skookumchick | September 23, 2009Look what showed up in my most recent issue of the NWSA Journal (NWSA=National Women's Studies Association)?
I'm in print! W00T! This co-authored paper is in the current issue, which is a special issue on "Inclusive Science" that came out of this conference last summer.
I'm pleased to be in the same lineup with Cindy Foor, whose fabulous paper on industrial engineering as "imaginary engineering" you should really read (the original paper came out of the NWSA conference a few years back), as well as Meg Upchurch, whose paper on on our problematic metaphor of glial cells as "housekeepers" is…
sciencewoman | September 23, 2009Don't adjust that dial. Starting ~ now, ScienceWoman is officially renaming herself SciWo. I've been trying out the name for some time, but have finally decided to make it official and change the way my posts are labeled, my comments signed, and my tweets delivered. Partly, this is an effort to combat Alice's invisibility that was created when our blog name was so close to my pseudonym. (You wouldn't believe the number of emails that we get that either think we are one person or that mix the two of us up.) But another justification for the pseudonym mutation is that I want my nym to reflect…
sciencewoman | September 22, 2009This afternoon, as I was busy working with graduate students and my daughter was napping at daycare, an email from AGU reminded me to renew my membership for next year. AGU is one of my two main societies and early renewal gives you a discount on electronic access to their articles, so I dutifully headed over to their site to pay up. Like all good organizations, before they'd let me pay their dues, AGU wanted to know if I would give a gift to one fund or another. Maybe I was feeling in a generous mood because I'd just come off good meetings with my grads, but I decided to browse the list of…
skookumchick | September 22, 2009While it is hard to go back to the daily slog of the semester after having a more freewheeling summer, I do like the fact that you can set all kinds of new academic patterns. Like an Academic New Year, as my friend Julie put it. One of my academic new year resolutions: get some data collected on our ADVANCE research projects. I mean, it's almost been a year, and we've been bogged down getting protocols through IRB, and then someone raises some concerns somewhere, and we need to revise the protocols for IRB again. It's been pretty frustrating.
Not only that, but my time has been taken up…
skookumchick | September 21, 2009Are you a person in industry who is thinking about a transfer into academia? This ADVANCE-sponsored program might be something you're interested in:Our first annual On-Ramps into Academia Workshop will take place this October 18-20th, 2009 in Seattle, Washington. The purpose of this workshop is to assist women currently working in industry to transition into positions in academia. As part of the resources we will provide to On-Ramps participants, we are planning on building out a list of open faculty positions in STEM departments. If there are any open positions at your college or university…
skookumchick | September 21, 2009Friday was our 5th wedding anniversary. :-) Can I just say? I think living in the same place has been good for us; way better than being 213 miles apart.
We had a weekend packed with festivities, including:
Ordering take-out sushi and watching the last few episodes of season 1 of Mad Men (I know, we're so two years ago
Inviting friends and colleagues over for a dessert party on Saturday, at which we served apple pie, yellow cupcakes, and diet coke chocolate cupcakes (as an attempt to provide dessert for diabetic friends), fruit, and a few savoury items to clear the palate (and our fridge…
sciencewoman | September 18, 2009Welcome to the second installment of SciWo's Storytime, a low-production cost substitute for the recently canceled children's television classic, Reading Rainbow.
This week, Minnow and I have been enjoying the book "Move Over Rover" by Karen Beaumont and illustrated by Jane Dyer.
I apologize for the poor video quality. I think daytime shoots are going to work better. If you get the book from the library, you'll see that the surprise twist is foreshadowed throughout the book. Jane Dyer is an amazing illustrator.
After reading the book a few dozen times, Minnow and I realized that we had a…
sciencewoman | September 17, 2009While I'm loving @nparmalee, I thought I'd repost a short series of tweets where she asks a really good question, and one that I don't have an answer to.
There's a lot of talk re: women in science and accepting alternate timelines, & I think this is great. I am very anachronistic.
That reqs explanation in acad interviews. The explanation is family. Saying that enters fam into career disc, which I would prefer not 2 do
Were I to say 'I had another career' (which I did) it wld imply lack of focus, which was never true.
Bringing up fam can suggest I want special consideration, which I don't…
sciencewoman | September 16, 2009Some days the intertubes are not good for my blood pressure. Today was one of those days.
It started when my email contained a plea from the National Women's Law Center sent me an email with the title "Breaking News: Abortion at Risk in Health Care Reform"
"As you are reading this, there's language on the brink of being included in health care reform that will take away coverage of abortion that millions of women currently have. We must not let this happen because comprehensive reproductive health care is basic health care for women. Call and email your Senators and the White House TODAY.…
skookumchick | September 16, 2009We found a new friend at the dog shelter this weekend. I have been "between dogs" since my family's beloved Psyche (our beagle who was attacked by the cougar) died of lymphoma in 2004.
