women in science
skookumchick | November 3, 2008A colleague emailed me notice of an article published 11/1 in the Columbus Dispatch, titled "OSU wants more female scientists." The first part of the article reads:
A new Ohio State University program that aims to help female professors advance in the sciences would lead to discrimination and quotas, the president of a scholars' group says.
"What will prevent Ohio State officials from hiring members of the preferred groups who are less qualified than other applicants because of cronyism?" said George W. Dent Jr., president of the Ohio Association of Scholars.
"If you have a quota to fill,…
skookumchick | October 31, 2008My colleague Donna Riley just sent me a way-cool call for papers: inclusive science, for a special issue of the National Women's Studies Association Journal. Get your writing hats on -- papers are due January 15! The rest of the call is after the fold.
INCLUSIVE SCIENCE: ARTICULATING THEORY, PRACTICE, AND ACTION
Call for papers for a Special Cluster of Papers in the
National Women's Studies Association Journal
It is no secret that there is a national crisis in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), particularly in terms of the involvement of women and people of…
skookumchick | October 29, 2008A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to come to a day-long workshop hosted by the Association of Women in Science at Eli Lilly in Indianapolis. Below are some snippets on things I learned, for better or worse.
I listened to a panel of scientists, Margaret Wasilewski, Katherine Armstrong, and Alisa Wright. Wasilewski is moving into retirement, and asks us to pass on good ideas and information to people coming after us. She said she recommended that you trust your instincts about what roads are good for you, and if there is no road where you want to go, you build it yourself. Armstrong…
sciencewoman | October 28, 2008Picking up on a meme for which I've been tagged by ScientistMother, I'm going to add my own little twist, and do six random facts along a common theme.
I chose geoscience in seventh grade because I needed a science fair project and I didn't want to do anything my parents knew something about. Between them, they had degrees or jobs in chemistry, biology, and computer science. Physics was a little daunting for a 12-year old, so geoscience it was.
By the time I was 17, I knew I wanted to be a particular geoscience subspecialty. My choice of colleges was influenced by the location of one of the…
sciencewoman | October 27, 2008I sporadically get press releases from organizations trying to promote themselves to our readers. This time, I'm actually going to manage to post it in a timely fashion.
The Feminist Press with IBM have just launched UnderTheMicroscope.com, a new site to involve young women in science and to encourage them to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math. The site is part of the Women Writing Science, a project initiated by The Feminist Press at the City University of New York and funded by the National Science Foundation.
The site features personal stories of women scientists…
sciencewoman | October 23, 2008That sort of crazy talk sounds like it might be something from a right-wing political campaign, but it's not. It's from a letter published in this week's Nature magazine. The authors, Timothy J. Roper & Larissa Conradt of the University of Sussex, responded to a Nature post-doc journal entry in a manner that appears sympathetic to the plight of women in science, until you read the last few lines. Then they pull a nasty switcheroo.
Here's ~1/2 of the good part:
The career structure for young scientists must be made more family-friendly. This means, for example, making part-time work a real…
sciencewoman | October 22, 2008I find it so refreshing that a bunch of guys are debating the value of anonymity/pseudonymity/identity and its relationship to trust as pseudonymous Abel Pharmboy and decloaked Dr. Pal prepare for their session at ScienceOnline09. I think that sometimes pseudonymity is considered a women's issue, because of concerns about harassment or easy identifiability of a woman blogging in a male-dominated field. I think Abel is raising some interesting questions about pseudonymous health blogging and how readers know whether to trust what they read.
But here's what going through my mind when I read…
sciencewoman | October 22, 2008Hat tip to a reader who pointed me at this recent Chronicle article by two women scientists who tell their stories of bringing their infants along to their field research sites. And pretty hardcore stuff too. Two months in the Yukon studying snow for an assistant professor (Joan Ramage Macdonald), and peat bog research by a Ph.D. student (Maura Sullivan).
When I read the article, I felt a wave of familiarity wash over me. Minnow accompanied me in the field several times during my post-doc The story of her first field experience is here.
Below the fold, key recommendations from the Chronicle…
skookumchick | October 21, 2008Hear ye, hear ye! I am looking for an awesome up-and-coming scholar to work with on ADVANCE. See the job advertisement below! Email me with questions! Spread the word! Thanks!
ADVANCE-Purdue and the Purdue Center for Faculty Success (PCFS) invite applications for a postdoctoral scholar.
We are seeking a highly-motivated up-and-coming researcher to help develop and administer a series of research studies associated with increasing the number of women, particularly women of color, in faculty positions in the Colleges of Science, Technology, and Engineering at Purdue University. This…
skookumchick | October 17, 2008Did you know the Association for Women in Science and the Society for Women Engineers asked both presidential campaigns for responses to questions about science and engineering and women's roles in each. Download the pdf here to see the questions and the candidates responses. Read them through and be edified. (I tried to copy and paste them here, but it turned into a formatting nightmare - even all the spaces were screwed up...)
