Issue of November 22, 2013
eds: Michele M. Montgomery, Daryl
Haggard, Nick Murphy, & Nicolle Zellner
This week's issues:
1. Professional Development at the 2014 Winter AAS Meeting
2. I am sorry this blog post is late
3. Sponsorship: the New Hammer to
Crack the Glass Ceiling
4. Women Who Changed Modern
American Science
5. Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s Talk at
CERN
6. Something about STEM drives women
out
7. Diversity in Science
8. Women Score Lower Than Men on
Physics Assessments – Except in This Kind of Classroom
9. HuffPost's Girls In STEM
Mentorship Program
10. GoldieBlox: The Engineering Toy for Girls
11. Job Opportunities
12. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter
13. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen
Newsletter
14. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter
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1. Professional Development at
the 2014 Winter AAS Meeting
From: Laura Trouille via
womeninastronomy.blogspot.com
The number of professional
development opportunities at the annual AAS meeting seems to grow every year.
And the upcoming January meeting is no exception. This year’s conference
features workshops, panel discussions, and talks on everything from Python
programming to interviewing skills to changing demographics to maintaining a
healthy work-life balance.
To see a list of the career and
skills development sessions, please see
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2. I am sorry this blog post is
late
From: David Charbonneau via
womeninastronomy.blogspot.com
I am sorry this blog post is
late. I meant to post it Monday. Yes, the blog is important! But I think my daughter might have lice and
I had to deal with that urgently.
I am sorry I can't accept the
invitation to speak at the conference. Yes, I do want the meeting to be a
success. But we have four children and the family simply doesn't do well when I
am away.
I am sorry that I can't write a
letter in support of the promotion. Yes, the candidate is doing great work, and
I feel terrible that I can't add my enthusiastic support to assist this junior
person. But I get 25 such requests a
year, and my weekends are full with math homework, hockey, and girl scouts.
To read more, please see
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3.
Sponsorship: the New Hammer to Crack the Glass Ceiling
From:
Joan Schmelz via
womeninastronomy.blogspot.com
My recent posts on Unconscious
Bias include a personal story, the legacy of patriarchy, schemas, and studies
from sociology. You can probably tell that it is a subject that interests me
greatly. Therefore, I was delighted to find an article in Sunday’s Washington
Post that sheds new light on our biases as well as the importance of
“Sponsorships,” which are different from “Mentorships” in ways that are vital
to promotion and success.
To read more, please see
To read more of the interview
with Kent Gardiner, please see
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4. Women who Changed Modern American Science
From: Jessica Kirkpatrick via
womeninastronomy.blogspot.com
The Boston meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in February, 2013,
included a session on the history of women in science. This article summarizes
the presentation by Margaret Rossiter, which was entitled “Thirty Women Who
Changed American Science, 1970–2010” and was based on the third in her series
of books, Women Scientists in America. It described the changes these women
wrought, not by means of scientific research, but rather by means of political
and legal activity. Every woman who began a career in science in the 1970’s and
later owes them a great debt.
To read more, please see
This article, written by Nancy
Morrison, also appears in the June 2013 issue of Status.
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5. Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s Talk at
CERN
From: David Anderson
[danderson_at_albion.edu]
As part of CERN’s program on
diversity, Jocelyn Bell Burnell recently presented information on the status of
women in astronomy. She gives a nice summary of the numbers of women in
astronomy in countries around the world and presents her conclusions about
these data.
To listen to this talk and see
the presentation slides, please see
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6. Something about STEM drives women
out
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]
In the December issue of Social Forces, Sharon Sassler, a
professor of policy analysis and management, and her colleagues report that,
since women leave STEM careers before they get married or have children, there
is “something unique about the STEM climate that results in women leaving.”
To read more about how the
authors interpreted the results of a longitudinal survey, please see
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7. Diversity in Science
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]
Using Marie Curie’s birthday as a
time to reflect on the status of women in science, Ivy Kupec has written a nice
summary article. It sheds light on Curie’s life and also describes some
progress in the number of girls in high school physics classes, the number of
women faculty in physics departments, and the number of women in leadership
positions at the National Science Foundation.
To read more, please see
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8. Women Score Lower Than Men on
Physics Assessments – Except in This Kind of Classroom
From: WIPHYS, November 11, 2013
In an upcoming Physics Review article, authors A. Madsen,
S. B. McKagan, and E. C. Sayre report on their recent study of how young men
and women perform on standardized tests and specifically, on physics concept
inventories. While they found that women
consistently scored lower than men in both the pre- and post- tests, the
authors report that “the performance of both men and women is improved when
they experience an interactive classroom.”
To read more about this study,
please see
See also
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9. HuffPost's Girls In STEM
Mentorship Program
From: WIPHYS, November
11, 2013
As part of a series to promote
the importance of encouraging young girls to enter STEM disciplines, the Huffington Post offers two recent
articles. “Be a Verb” and “Closing the
STEM Gender Gap” describe why it is important to encourage young girls to study
STEM and what we can do to mentor them.
To read more of these personal
anecdotes, please see
and
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10. GoldieBlox: The Engineering
Toy for Girls
From: Caroline Simpson
[simpsonc_at_fiu.edu]
Debbie Sterling, a Stanford
engineer, has designed “a construction toy + book series starring Goldie, the
kid inventor who loves to build.” With
women making up just 11% of engineers, her motivation in creating “GoldieBlox”
was to “inspire girls the way Legos and Erector sets have inspired boys, for
over 100 years, to develop an early interest and skill set in engineering.”
To learn about the founder's
motivations for starting the company (and her pitch for funding), please see
To watch the clever video promoting
the new game, please see
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11. Job Opportunities
For
those interested in increasing excellence and diversity in their organizations,
a list of resources and advice is here: http://www.aas.org/cswa/diversity.html#howtoincrease
-
Postdoctoral Position in Exoplanet
Research, Wesleyan University
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12. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN
newsletter
To submit an item to the AASWOMEN
newsletter, including replies to topics, send email to aaswomen_at_aas.org
All material will be posted
unless you tell us otherwise, including your email address.
When submitting a job posting for
inclusion in the newsletter, please include a one-line description and a link
to the full job posting.
Please remember to replace
"_at_" in the e-mail address above.
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13. How to Subscribe or
Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
Join AAS Women List by email:
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Google Groups Subscribe Help:
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14. Access to Past Issues
Each annual summary includes an
index of topics covered.
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