conference chatter
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,…
sciencewoman | January 17, 2009Gender and science session - Alice, Zuska, and Abel
Non-chronological note-taking from a great session.
What is an ally? How do you become an ally?
You can be an ally for any oppressed group. (http://partnersinchange.umich.edu/page1_2.html)
Be an ally all the time, not just in front of the person to whom you are allied. (Zuska)
There is point of no return. A crystallizing experience, that crosses a threshold, where they can't go back to not caring. But you can't tell (from looking or listening) who has crossed the threshold and whether you can count on them all the time. (Janet)
Being an…
skookumchick | January 17, 2009So ScienceWoman and I will be sharing live-blogging duties today, at least until our batteries give out. We're both starting at the Open Access publishing session, although I was also intrigued by Peggy Kolm's session about science fiction on science blogs. I'll have to catch up with her later.
Also, please note: this is liveblogging. There may be grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, unfinished sentences. But it's hot off the press. I'll try to come back and clean things up afterwards. FYI.
I wanted to go to the open access talk because my department is talking about publication needs…
sciencewoman | January 16, 2009
I'm sitting at the edge of the auditorium at the Sigma Xi Center, comfortably sandwiched between Scicurious and Christina Pikas. I'm listening to Rebecca Skloot describe how a creative writing class assignment to write about a place and her response about the freezer in the Colorado State University Veterinary School morgue launched her on a career in science writing. Now, she's introducing the main topic of her talk (as well as the topic of her new book) "The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks" And we're getting to hear world-premiere excerpts from the book to be published next year.
Skloot'…
skookumchick | January 4, 2009As I've mentioned, I'm co-organizing a session on gender and science blogging, with a particular focus on how we can be allies, as well as on the intersection of gender, race and class in blogging.
The official conversation has been a little slow, but while I've been distracted, others have been writing interesting posts, with even more interesting comment threads and responses. I'm hoping bringing it up again will keep the conversation going and might prompt ideas for the ScienceOnline session.
In my last post, ecogeofemme askedhow ally was defined in this context. On one hand, as Lab…
sciencewoman | December 20, 2008Don't tell my university administrators, but sharing my latest science results is only a tiny fraction of the reason to go to a conference like AGU. Even hearing the latest and greatest science is not the entire reason. This is a lesson that is taking me a long time to learn. I get giddy with the thought of all the cool science I want to take in at AGU. I plan my schedule full from 8 am to 6 pm with talk after talk and poster after poster. Since the work I do crosses several sub-disciplines, I am often forced to make difficult choices between competing timeslots. When I was a wee grad student…
sciencewoman | December 16, 2008The last few weeks have been completely chaotic, over-crowded, and exhausting. On top of the end-of-term crunch, with its usual flurry of grading, review sessions, and exams, I was also trying to finish revisions on a paper, and get some research done in time to make the poster for AGU. The unintended, but entirely predictable consequences of all this was longer and longer hours working, more and more caffeine, and less and less time with Minnow.
I was getting so much done! I discovered that if I just drank more caffeine, I could reduce my nightly sleep to 6 (badly interrupted) hours. And in…
sciencewoman | December 2, 2008You've got a blog. You've developed a comfortable voice. Your writing has found a receptive audience, with thoughtful and supportive commenters. Things are going well.
Then, WHAM! You defend your thesis. Or you get a new job. You have a baby. Or get a divorce. You move to a new continent. Your blog gets assimilated by a Borg. Or you decide to come out of the pseudonymous closet.
Suddenly, you find you've lost some confidence in your writing. Maybe your usual stream of topics has been cut off. Maybe you worry about the appropriateness of your blogging in your new professional capacity.Maybe…
skookumchick | July 31, 2008Just over a month ago I was just starting the main part of the National Women's Studies Association conference. I finally have a few minutes now to share with you some of the ideas and sessions I went to at the conference.
Sorry it's not liveblogging - there wuz no Internetz at the conference center *gasp*.
I pretty much just sat in the science and technology studies sessions, with the exception of the initial keynote address. A caveat - if you are the author or also attended the session, please feel free to correct my recollection! NWSA is a hard conference for me to sit in, as it requires…
skookumchick | July 22, 2008As you know, I have just returned from a 3-week visit to Europe, where a main event was attending the Research in Engineering Education Symposium (REES) in Davos, Switzerland between July 8-10. Before I forget the experience entirely, let me share some highlights.
