engineering education
sciencewoman | October 7, 2008We got off to a strong start in the Sciencewomen Reader Challenge 2008. In the first 48 hours, we attracted 9 donors who gave a total of almost $400 to our DonorsChoose projects that fund impoverished public school science classrooms. And then we plateaued and our ticker hasn't budged a milimeter in the last few days.
Maybe you gave to other DonorsChoose challenges or maybe you thought you'd do it later. But we'd love to see you give a little bit of money to help out our handpicked projects, too. So in order to provide a little extra incentive, Alice, I and the good folks at Yellow Ibis have…
skookumchick | October 6, 2008The PBS News Hour reports out on the Barefoot College in India. The reporter talks with grandmothers learning to make solar lights, and with the founder who believes educating men is a lost cause because they're lazy. He argues that women use their education to get good jobs, and then use the money they earn to support their families, bringing it back to their villages, while men use it to get the worst jobs they can. It's a compelling story, and one that reminds us of the value of microlending, particularly for women's education and businesses.
See photos of the Barefoot College students…
skookumchick | October 1, 2008For the last two Octobers, Janet of Scienceblogs' Adventures in Ethics and Science has organized Sciencebloggers into participating in the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge. We're doing it again this October, yay!
DonorsChoose collects requests for materials, supplies, equipment, money for field trips and so on from public school teachers who are trying to do great things for their students, and then faciliates matching them to people who want to help. ScienceWoman and I have chosen some projects we think would be great to fund, for kids who really need it.
And while we realize that the…
skookumchick | September 2, 2008(Okay, I admit this is a pure plug. You've now been warned.)
My department is hosting an open house for prospective graduate students September 18-19 here in West Lafayette. If you have been thinking about doing a PhD in engineering education at Purdue, here's your opportunity to:
interact with current engineering education grad students
chat with faculty about research opportunities and ideas
check out Purdue and Lafayette/West Lafayette.
come to a departmental seminar that yours truly organizes
tour the Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering (where our department is located), as an added…
skookumchick | June 27, 2008Some longtime readers may know I'm enormously frustrated at the corporatization of engineering, and think that if engineers say they solve problems then there are some enormous problems of housing, lack of clean water, and energy use in impoverished communities across the globe that need solving and we engineers as a profession should get cracking on them. Here are two couple of examples of people who are doing just that:
Architecture for Humanity is an organization that started after the South Asian tsunami to design buildings to help rebuild not only the structure but also the spirit and…
skookumchick | June 24, 2008We've been having a couple of interesting conversations on this blog about what makes an engineer, or who becomes an engineer. The National Academy of Engineering has been facilitating a conversation about this too, and have just published a report about it.
I have just ordered my copy, so I haven't read the report yet. But I have heard a couple of presentations on it, and the rough summary is that engineering needs an image change. We need ideas other than the stories of "engineering is problem solving" or "engineering is making things" to attract those who have the talent engineering…
sciencewoman | June 17, 2008All the recent talk about engineers 'round these parts has got me feeling a bit left out. You see, back when I was a girl, my parents encouraged my interest in the natural world. And they encouraged my brother's interest in all things electrical and mechanical. Today, I'm a scientist and he's an engineer.
I'm not suggesting that my parents consciously or unconsciously steered me away from engineering because I was a girl. Rather, unlike my brother, I didn't get pushed toward it. It wasn't until after college that I realized, with my academic interests, I would have been better served by…
skookumchick | June 12, 2008Newsweek isn't really my mag - I'm more of a Ms, Mother Jones, Yes! magazine reader, or would be if I didn't have so much other stuff to read too - but I got a subscription as a gift, and it serves in lieu of conversation as my breakfast companion. Two articles of note this week:
A great piece on why biology should be a general education requirement for everyone, by Sally Hoskins, a professor at the City College of New York. She writes, "Science isn't old information pressed like crumbling fall leaves between the pages of forgotten books. It's alive - growing and shifting and blossoming…
skookumchick | June 11, 2008Okay, I've been having some interesting conversations on and offline about what boils down to engineering epistemology and identity. Of course, that's my research area, so I dig it. And I want to start having a bigger conversation about if there's anything particularly indelible or inherent about "engineers" or "engineering." But first I want to throw open the comment doors, and see what your thoughts or beliefs are about engineers' place in the world - how they construct themselves, how they reproduce or resist disciplinary narratives about engineering, why they may be more prone to…
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 | 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 | March 28, 2008Ages ago people asked me what my research was actually about. Well, here's a synopsis of my PhD work as a starter.
I got my PhD in Industrial Engineering at the University of WIsconsin-Madison, and a PhD minor in women's studies. I was interested in how we keep using two ideas to understand women's underrepresentation in engineering - the pipeline, and the chilly climate - and how the programs and solutions that came from those ideas didn't seem to be increasing the number of women going into or graduating from engineering (in fact, the number is actually decreasing). I wondered if there…
skookumchick | February 21, 2008I am terribly neglectful of my role as engineer on this blog - I COMPLETELY FORGOT about E-Week, that's National Engineers Week to the rest of you.
Peggy at Women in Science and SciBling Zuska have written good posts about it, so go read those for your fill of E-Week Goodness.
I confess though, that E-Week simply reminds me of some very peculiar activities that those at my undergrad institution engaged in. A lot of drinking, I mean a LOT of drinking, and most of it was even legal. A broomball tournament amongst teams with names like "Choked Flow" (I think that was a Chem Eng name. Those…
skookumchick | February 9, 2008Hello? - ello - ello - lo... Wow, this is a big sandbox. Can I come play?
My name is Alice. As in Wonderland. I'm a newbie faculty member in the super-cool School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. I've also been blogging 2 months shy of 2 years, but pseudonymously - that's the first time I've publicly blogged my name and job. It's true, blogging under your own name does sort of make you feel like you're naked in a crowd. At least, until I get used to it. ;-)
I'm an engineer. But a comparatively weird engineer: a feminist, radical, social justice-y engineer. In my…