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 and Family Services (NJ DYFS) to immediately take away your newborn child and permanently terminate your parental rights. Sounds unbelievable, right? But I am so not making this up. In the case of New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services v. V.M. and B.G., In the Matter of J.M.G., new mother…

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 you are talking about frigid offices in sizzling summer weather. Here's part of what I asked Dr. Isis: Please, oh goddess of style, recommend a blazer or sweater that will be versatile enough to see me through summer work sessions in a frigid office and impromptu meetings across campus. Ideally this…

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 abstract Submit paperwork to university compliance office Write letter of intent for a big grant (and make progress on the grant app itself) Write volunteered abstract, get co-author input, revise and submit Get student working on hir abstract, revise as necessary, make sure zie submits Write draft of…

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 flux has eased somewhat, but it's still difficult to maintain the cucumber mass balance in our house. Anybody want some? What do you do with so many cucumbers? Make 2 versions of cucumber-tomato salad for a friend's house-warming party, and bring 2 extra cucumbers as her housewarming gift. Too bad…

Folks, I know my blogging has been near non-existent recently. I've just come back from yet another workshop (this time on engineering and identity - v. cool) and tomorrow we head out on vacation. We're camping across the country, then spending some time with my folks in Canada, then camping back. I suspect the intertubes will be thin on the ground but will post snippets when I can. I'm also at the cusp of making a big decision, and the time away from online I think will be really helpful for me. So I leave you in the hands of the always insightful Science Woman for the next few weeks - I…

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 redemption - a chance to return to the lead role in The Moon Opera. The novel follows Xiao as she attempts to control her body and contort back into the role of a much younger woman, despite the fact that she now has a teenage daughter of her own. Meanwhile, Xiao's understudy and star pupil wants…

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 constraints, over-arching goals, and ancillary skills goals. It's finally time to add content to my course. (Note that the material that follows is a bit outliny, because I'm thinking out loud (on blog paper) here and looking for feedback) First, according to the good folks at SERC, I need to bring it back…

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 between multimedia and feelings about the content. I would like to invite you to help me in validating this questionnaire. The goal of this questionnaire is to gain further insight in the relation between multimedia and feelings, mostly with regard to how your feelings about the shown multimedia is…

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 (EDDA) that will serve MS and PhD students from geosciences and civil and environmental engineering. I don't envision this course as a purely statistics course, though EDDA necessarily incorporates statistical concepts and techniques. Similarly, I don't envision this course purely as a proposal…

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 mentors and mentees who would like to return to science after a break (for taking care of children, family, whatever) to find each other. I was psyched about using such an organization because juggling three kids during my training taught me pretty quickly that productivity is often more about…

I cannot even believe this happened. Henry Louis Gates - Harvard professor, scholar extraordinaire (pdf), race theorist, PBS series host on African American Lives, most famous contemporary American black academic before Obama (maybe) - was arrested on July 16 for breaking and entering. INTO HIS OWN HOUSE. BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS. Read the story here. The police EVENTUALLY dropped the charges, AFTER questioning him for 4 hours at the police station. I just don't even know what to say. I am so freaking appalled I can hardly blog this. But to all those idiot people who think we're in a…

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 illness that limits her work hours. Yet she's also managed to get her lab up and running, recruit students, teach, and write a CAREER proposal. (I get out of breath just thinking about it.) So Janus Prof was understandably inspired to read a recent post from Dr. Mom, in which she admits that she…

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 colleague. GLR writes: Hi ScienceWoman, Thanks for your blog! I just became department chair on July 1. Too bad it means more work but no more pay! I'm wondering...what makes a good department chair? It seems from your conversation about your review, your chair is fairly hands-off and doesn't do…

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 kick in the butt to do something good. Ethan's post reminded me that I still hadn't completed our promised giving for the Silence is the Enemy project. Alice and I promised to double the amount we were paid for clicks in the month of June. We gave half of that money to Doctors without Borders (MSF) and…

Hooray, the first male host of Scientiae! Abel Pharmboy is hosting the August Scientiae, and posts the following on his blog: Summer days, driftin' away. . . Consider how you balance the demands and pleasures of this season. Have you found ways to make progress on your must-dos while also taking time for your family, friends - and yourself - and being in the moment of this time of year? Or are July and August just another month for you? And so as not to exclude our colleagues in the Southern Hemisphere (where I am fortunate to draw 5-7% of my blog visitors), why don't you take this time from…

Don't worry I'll be back to the course design series soon, but I spent yesterday focused on other things (paper revisions, grant proposals) and I haven't completed the necessary work to get the next post up. And it's Friday, so let's divert to lighter equally serious but different topics. As the mother of a toddler daughter I've been struggling with the overt patriarchy of the classic Disneyfied fairy tales, in which a stereotypically beautiful damsel in distress is helpless until rescued by a prince. I'd been trying to avoid exposing my daughter to the princess stories (Cinderella, Sleeping…

As introduced yesterday, I'm blogging my way through the SERC tutorial on course design, for a new graduate-only course on experimental design and data analysis. Yesterday, I explained the context and constraints on the course, and today I'm mulling on the course goals. I'm supposed to identify 1-3 over-arching goals for the course and 1-2 ancillary skills goals. Below the fold, I'll share my overarching goals and how I got to them. But I'm struggling with the ancillary skills goals, dear readers, and I'd love your help. Task 1.2c: Set one to three overarching goals for your course. The SERC…

After articulating that my most dire need is to get funded, it may seem disjointed to embark on a series of blog posts about teaching, but there you have it, the life of a professor at a place that requires both research and teaching. I still contend that I will get fired from my job much more quickly for failure to teach a course than failure to get funded, so I must do something about the new preparation I have for the fall. The new course, "Experimental Design and Data Analysis," is a graduate-only course with only a loose definition in the course catalog. It hasn't been taught for the…

A few weeks ago, I blogged a self-assessment of my progress towards tenure. It seemed like an apt time to reflect in the hours before my annual review meeting with the department chair(s) and in the months before my packet for reappointment is submitted. Reappointment is the first and only gatekeeping between me and submitting that tenure dossier in three years. I feel OK about reappointment, but less so about tenure. So that's the focus of the navel-gazing. (I suspect such gazing will only get worse as the next few years wend on.) In my self-assessment, I identified a number of areas where…

I'm off visiting a set of archives for the rest of this week - Karen Tonso and I are trying to cook up a cool research idea (to expand into a manuscript) about engineering and identity in relation to this project. However, my attention was recently drawn to an article by Peg Boyle Single in Inside Higher Ed about writing your dissertation, and I noticed a connection with Robert Boice and his writing strategies. What ho! I thought. Time to bring back the ATNFM into my life. It's a sign. I've also started exploring the idea of doing research with Evernote. I'm not sure how it will work,…