conference chatter
sb admin | July 21, 2010Mark Pendergrast writes: It's time to wrap up this ScienceBlog Book Club on my book, Inside the Outbreaks. I want to thank Liz Borkowski, Steve Schoenbaum, and Karen Starko for their excellent, insightful commentaries, and thanks too to those who commented here. I assume that you can continue to do so, and you can also contact me through my website at www.markpendergrast.com. While you're there, on the Outbreaks page, take a look at the YouTube link to the children of Niger singing. It's quite wonderful, and it also has an important message at the end.
I don't regard this as the end of…
skookumchick | December 6, 2009Okay. It's been another month since I blogged. But since I last wrote, my dad wrote the family holiday letter and asked me how many places I've traveled to. Here's the list.
January
To Detroit to look at the SWE Archives
To RTP for ScienceOnline2009
February
To Arizona, invited to a workshop on engineering and ethics education
To Washington DC for a panel on research in engineering education
March
To Kentucky, to do some intense PEER mentoring in engineering education
April
I think nowhere
May
To Madison for my dad's retirement
To a room at Purdue for a week's development of a…
sb admin | November 27, 2009This week we are reading Judith Viorst's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. This video was produced with a dedication to Kate, who explained to me why kids like this book so much even before they understand everything that's happening in it. She wisely told me that it's because kids rarely get to hear a story about a kid getting really mad, expressing their feelings, and without a neat fairy-tale or moralistic ending. Alexander just has a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day, and he's not afraid to tell us about it.
I'd also like to dedicate this post to all of…
sb admin | November 20, 2009I am not in charge of SciWo's Storytime. Sure, it might look like I'm the one reading the books and operating the video camera, but Minnow exerts the ultimate executive authority as editor-in-chief. Some weeks no videos whatsoever are allowed to be made, some weeks she's content to let me pick the book, and some weeks she is quite happy to make a whole string of videos, so long as she chooses the content.
With that proviso, Minnow presents this week's edition of SciWo's Storytime featuring the book Little Squire the Fire Engine by Catherine Kenworthy and illustrated by Nina Barbaresi.
Now…
skookumchick | October 2, 2009I'm digging out of a mound of to-dos, but wanted to make you aware of two opportunities to explore feminist pedagogies and research methods in engineering education at the 2009 FIE later this month. Note participation in the workshop requires advance registration. Please share this notice with other colleagues who might be interested, and feel free to contact me with questions. On behalf of all the presenters, thank you, and we hope to see you in San Antonio
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S3A: Workshop: Feminist Engineering Education: Building a Community of Practice
Sunday October 18 from 6-9 pm in El…
sciencewoman | August 12, 2009A. 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 I've written about before (here, here, and here on a trip when Minnow was 9 months old, here at 18 months, and here's a manifesto on the subject that was featured in last year's Open Lab ).
And it's funny timing too that A. Non Mouse writes about motherhood and conference travel now, when I am…
sciencewoman | August 4, 2009A 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 expect that there will be a lot of emphasis on astronomy, but also a lot of general discussion about life as a woman in science in general.
The conference is in College Park, MD in October and it sounds fantastic! If any of my legions of astronomer readers attend the conference, will you please…
skookumchick | June 29, 2009When I first started to go to conferences, I couldn't see what people saw in them. I didn't know anyone, I thought lots of the sessions were boring, and I found the whole thing overly stressful to deal with. Then I started making some friends who I would see at said conferences, and then started to figure out why people liked them.
Since then, I have added an aspect to going to conferences. I'll go hang with my friend-colleagues (some of them having advanced to being full friends :-) ) most of the meals, but once in a while I'll sneak off and have dinner by myself.
I did this tonight…
skookumchick | June 25, 2009Somehow I've survived this week with only one really big "oops" (an IRB application I should have turned in weeks ago), and I am off tomorrow to continue my conference tour. I'm heading to a workshop in Delft, The Netherlands on gender and engineering research (along with a couple of R&R days in Amsterdam - send me your best advice for things to do!), and will blog depending on internet access. Then I have a research trip to Detroit to go back to the SWE archives at the Reuther Library (a continuation of this project). Then I have another workshop in New York (state) on engineering and…
skookumchick | June 16, 2009Okay, so I have recovered from my visit to Washington, and my first JAM conference. Here are some highlights that are more edited than my lame live-blogging post is. ;-)
I didn't realize how big JAM is -- there were ~1200 people attending, and ADVANCE was only a very very small part. There were people from AGEP, TCUP, GSE, CREST, RDE, HBCU-UP, and LSAMP.
