skookumchick
Posts by this author
October 16, 2008
While the October Scientiae still may happen albeit much delayed (host Jen has been dealing with some personal concerns, give her a supportive shout-out, will you?), next host Jane of Sb's See Jane Compute will be hosting the November Scientiae. She's posted the theme of TRICK OR TREAT! and you…
October 14, 2008
We've just heard from the Sb overlords:Seed has agreed to do prize drawings again this year for donors who give to DonorsChoose, beginning this Friday. We'll be giving away 50 Seed Magazine subscriptions and about 15 or so other prizes from an assortment of mugs, laptop covers and USB drives. Each…
October 8, 2008
Remember my friend Moreena, and her kids Anni and Frankie?
It's Moreena's birthday.
And Anni is getting a new liver today.
As she put it,Please please please keep her safe.
Please please please send peace to this donor family.
Please please do. I'm not a prayer, but I'm praying.
We're waiting to…
October 8, 2008
Okay, I need to confess. I usually peg myself as an indie/alternative/progressive/folkie music person. But I am really finding myself working well when I start playing the following playlist (care of the new Genius playlist on iTunes):
Online - Brad Paisley
Landslide - Dixie Chicks
I Feel Lucky…
October 6, 2008
The 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…
October 4, 2008
Both SW and I are trying to make/find/take back extra time outside of our jobs to support "the rest of life," with SW trying to support both Minnow and Spouse as well as herself. (Has anyone else noticed that, when women academics talk about balance, they tend to mean "work and the rest of life,"…
October 2, 2008
Steve Higgins of Of Two Minds and I got together with some Midwestern friends at Jupiter's Pizza in Champaign last Saturday to celebrate the millionth comment on Scienceblogs. We ate pizza, drank draft cider (okay, Lisa and I did), discussed what it meant to be an engineer, and stuck the Sb…
October 1, 2008
For 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…
September 30, 2008
I got a paper review back yesterday. More revisions. *Sigh.* The history of this paper is: this is part of one chapter of my dissertation. I revised it into a paper last fall. I submitted it the first time in February, and got my first reviews in April. I revised it and resubmitted in June.…
September 29, 2008
OMG, has it been a busy few days. I'm just starting the second shift of working today, after an 8-5:30 day of back-to-back meetings, and tomorrow will be all day in a workshop, but I need to share some updatey things, including a belated announcement for the October Scientiae (yay!) below the fold…
September 22, 2008
There are 999 messages in my inbox. An inordinately large number of them are flagged "urgent." There are 1710 messages in my "to sort" mailbox. This is a local folder where I dump messages from my inbox and outbox when I start getting error messages about having too many messages in my IMAP…
September 20, 2008
As announced, Steve Higgins of Of Two Minds and I are hosting a Millionth Comment party on behalf of Scienceblogs on September 27, starting at 7ish, at Jupiter Pizza in Champaign IL. Come join in, and the first round is on us. Er, Scienceblogs, rather. :-)
See more info on Facebook.
September 17, 2008
The press release for our big grant came out today. I have so far been interviewed by the student paper, and the local NPR station, and I have already learned some things about what not to do in interviews with friendly reporters. Some tips are below that I'll add to over the day, and please…
September 12, 2008
I saw this meme over at at Jane's, who saw it at Janet's: The Vegetarian's Hundred, a veggie response to the Omnivore's Hundred meme. Here are Jane/Janet's rules:If you want to play along, here's how you do it: copy the list, including my instructions, and bold any items you have eaten and strike…
September 11, 2008
So I'm going to throw my hat in to the Millionth Comment Hoopla and join forces with geographically proximal scibling Steve Higgins of Of Two Minds for a combined Indiana/Illinois party to which you all are welcome! Steve is working on the details, but currently we're looking at Sept 27, at the…
September 10, 2008
I've carried on with the activity of actively waiting in accordance with Boice's Advice for New Faculty Members that I'm blogging about this semester. And I'm preparing for trying Chapter 10: Begin Writing Early.
More below the fold...
I mentioned to a colleague that I was trying to follow Boice's…
September 9, 2008
I came home from a meeting yesterday afternoon which was supposed to be thinking about what our dean calls "blue ocean" ideas for improving the diversity of the population of students, staff and faculty in the College of Engineering. My group was supposed to be focusing on issues that impact women…
September 6, 2008
My small friend Annika is in the PICU in Chicago, on a ventilator and delirious. Anni is 7, and has already had two liver transplants. The current visit is particularly scary 'cause they can't work out what is wrong with her. More info from her mom's blog is here. If you are the praying sort,…
September 5, 2008
Just 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…
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…
September 1, 2008
Lab Cat has hosted a September Scientiae BBQ, with posts from both ScienceWoman and me. Thanks for hosting, Lab Cat! A good read to chew over as you labor over canning pears, I will admit.
Next Scientiae will be hosted by Jen Myers over at deliberatepixel.
August 29, 2008
... now that I live on the western edge of a time zone, I regularly have to get up before the sun rises. These days that are approaching the equinox, when the sine function of daylight hours has a steep slope, the time of sunrise seems to really change a lot from day to day. Today's the first…
August 28, 2008
I've taken some of the last week to try to practice what Boice calls "actively waiting" in preparation for writing on a project I've been avoiding. See the project plan here and a discussion about "actively waiting" here. Some of my thoughts on this exercise from the last week are below the fold…
August 26, 2008
The Scientiae theme for September is "my summer vacation." My first week of class started today, so perhaps this is a good way to remind myself of what I've done this summer.
We had dinner early in May at a friend and colleague's house to acknowledge my husband's decision to step away from his…
August 25, 2008
So, have you been asked whether you are married or have kids on an academic job interview? Many of us have, even though the people interviewing you are not supposed to ask. What strategies have you used (or would have liked to use ;-) ) to deal with these awkward questions? Do you wear your…
August 24, 2008
I got an email from a reader a few days ago posing a doozy of a problem: she's heading to an interview this week at an institution, and part of her interview involves having "beer with the guys".
With her permission, I share with you an edited version of her email:
Hi ladies,I am a job candidate…
August 20, 2008
In my inbox this afternoon:We are requesting your help in identifying participants for a study that we are conducting at Rice University. Essentially, we are trying to identify ANY faculty who have voluntarily left one academic job for another job (either academic or nonacademic).
Who fits in…
August 18, 2008
I'm very excited how many of you have said in the comments that you'll be joining me as I explore how to use Robert Boice's Advice for New Faculty Members (AFNFM) to help me with my writing during this semester. Even if you didn't delurk in the comments, you're welcome to join in. Hopefully your…
August 12, 2008
Astrodyke reminds us that we're mid-Perseid meteor shower these days. I actually woke up at 3:30 am this morning (NOT on purpose) and thought about going to look, but I was too dog tired from the move out (move in is tomorrow).
Did you see anything?
Apparently we have another chance tonight!…
August 12, 2008
Seed is trying to figure y'all out with a little official reader survey (in contrast with our threads asking you to introduce yourselves, which were not prompted btw by the Seed overlords, in case you were wondering). Apparently the reader survey takes only 10 mins to fill it out, and their…