diversity matters
skookumchick | December 8, 2009One of my colleagues Amy Slaton (a historian of engineering and engineering education at Drexel) has started a new blog in conjunction with the completion of her new book, Race, Rigor and Selectivity in U.S. Engineering: The History of an Occupational Color Line. Her work is brilliant -- thoughtful, grounded, clear, and with an appalling message about the raced character of engineering education.
Anyway, her new blog is STEM Equity, and you should also totally read her first book, Reinforced Concrete and the Modernization of the American Building which is similarly brilliant even though it…
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…
sciencewoman | November 6, 2009A few days ago I arrived at my office in the morning and was greeted with an unpleasant surprise...someone had scratched a cross into the bulletin board just outside my office door.
(Apologies for the terrible cell-phone picture.)
While I'm able to cover the image with a strategically placed advising schedule, I'm haunted by a terribly icky feeling in the pit of my stomach. Was someone trying to send me a message? Why a cross? Why my board and not the boards of my male colleagues along the corridor?
I'm not offended by images of crosses in general, but it is not something that I want…
sciencewoman | October 8, 2009 After tropical forests are cleared for agriculture and then abandoned, secondary forests regrow on the site. But how do plant species composition, biomass and soil organic matter differ through this succession of primary forest, pasture, and secondary forest? Employing tools of biogeochemistry, ecosystem ecology, and land-use/land-cover change to examine those and related questions, Erika Marin-Spiotta earned a Ph.D. in environmental science, policy, and management from the University of California at Berkeley, a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and…
sciencewoman | July 6, 2009Reader science newbie poses a great question to me and asks for the collective wisdom of our readers:
Dear Sciencewoman,
I have been reading & loving you blog for some time now. Thanks! You rock!
Ok, I have a question....
I have interviewed for, and been given a verbal offer for my first assistant professor position. We are negotiating startup funds, salary, etc right now. Due to state budgetary constraints, I have been informed that all of my startup funds (excluding salary) will have to originate from the department's funds, not university or state money. I have found some information…
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 8, 2009My university has reported that we have just increased our math requirements for admissions into the university. I guess that Purdue's requirements had been to require students have taken 3 years of math to be admitted, and now it will be 4 years starting in Fall 2011. The argument is that "[t]he vast majority - 95.1 percent - of Indiana students attending Purdue already takes four years of college preparatory math, such as algebra, trigonometry, precalculus and calculus" (no word on out-of-state students) and that there is research that suggests requiring students to have taken 4 years of…
sciencewoman | March 1, 2009 Liberal Arts Lady has ably hosted another fantastic edition of Scientiae. Head over there for some fantastic stories of role models and mentors, as well as some reminders that we have a ways to go before all aspiring scientists can find someone who looks like them.
I also wanted to draw your attention to an excellent post by Zuska. She says that "It's Difficult To Talk About Diversity When You Feel Ignorant And Are Afraid To Give Offense" but that it's really important to be an ally in practice and not just in (silent) principle.
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 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 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 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…
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 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…