a great theme for this month's carnival "Our Dreams for a Better World." Go check out all the great ideas and then let's get to work turning them into reality.
And now for an exciting announcement, DNLee of Urban Science Adventures is kicking off a new monthly carnival focused on Diversity in Science.
Blogs of every genre are invited to write a special feature post about a person who is a pioneer and/or innovator in any of the amazing fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).
Tell us all about him/her?
How…
sciencewoman | February 1, 2009Another valiant attempt to combine motherhood, teaching prep, and watching the superbowl. Last year I made it to the third quarter before giving up (i.e., Minnow needed my attention for the rest of the evening). Let's see if this year goes any better.
6:22 pm: The TV has been on for about 15 minutes with the various pre-game antic. We shut it off because it's distracting Minnow from eating dinner.
6:29 pm: I'm changing a poopy diaper during opening kickoff. Minnow decides she wants to wear underwear for the next round.
The over-turned first touchdown: I'm dishing up home made apple pie and…
skookumchick | January 31, 2009I'm cleaning house, and trying to write half an exam, and making a dessert to take to a friend's house tonight, and trying to reset myself. So, while I am not blogging, here is a distracting video to amuse you. Carry on.
Hat tip to one of my husband's former students, who posted it on her blog.
skookumchick | January 30, 2009So I've said over there on the sidebar that I blog at the intersection of women's studies and engineering. I confess I bet Science Woman was hoping I'd do more of that than I have so far, and I was hoping to too. But I've been hobbled by the idea that I should publish it in the archival literature before I publish it on the blog.
Well, dear readers, I hope that your patience will be rewarded. I've got 2 papers submitted at the moment, not sure if they're both in review or if only one is, but the other I submitted to NWSAJournal, in hopes they'll publish it in their special issue on…
skookumchick | January 28, 2009Pat of FairerScience is hosting the February Scientiae, and has posted the theme to be about imagining a fairer, more equitable society (and maybe specifically about science). She's taking submissions (via this method) until January 30, so get fingers to keyboard if you haven't already, and send her your musings and dreams.
Can't wait to read this one... :-)
skookumchick | January 27, 2009I haven't talked much about my teaching yet this semester, and it's high time I did - at least a little, particularly to contribute a bit to the discussion about PWIs. To be clear: my institution will consider me for tenure based upon my research, and to a lesser extent based on my teaching (I learned on Monday that our teaching expectations in my department are a little higher than elsewhere in my college because we focus our research on education as well). So my job is primarily intended to be about helping the engineering education research community learn new things, with a secondary…
sciencewoman | January 26, 2009Dearest Minnow,
Happy Birthday!
I am so proud of my "big girl" who knows her colors, can count to three, has seven word sentences, loves books to the point of memorization, solves puzzles repeatedly, pees on the potty regularly, cares for and cuddles her "baby" and stuffed puppy, sings songs spontaneously, worries about how "Nanna has a big owie," pedals her tricycle, and has words associated with most of the letters in the alphabet ("apple, baby, cat, daddy..."). I'm amazed by how much you've grown so much in just the past few months, and I look forward to being amazed by your…
skookumchick | January 26, 2009OH MY GOD OH MY GOD THE COOLEST THING CAME IN THE MAIL! LOOK LOOK LOOK!
IT IS A THANK-YOU BOOK OF DRAWINGS FROM THE KIDS WHO GOT OUR DONORS CHOOSE DONATIONS!!!!
I am SO TOTALLY excited. The book is AWESOME, and they sent photos too, but I don't want to put them up on the blog for the kids' sake. But trust me, they are all SUPER COOL.
Below the fold is the letter from their teacher... thank you so much, folks for your generosity to our Donors Choose challenge -- y'all completely rock.
(Click to embiggen)
sciencewoman | January 24, 2009Thanks so much to Propter Doc for helping me moderate the Transitions session at ScienceOnline09. Our goal for the session was to draft a list of "best practices" for handling your online presence as you move through personal and professional transitions in the off-line world. Thanks to all the participants in the session for offering up their advice, stories, and wisdom and helping us come up with just such a list. Propter Doc has now got the complete list posted on Lecturer Notes, but I'll offer up a few highlights here.
Be ready with an argument to support your blog (why it benefits you…
skookumchick | January 24, 2009ScienceWoman and PropterDoc coordinated a session at ScienceOnline 09 that provided space for people to talk about different transitions they have blogged through, and how they navigated or negotiated those transitions. Both coordinators have gone through some job transitions which have manifested themselves in their blogs in different ways:
ScienceWoman has gone from being a graduate student to a junior faculty member and has blogged through her pregnancy and now two years of her daughter's life, while PropterDoc has also changed jobs but also changed countries at the same time, and is…
sciencewoman | January 23, 2009SW Notes: This post was begun a few weeks ago...you know, in the break between semesters. But I've been delayed and delayed in getting it done, and today is a day of metaphorical desk-clearing. So I'm just going to put it up now, half complete and let you all finish discussing it in the comments section.
The scene: My car insurance office
Insurance agent: You work at Mystery U.? You're on break now for a couple weeks, right?
ScienceWoman: Well, sort of. Classes start back up in mid-January, but there's lots of work to be done before then.
Insurance agent: Oh.
That scene is hardly unique in…
sciencewoman | January 21, 2009New blogger Mrs. Comet Hunter is in the latter stages of her Ph.D., and she's at the stage of trying to figure out how to break her work out into discrete publishable chunks. She recently wrote a post about the topic, and she sent me an email to ask some related questions. With her permission, here's the bulk of the email:
Dear ScienceWoman,
I've been reading the Sciencewomen blog for a couple of months now (I know, I'm new to the blog thing) - and find it very interesting! I especially like your shoe posts, and "Ask ScienceWoman". I have a suggestion for an Ask ScienceWoman topic: how to…
skookumchick | January 20, 2009Slightly less significant... Apparently both Diane Feinstein and Obama are left-handed. Let's hear it for lefties! ... forgetting that so were GHWBush and Ross Perot. ;-) Clinton (him, not her) is left-handed too.
skookumchick | January 20, 2009I spent my lunchtime today watching the inauguration of our new president. (W00T!) In between screen freezes and buffering, I noticed an article to the side of my video window in the NYT titled: "Female Scientists" and the lead line was "The inauguration brings some new home for lifting women in science." Written by Science Times writer Natalie Angier, the article wonders whether women will have a more equal time of it in science now we have a pro-Science administration (and smart is the new cool, apparently. I thought smart was cool all along but I realize I may have been in a minority…
sciencewoman | January 20, 2009Sciencewoman says: Some of readers have been wondering about what life is like for those jobs at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs). Alice and I are indubitably unqualified to answer that question, so Kim Hannula of "All of my faults are stress related..." graciously offered to provide some perspective. Kim is an incredibly thoughtful blogger about teaching and about geology, so you should all be reading her.
In the comments on Alice's post about grad students and balanced careers, there was some discussion about working at a primarily undergraduate institution, and questions about…
sciencewoman | January 20, 2009The real world intervened (i.e., I got a nasty cold) with my best intentions to provide more thorough blogging coverage of the wonderful conference (hi everyone!). Maybe someday I'll manage to work my thoughts from the sessions into coherent blog posts, but I know I'm pretty bad about promising and not delivering results (hello, the time-off post. It's 1/2 written even).
But here are some snapshots of the conference. And let me just say that Alice is even more wonderful in person than she is on blog. She is way cool. No wonder they gave her a trading card at the WISE event on Friday.
(Hey,…
skookumchick | January 19, 2009Ahem. I made it back from ScienceOnline 2009 with no mishaps. And today, I turn 32.
That is all.