let's talk about solutions
sciencewoman | April 22, 2009Alice and I have been talking about the big and small ways that universities could act to improve the environment, but Earth Day is also about making personal changes to lessen your environmental impact.
So it's fitting that Mike Dunford has issued us an Earth Day challenge:
I'd like you to take a minute or two to come up with three things that you can do to be more environmentally friendly. The first should be something that's small, and easy to do. The second should be more ambitious - something you'll try to do, but might not manage to pull off. The third should be something you can do to…
sciencewoman | April 21, 2009Like many other public universities around the country, Mystery U has been hit hard by the economic hard times. Most of this year, we heard ominous rumblings that (at some point) there would be a budget reversion, i.e., we'd have to send some portion of our budget back to the state coffers. But all was pretty much business as usual until a few weeks ago when the axe fell. Instantaneously our whole university budget and we were under strict orders to conserve the precious resources we still had...you know, things like copier paper. Because we have no money to buy any more.
I've been biting my…
sciencewoman | March 26, 2009Mary Ann Mason has a column in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education describing the importance of role models and mentors for women graduate students. Though Zuska recently wrote a provocative post that argued that "the problem of motherhood" might be a red herring for those interested in increasing the representation of women in science, Mason's column provides some data that suggest the problem of motherhood is very real.
Role models, particularly ones with children, can make the difference in whether a female graduate student takes the next big step along the tenure track. While…
sciencewoman | March 19, 2009Two recent announcements caught my eye and I thought they might be of interest to some of you. Plus, I'm always pleased to see universities taking seriously the issues career development and training future faculty.
Opportunity 1: Washington State University Summer Doctoral Fellows Program
Opportunity 2: Rochester Institute of Technology's Future Faculty Career Exploration Program
Details below the fold.
Opportunity 1: Washington State University Summer Doctoral Fellows Program
Washington State University invites applications from doctoral candidates who are nearing completion of their…
skookumchick | March 19, 2009Dr. Isis has decided to donate the funds from her blog traffic to fund a scholarship for undergraduate research, and has gotten the American Physiological Society to match her donation up to $500. And all you have to do is click on her site - no $$ donations required. So cool!
Go visit her announcement, and her site through teh browser not the RSS feed reader for this month. :-)
sciencewoman | March 2, 2009I recently had the privilege of attending a COACh workshop focused on developing the negotiating skills of women STEM faculty, and I highly recommend it and the other workshops they offer. Here are few nuggets I gleaned from the session.
Here's a sample dialog between a new faculty member and their chair:
"Why do you need fancy piece of equipment X? Can't you just go to nearby university Y and use theirs?"
"Umm, I think it will be faster to have it in my own lab and we won't have to travel back and forth so much, so..."
"The Dean's not going to like giving such a large startup package."…
sciencewoman | February 26, 2009Wow. You all rock. You are good at so many wonderful things - I am impressed.
Yesterday's question was prompted by the introductory activity at a COACh workshop that I had the privilege of attending. The workshop focused on developing the negotiating skills of women in STEM, and I highly recommend it and the other workshops they offer.
After coffee and bagels, our facilitators asked us to stand up and introduce ourselves to the group by saying what we were good at professionally. And then they showed us how our answers were weak and could be improved.
Here's my response: "I think I'm good…
sciencewoman | February 25, 2009You are in a room with a bunch of other female faculty/post-docs/grad students from your university. You know a few of them, but most of them are unfamiliar to you. The convener of the meeting asks each of you to introduce yourself by answering the following question: "What is one aspect of your professional life that you are good at?"
How do you answer the question? (Please do, in the comments.) Tomorrow, we'll discuss.
I'll go first. I'm ScienceWoman and, in my life as a blogger, I'm good at getting thoughtful discussions going in my comment threads. :)
skookumchick | February 19, 2009Call for Manuscripts: Special issue of Engineering Studies: Journal of the International Network for Engineering Studies on "Engineering and Social Justice"
Editors, Engineering Studies: Gary Downey (Virginia Tech, USA) and Juan Lucena (Colorado School of Mines, USA)
Special Issue Editor: Jen Schneider (Colorado School of Mines, USA)
This planned special issue of Engineering Studies invites submissions from scholars across the disciplines who study engineering and its intersections with social justice.
