Friday, February 9, 2018

AASWomen Newsletter for February 9, 2018

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of February 9, 2018
eds: Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Cristina Thomas, and Maria Patterson

This week's issues:
 
1. Cross-post: Speak your science: How to give a better conference talk
2. AAS Presidential Advisory Panel on Sustainability is seeking new members
3. Equivalence: Elizabeth L. Scott at Berkeley
4. US science agency will require universities to report sexual harassment
5. “I Spent Two Years Trying to Fix the Gender Imbalance in My Stories”
6. Job Opportunities
7. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter
8. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter
9. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Cross-post: Speak your science: How to give a better conference talk
From: Patricia Knezek via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

Emily Lakdawalla posted a piece on the Planetary Society blog February 6th about the importance of communicating your science well.  As she notes, "Bad presentation often gets in the way of good science."  To see her advice about how to improve how you communicate, please see the full posting at:

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2018/0206-speak-your-science.html

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. AAS Presidential Advisory Panel on Sustainability is seeking new members
From: Andria Schwortz [aschwortz_at_gmail.com]

The AAS Presidential Advisory Panel on Sustainability is seeking new members who are passionate about sustainability issues.  There are up to four positions available for three year terms from July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2021.  The position involves monthly video conferences and events at AAS meetings.

The AAS Presidential Advisory Panel on Sustainability aims to inform and support AAS members and leadership in matters relating to the environmental impact of our work, and to provide facts and recommendations on sustainability for engaging students, colleagues, and the broader world community.

For more details, interested members of the AAS can check the AAS Sustainability webpage at http://sustainability.aas.org/ or contact Andria Schwortz (Member) at aschwort_at_qcc.mass.edu or Geoff Clayton (Chair) at gclayton_at_fenway.phys.lsu.edu.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Equivalence: Elizabeth L. Scott at Berkeley
From: Pat Knezek [pknezek_at_gmail.com], Amanda Golbeck [algolbeck_at_uams.edu]

Elizabeth L. Scott (1917-1988) was an astronomer-statistician and is the subject of the newly published book “Equivalence: Elizabeth L. Scott at Berkeley” by Amanda L. Golbeck. She earned her PhD in astronomy under Robert J. Trumpler at UC Berkeley (in connection with Lick Observatory). She went on to become a faculty member in mathematics and then statistics at Berkeley. Scott did a lot of statistical work on astronomy problems, collaborating with Jerzy Neyman, C. Donald Shane, and others. She was especially interested in the clustering of galaxies.

Scott was recognized not just for her contributions to science, but also for her work on the status of women in academe. She was a pioneer in conducting research on salary inequity in academe. She authored the influential AAUP Higher Education Salary Evaluation Kit: A Recommended Method for Flagging Women and Minority Persons for Whom There is Apparent Salary Inequity and a Comparison of Results and Costs of Several Suggested Methods (Washington, DC: American Association of University Professors, 1977). Scott’s work on behalf of academic women is the focus of over half of the book.

For more information about the book, please see

https://www.crcpress.com/Equivalence-Elizabeth-L-Scott-at-Berkeley/Golbeck/p/book/9781482249446

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. US science agency will require universities to report sexual harassment
From: Heather Flewelling [heather_at_ifa.hawaii.edu]

by Alexandra Witze

“Any institution receiving grant monies from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) must now inform the agency if it finds that anyone funded by the grant proposal has committed sexual harassment. The policy will take effect after a 60-day public-comment period ends.

Until now, “we haven’t had a requirement on universities to report a [harassment] finding or when they’ve put someone on administrative leave” during a harassment investigation, says France Córdova, the NSF director. “We didn’t have the channel to find out what’s at the end of an investigation.”

The reporting requirement comes in the wake of numerous sexual-harassment scandals in the sciences. It is a rare move among US federal research agencies, which generally do not require grant recipients or their employers to disclose sexual-harassment allegations or findings.”

Read more at

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01744-5

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. “I Spent Two Years Trying to Fix the Gender Imbalance in My Stories”
From: Cristina Thomas [cristina.thomas_at_nau.edu]

by Ed Yong

“In December 2015, I wrote a story about the potential uses of the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR. That piece, based on a conference that I attended in Washington, D.C., quoted six men and one woman. The six men included five scientists and one historian, all quoted for their professional expertise. The one woman was a communications director at a tissue bank organization, and her quote was about her experience as the mother of a child with a genetic disease.

These disparities, both in the absolute numbers of men and women, and the ways in which their quotes were used, leapt out at me, but only after the piece was published. They felt all the more egregious because the CRISPR field is hardly short of excellent, prominent female scientists. Indeed, two of the technique’s pioneers, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, are women, and both of them spoke at the same conference from which I reported. And yet, if you read my piece, you could be forgiven for thinking that CRISPR was almost entirely the work of men.”

Read more at

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/i-spent-two-years-trying-to-fix-the-gender-imbalance-in-my-stories/552404/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. Job Opportunities

For those interested in increasing excellence and diversity in their organizations, a list of resources and advice is here: https://cswa.aas.org/diversity.html#howtoincrease

-Inertial Confinement Fusion Physicist, LLNL, Livermore, CA
http://careers-llnl.ttcportals.com/jobs/2409064-wci-icf-physicist

-Experimental Physicist, LLNL, Livermore, CA
http://careers-llnl.ttcportals.com/jobs/2383115-wci-experimental-physicist

-Postdoctoral Research Staff Member, LLNL, Livermore, CA
http://careers-llnl.ttcportals.com/jobs/2370286-postdoctoral-research-staff-member

-Design Physicist, LLNL, Livermore, CA
http://careers-llnl.ttcportals.com/jobs/2381361-design-physicist

-Computational Physicist, LLNL, Livermore, CA
http://careers-llnl.ttcportals.com/jobs/2378973-computational-physicist


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7. 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.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter

Join AAS Women List by email:

Send email to aaswlist+subscribe_at_aas.org from the address you want to have subscribed. You can leave the subject and message blank if you like.

Be sure to follow the instructions in the confirmation email. (Just reply back to the email list)

To unsubscribe by email:

Send email to aaswlist+unsubscribe_at_aas.org from the address you want to have UNsubscribed. You can leave the subject and message blank if you like.

To join or leave AASWomen via web, or change your membership settings:

https://groups.google.com/a/aas.org/group/aaswlist

You will have to create a Google Account if you do not already have one, using https://accounts.google.com/newaccount?hl=en

Google Groups Subscribe Help:

http://support.google.com/groups/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=46606

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9. Access to Past Issues

https://cswa.aas.org/AASWOMEN.html

Each annual summary includes an index of topics covered.