Here's Psyche on Christmas 2003 (and me with really really long hair):
My husband has never had any pets, and I've been so busy that we've been working up to getting a new friend for a looooong time. We were looking first for living in the same city together, then feeling more stable, then not traveling over the summer. Finally the time seemed right, so we started visiting shelters to find a friend in need…
sciencewoman | September 15, 2009Yesterday I wrote a post where I laid out reasons why I am opposed to night school courses in my graduate program. As I said yesterday, "I am against accommodating our full-time worker, part-time graduate student students by moving a significant number of our classes to evening hours." That post sparked a number of wonderful comments providing a variety of valuable perspectives on the role of night classes in serving various student populations. I didn't mean to come across as down on part-time grad students or the over all concept of night school. Let's see if I can lay out a more general…
skookumchick | September 14, 2009It is that season again, where NSF-CAREER awards are being announced left right and center. In my world, there are three in particular to celebrate:
Dr. Julie Trenor, assistant professor in the Department of Science and Engineering Education at Clemson University, whose grant is titled "Influence of Social Capital on Under-Represented Engineering Students' Academic and Career Decisions"
Dr. Demetra Evangelou, assistant professor in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University, whose grant is titled "Developmental Engineering: An Examination of Early Learning Experiences as…
sciencewoman | September 14, 2009It has recently been brought to my attention that a subset of my department's graduate student population is unhappy with our course scheduling. Some of our part-time graduate students feel that we are not doing a sufficient job of offering evening courses to meet the needs of people who work full-time during the day and complete their graduate degree one course at a time. I imagine the disgruntlement has been brewing for a while, but I suspect things are likely to come to a head soon, so I thought it might be worthwhile to spend some time laying my thoughts out here before it comes up in…
skookumchick | September 12, 2009A couple of weeks ago, I "attended" a webinar hosted by WEPAN (Women in Engineering ProActive Network) on their recently unveiled Knowledge Center. I had never participated in a webinar -- I called up a conference call phone number, and logged into a website, and saw what the presenters had on their computers. Different presenters at totally different locations could also take charge of what everyone was seeing; it was a neat experience.
I was attending with participants from a few other organizations, including MentorNet, the Association of Science-Technology Centers (which is the…
sciencewoman | September 11, 2009Did you know that after a 26 year run, Reading Rainbow is no longer producing episodes? "Butterfly in the sky, I can fly twice as high. Take a look, it's in a book, a reading rainbow" is no longer enchanting thousands of young children. The series, in case you never watched it, featured the reading of a children's book, a related adventure, and reccomendations of other books by child reviewers. The whole thing was wonderful for creating future bibliophiles. Apparently, it's no longer the educational mission of public television to encourage a love of reading, rather the focus of educational…
sciencewoman | September 8, 2009Those following along on Twitter know that late August became my #weeksofdoom in which I triumphed over three major deadlines on top of the beginning of classes and starting Minnow in a new school. (Hence, the unexpectedly long bloggy absence).
Now that the weeks of doom* are over, I'm finally trying to settle into a productive but sane rhythm for the semester. It was such a blessing to have a long weekend to just hang out and play with Minnow (we tented in the backyard and baked an apple pie), and for the first time this semester, I feel mostly prepared for my new prep EDDA class tomorrow.…
skookumchick | September 8, 2009On Sunday, Academic posted the newest edition of Scientiae, focusing on "inspiration and desparation." Head over and read it!
skookumchick | September 8, 2009Mmmm...wasn't a 3-day weekend marvelous? (Except for those of you at institutions which don't observe Labor Day, or choose to observe it by having ununionized people labor). We did all manner of fun things including canning tomatoes, dropping by a music festival, and weeding. :-) Of course, now it's back to the grindstone, and my head is full of work-related "to-dos" so I thought I would write this in lieu of a for-realz post.
Recently in my travels on the internet, I came across two Flickr sets I thought it would be fun to share with you - but beware the procrastination monster.
First…
skookumchick | September 6, 2009A reader recently sent in the following question:
Hi Ladies --
I've been reading your blog for most of my graduate career, and am currently beginning my first post-doc position. I've got a question for your readers, and I'm dying to know if anyone's really come up with a good solution for it. How can you become a (nearly) paper free academic (with the exception of lab notebooks)?
I ask this because after moving from my rather large (by grad school standards) office to a rather restricted lab space, I've been forced to realize that I can no longer keep all my printed and scribbled on pdfs. I'm…
skookumchick | September 5, 2009New Scibling Anne Jefferson (welcome, Anne! We are neglect in our scibling hospitality, so sorry!) who blogs over at Highly Allochthonous has called out for a last hurrah for women geoscientists to fill out a survey about reading or writing blogs. Please do wander over and complete it, won't you?
In addition, Academic has extended the Scientiae deadline until midnight tonight, Saturday Sept 5. Don't forget to send in your post about inspiration or desperation...