Engineering, as educational and professional practices often aimed at developing…
skookumchick | February 11, 2009A good colleague of mine sent this video around a couple of days ago, with the disclaimer that sometimes he saw himself as the engineer, and sometimes (increasingly) like the "management dude," a fact he found alarming.
I for sure feel that one of the reasons that we see so little change in academia is for similar reasons.
The story about who created the video and why was on NPR. While it has pretty low production values, and the acting isn't award-worthy, I think we can all recognize the patterns and sentiments.
Here's a nice contrast I shared with my first-year engineering students:…
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 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 26, 2009OH MY GOD OH MY GOD THE COOLEST THING CAME IN THE MAIL! LOOK LOOK LOOK!
IT IS A THANK-YOU BOOK OF DRAWINGS FROM THE KIDS WHO GOT OUR DONORS CHOOSE DONATIONS!!!!
I am SO TOTALLY excited. The book is AWESOME, and they sent photos too, but I don't want to put them up on the blog for the kids' sake. But trust me, they are all SUPER COOL.
Below the fold is the letter from their teacher... thank you so much, folks for your generosity to our Donors Choose challenge -- y'all completely rock.
(Click to embiggen)
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…
skookumchick | January 20, 2009I spent my lunchtime today watching the inauguration of our new president. (W00T!) In between screen freezes and buffering, I noticed an article to the side of my video window in the NYT titled: "Female Scientists" and the lead line was "The inauguration brings some new home for lifting women in science." Written by Science Times writer Natalie Angier, the article wonders whether women will have a more equal time of it in science now we have a pro-Science administration (and smart is the new cool, apparently. I thought smart was cool all along but I realize I may have been in a minority…
skookumchick | January 15, 2009A friend of mine posted this article to his Facebook page, and I thought it well worth pointing your attention to it. Researchers at University of California, Berkley surveyed over 8,000 doctoral students from the UC System about their career, family and life plans. Unsurprisingly perhaps, they found that "major research universities may be losing some of the most talented tenure-track academics before they even arrive. In the eyes of many doctoral students, the academic fast track has a bad reputation--one of unrelenting work hours that allow little or no room for a satisfying family life…
skookumchick | January 14, 2009I just got an email from Marlene Zuk, who gave an awesome talk at last year's Inclusive Science conference that I liveblogged. She has a great postdoc opportunity that those of you who have STEM backgrounds and who study ways to improve diversity in STEM should really apply for. More below the fold...
UCR Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellowship for Cultivating Diversity in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics
Criteria: Promising potential tenure-track applicants with no more than three years postdoctoral university experience
Award: $40,000 for 2009-2010 academic year, plus benefits and…
skookumchick | January 13, 2009So, we may have mentioned we're going to ScienceOnline 2009, which starts on Friday; ScienceWoman and I have our respective sessions on Saturday with our respective co-facilitators.
I've been snowed under with the start of classes, some papers due, some abstracts due, a meeting last week, and, of course, this upcoming event. But I'm getting a little caught up (even if this is a scrambled post), and saw discussion of being a blogging ally at a couple of places of note:
In particular, Samia blogged about how others could be good allies within her post about race and science blogging (before…
skookumchick | January 6, 2009Hear ye, hear ye, an official congratulations to Science Woman whose awesome post "A reckless proposal, or 'Scientists are people too, and it's time we started treating them that way'"has been included in Open Lab 2008. W00T! If you haven't already, go read her post, and give her some comment love, will you?
Rock on, SW!
skookumchick | January 3, 2009I've been spending the past week or two trying to get my groove on with respect to work. I scared myself quite badly with how overwhelmed I got at the end of last semester, and how quickly. I vowed to myself not to let myself get sucked into such unhealthy patterns, and then beat myself up over and over because of how often I tell myself not to get sucked in, and then how I get totally sucked in again.
However. It is a new year. So I have another chance to start over. And am apparently trying to do so publicly, as what else would a blogger do? Besides, I don't want to give anyone the…