What do you think of their responses?
sheril | October 13, 2008Science, New Series, Vol. 77, No. 2003, Issue Containing the Preliminary Program of the Chicago Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Associated Societies May 19, 1933, p. 464
ENTERTAINMENT FOR LADIES
Mrs. Henry Gale, chairman of the Ladies' Committee, has reported the present stage of plans for entertaining the ladies while their husbands are attending the scientific sessions. On Wednesday, there will be an automobile trip up the North Shore, luncheon and visits to two or three private gardens, with tea; on Thursday afternoon, a visit to the University of…
sciencewoman | October 1, 2008
There's an interesting commentary in the current Chronicle of Higher Education about how men and women experience college differently. The author is Linda Sax, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Here's the part that first caught my eye:
Second, men who work with faculty members on research or receive advice, encouragement, and support from them hold more-egalitarian views on gender roles. They become less supportive of the notion that "the activities of married women are best confined to the home…
sciencewoman | September 29, 2008I justed wanted to give a shout-out to my friends at YellowIbis.com, a science t-shirt shop. They specialize in wonderful shirts featuring all sorts of molecules (pick your favorite, they'll make it), sciencey one-liners, and "science varsity" shirts. Minnow and I were recently outfitted with some of their shirts and we debuted them at the zoo blogger meet-up.
I have coveted one of Yellow Ibis's shirts ever since I first heard about them. I love, love, love their "this is what a scientist looks like" t-shirt, and now I own it. Pictures of the shirt, and Minnow's adorable shirts below the…
sciencewoman | September 24, 2008In all the excitement of our weekend travel, two important milestones went by unmentioned. Saturday marked the two-year anniversary of my Ph.D. defense, and the one year anniversary of my move from blogger to ScienceBlogs. In celebration of the latter, I undertook the ambitious and miserably overdue task of updating our blogroll. The old blogroll was nearly as old as Minnow and it didn't reflect the incredible growth in women in STEM related blogs over the past two years.
We've got so many and such excellent blogs in our community these days, that they deserve more than one blogroll. They…
sporte | September 23, 2008The National Girls Collaborative Project, as you might guess from the title, focuses on helping girls and engaging girls in science, technology, engineering, and math (aka "STEM").
photos used with permission from NGCP
Quoting from the NGCP website, (the emphasis is mine):
Numerous programs and initiatives seek to create gender equity in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have been implemented only to lose effectiveness or fade away. Had these programs had the benefit of collaboration with other girl-serving projects, organizations and institutions, and…
sciencewoman | September 18, 2008 Money is on my mind a lot this semester. First, there's the grant writing marathon. And then there's the personal budgetary shortfall. Without a second income, we run a several hundred dollar per month shortfall. I've trimmed the fat from the budget and we're eating through the small amount of savings we had squirreled away. Soon it will be time to think about more drastic measures. And there's one big item looming large in my nightmares of financial ruin - the almost $1200 per month that I am paying for Minnow's truly excellent daycare where she is very happy and well cared for.
Why is…
skookumchick | September 5, 2008Just got word that our NSF-ADVANCE grant that we'd been waiting on was finally funded. W00T!!! Start date of October 1. It's not listed on the NSF website yet, but I'll post the link when it is.
It's $3.9M. The president of the university is the PI, and I'm one of 3 co-PIs. It will fund my research assistants and my major research for 5 years. Not bad for a newbie assistant professor.
I think I'm going to take the evening off.
Updated 9/6/08: the NSF award information and abstract is here.
sciencewoman | August 28, 2008I'm part of a team submitting a proposal to NASA, and as such, I had to register in the NASA proposal tracking system, creatively named NSPIRES. But I was a little less than inspired when I got to the first step of the registration process. The screen shot and my analysis are below the fold.
The last name on my birth certificate has nothing to do with my professional identity and I don't want an automatically generated username (or similar) that I'm not going to remember because I would never use my birth last name for that purpose. My name change didn't come through marriage, but 81% of US…
sheril | August 26, 2008originally published November 2, 2007 by Sheril R. Kirshenbaum
I'm publicly responding to a particular reader's provocative comments because women-in-science is a topic that needs to be settled. Finally. After which, I'll be moving away from the great gender divide for a while and back to science and policy next week. Here goes.
November 2, 2007
Hello there Gabe,
You may be wondering why I'm addressing you in this forum. Well, since you visited both blogs and stirred up quite a response, I figured you deserve to be in the spotlight.
To begin, I'm glad you read our blog and take enough of…