Science Workforce

Last week we told you about the NYAS Two Cultures Conference coming up on May 9, 2009 in celebration of the 50 year anniversary of C.P. Snow's famous Rede lecture. Politicians, academics, writers, and the media will converge to discuss science and society--including keynote addresses by E.O. Wilson, John Porter, and Dean Kamen. Today we're pleased to announce that the website for the event featuring the full schedule is now available here. Tickets are going fast so we encourage readers to take a look at the agenda and register soon.  We hope to see you there!
Science Debate has done a great analysis of the science funding that has emerged from the House-Senate reconciliation process on the stimulus bill. For the most part, science funding was restored through the reconciliation process: $ 3 billion for NSF; $ 2 billion for DOE Science; $ 5.4 million for DOE research on efficiency and renewable energy; and 10.4 billion for NIH. You can check out the full analysis here. Assuming this bill gets to the president's desk and is signed--which seems a fairly safe assumption at this point--then this is great news for science and American innovation.…
We're pleased to repost the latest email from ScienceDebate: Dear Friend, Last Friday you and others in the science community took action and helped to restore $3.1 billion in cuts to science that had been planned in the Senate compromise version of the stimulus bill. That was a good victory for U.S. Science, but it was just the warm-up act. Now we all need to come together as a community for the real show. Even after the $3.1 billion restoration, the final approved Senate version of the stimulus bill falls far short of the House version when it comes to science and technology. You can…
The American Physical Society is asking folks to email Congress in support of the science parts of the stimulus package. The House version of the bill was very generous to science, but there's a concern about what the Senate version and the reconciliation process will end up with. So weigh in now; the tools to do so can be found here.
As Natalie Angier rightly points out, women are making tremendous strides in science and engineering earning 40 percent of U.S. doctorates in 2006 (up from eight percent 50 years ago). But we've still got a long way to go in terms of leveling the playing field after graduation. Angier references a recent survey of 160,000 Ph.D. recipients that found 70 percent of male tenured professors were married with children while only 44 percent of their female counterparts were. Further, twelve years or more after receiving doctorates, tenured women were more than "twice as likely as tenured men to be…
In a recession, there's supposed to be an inverse relationship between the economy's performance and graduate school enrollments. The theory is simple: In economic downturns, young people go back to school to shield themselves from the unpredictable labor marketplace and prepare for greater career advancement down the road. There's just one problem--it doesn't appear to be happening this time around. My latest Science Progress column explores this mystery, which doesn't bode well either for those wishing to become students themselves or for the future of our scientific workforce. As I put it…