The conference was attended by about 75 people who presented around 57 papers in an unusual and helpful format: the papers consisted of "extended abstracts," no more than 5 pages in length, and were distributed in advance. If you attended a session (90 minutes, three papers), you were expected to have read the abstracts of that…
sciencewoman | July 18, 2008So I attended a pedagogy workshop this week and I brought Minnow along. For those not keeping track, she's now almost 18 months old and still going strong with the nursing (>= 2 x/day, >=2x/night). When I signed up for the workshop, I'd intended her to stay with my mom in Midwest, but in the end she came with me instead. The workshop organizers have been fantastically accommodating, and I want to give a shout-out to the other participants who have been super-friendly and helpful. (Especially, Kim. Thanks!)
But I still feel like a trouble maker. There are plenty of other moms here. Some…
skookumchick | June 22, 2008I'm finally home from my two back-to-back conferences. I confess, somewhere in the middle of the 2nd conference, I just wanted to go home. But it was good to stick it out. Of course, the lack of Internets starting Friday morning through today wasn't great, but it means I have some session blogging still to do before I leave town again on Friday for my next conference trip. In the meantime, here are some photos of a few things that caught my fancy in Cincinnati.
The house looks okay, the plants haven't died, and I have my headache back. All in time for a busy day at work tomorrow. At…
skookumchick | June 19, 2008The National Women's Studies Association national conference and the American Society for Engineering Education national conference are back to back - I'm at NWSA now, and ASEE is next week.* While I want to blog about suggestions for how to work conferences, my morning of wandering 'round the conference center for NWSA has raised some stark differences between these conferences for me.
Here are a couple that are occurring to me:
ASEE
Sponsored by defense contractors like Northrup Grumman
Everyone wears business clothes
Empty women's bathrooms
No mention of labour unions
Evenings…
skookumchick | June 18, 2008Okay, so now I'm in Cincinnati (flew in from St. Paul this morning) for the National Women's Studies Association national conference (in a unionized hotel, please note). I missed the last day of Inclusive Science, but really enjoyed myself, and felt I had something to contribute. Things feel a bit different at this conference.
I arrived pretty early for this conference (the main program starts Thursday night) because the science and technology task force had a 3 hour meeting this afternoon. I'll blog more about this later, but I did feel completely out of my depth again - like when I first…
skookumchick | June 17, 2008I'm at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, MN at a completely fascinating (so far!) conference on feminist science studies. Because of the free Internetz, I'll try liveblogging the sessions I'm in, but may get distracted as it is (as I have mentioned) completely fascinating.
Here's some of what I'm hearing:
Marlene Zuk, talking about the problems with using males as model organisms and how the use of model organisms seem to result in making those model organisms role models for humans, and the problems with the scala natura constructing the most complicated (and therefore good)…
skookumchick | June 4, 2008It has been proposed by the fabulous Pat of FairerScience and other places that the developing genre of "women in science" blogs might be used as a way to recruit girls and young women into science and engineering careers(see a good outline and guidelines here). Women who write about their passion for doing science, their ideas for balancing work and family, their professional desires and challenges may indeed encourage girls who are readers to consider science - I think about it as an online version of seeing women as role-models in science.
I'd like to get your thoughts on the subject, in…
skookumchick | May 12, 2008Okay, so I've been keeping this under my hat for the last six-eight months, scared of jinxing things, but it's becoming arduous to keep hiding, so I'm sharing.
Purdue submitted a proposal in December for an NSF-ADVANCE institutional transformation grant - the purpose of these grants are to improve the lot for and of women in science and engineering academia, particularly faculty positions. I'm listed as a co-PI on Purdue's grant.
NSF hasn't awarded anything yet, so we are in official limbo, waiting for word. However, the waiting game has now bumped into the annual ADVANCE PI meeting,…
skookumchick | April 9, 2008Ugh. After conferences, I'm tired and want to go home; but then I get home and am overwhelmed by what I have to do to catch up. I got in at 10:30 pm last night; my inbox is jam-packed from people who want stuff from me, my fridge is empty, my calendar is back to being filled by disparate meetings, my seedlings need replanting, my hosts need thanking. It's now 8:30 am, and all I really want to do is go back to bed.
It will be a few days of catch-up, I guess. Best get started.
skookumchick | April 5, 2008I'm sitting in panels and sessions at this great conference on Engineering, Social Justice and Peace which is the 7th annual conference of this kind. Here are only some of the snippets of what I've been seeing and hearing:
I heard yesterday of exciting and courageous curricular attempts to integrate social justice into engineering education. I heard of a course called "Engineering and Social Justice" offered through engineering and sociology at Queen's University, a first-year course where projects were focused on social justice, year-long experiences for students in Engineers Without…
skookumchick | April 3, 2008I'm heading out tomorrow to the Engineering, Social Justice and Peace Conference being held at Smith College this weekend, and then two days in the area to try to meet with students and talk about our graduate program in engineering education. Anyone going to be in the area and up for a meet-up?
I'll try to post on the conference while I'm away, pending internet connections.