[Acronym dejargoner:
AGEP= Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate
HBCU=Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program
TCUP=Tribal Colleges and Universities Program
LSAMP= Louis Stokes Alliances for…
skookumchick | June 15, 2009At JAM last week, a really useful session was conducted by Nakeina Douglas, an assistant professor in the L Douglass Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth. She also is involved in the Grace E Harris Leadership Institute, and teaches public policy and research methods.
"What was so useful about her talk?" I hear you ask. Well. Let me tell you. She talked to us about how to write those darn annual reports for NSF. Let me share...
Shockingly, the two main objectives of reporting for NSF are accountability and decision usefulness. I know; who would have…
skookumchick | June 15, 2009Blog friend Pat Campbell and her colleagues Susan Metz, and Jennifer Weisman gave a great talk at JAM on getting your research message out to the press.
Key ideas, themselves tailored to this audience:
MEDIA SURPRISE: don't agree to an on the spot interview; research the journalist first. What part of the newspaper are they writing for? Who are they writing for? What is the angle? What is the deadline? Who else are they interviewing? Get background material on the journalist and have it written down.
HAVE A MESSAGE and tailor it to your audience. Your results are going to be…
skookumchick | June 9, 2009I'm liveblogging the Joint Annual Meeting of the HRD directorate programs, and although the internez is spotty, I will update as we can.
We began the morning with a keynote by Dr. Wanda Ward, Assistant Director for the Directorate for Education and Human Resources at NSF. The first half of her talk was largely about the different programs in HRD (Human Resources Division) and elsewhere that speak to (a new acronym to me:) BP, or "broadening participation." A few items of note:
[Follow along at the JAM twitterfeed here. So far it looks like I'm the only one twittering... can it be so?]
She…
sciencewoman | May 26, 2009The email below announces this year's "Negotiating the Ideal Faculty Position" workshop run by Rice University's ADVANCE program. I've heard great things about this workshop and they've run it for several years. In fact, I applied two years running and didn't get in, so it must be popular for a reason.
Dear Colleague:
A recent study of diversity in engineering notes that "the most
accurate predictor of subsequent success for female undergraduates is
the percentage of women among faculty members at their college [1]."
At Rice University we are strongly committed to increasing the
diversity of…
skookumchick | April 10, 2009Do you do research on gender and engineering or engineering education? Do you want to talk with cool European researchers about your and their research? Want to fly to Europe for free? Consider applying for the opportunity below the fold -- there are only a couple days left to apply (April 13 is the deadline) but the application process isn't difficult and I know they're still taking applications. Only restriction: you currently need to be working at a US university (I think).
US-Europe Workshop for Research on Gender and Diversity
in Engineering Education
Announcement and Call for…
skookumchick | March 30, 2009This announcement just in: the organization of a US-Europe workshop on research on gender in engineering education. More information below the fold; applications are due April 13, in just over 2 weeks!
US-Europe Workshop for Research on Gender and Diversity
in Engineering Education
Announcement and Call for Applicants
Applications are due April 13, 2009!
US Participants are sought for a 1-2 day workshop on gender research in engineering education to be held this summer in Delft, The Netherlands. Tentative dates are June 29, 30, or July 4. Participants will actively engage in developing an…
skookumchick | March 3, 2009So I got back Sunday night from a workshop at Arizona State University on Engineering and Science Ethics Education. The goal of the workshop was to explore the possibilities for blending microethics and macroethics in graduate engineering and science education; we spent 2 days talking about the history of such efforts, what micro and macro ethics might mean in the context of scientific and engineering education and practice, and how we might operationalize these ideas into 4 formats: a 3-credit course, a 9-credit course, a lab-situated set of discussions, and some online formats. The…
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…
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…
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…