The Maria Mitchell Women in Science Symposium - Summary of Discussions

By: Nancy Morrison, Nicolle Zellner, and Jessica Mink

The first Maria Mitchell Women in Science Symposium, in honor of the 200th anniversary of  Maria Mitchell's birth, was held October 5-6, 2018 at Babson College in Wellesley, MA. It was organized by the Maria Mitchell Association of Nantucket, MA, and sponsored by many organizations including the AAS. Nancy Morrison, Nicolle Zellner, and Jessica Mink, members of  the CSWA, attended and participated in the discussions. Speakers included Dr. Meg Urry (Yale), Dava Sobel (author), Dr. Jill Tarter (Emeritus, SETI), and Dr. Kate Kirby (APS). Panelists included astronomy profesor Dr. Colette Salyk (Vassar), Dr. Shirley Malcolm (AAAS), professors in environmental studies, biology, math, and other science fields, and other  science professionals. The panel discussions focused on three themes:

• Recruitment: How to Bring Women and Girls into STEM
• Retention: Strategies for Stemming the Leaky Pipeline and Ending Unconscious Bias
• The Future: Where Are We Going and How Do We Get There? The Future of Women and Girls in STEM

Each panel was followed by "salons", discussion groups to which we were assigned, with a range of ages and experience, all of which made for quite interesting discussions. For example, Shirley Malcom (AAAS) noted that the problem is not recruitment of women into science, but keeping them on a path (not a pipeline!) toward a life in science. We all agreed that retention is just as much affected by varied paths as it is by a single leaky pipeline and that there still is a problem that women's paths all too often take them away from academia and/or STEM. And the path isn’t necessarily family: Meg Urry presented the fact that the number one predictor of success in STEM careers is gender - not family issues; there is no difference between women with and without children.

Summaries of the break-out discussions will eventually be posted by members of the Maria Mitchell Association who organized the symposium, so highlights noted by Jill Tarter in her meeting summary are listed here. Take-away advice includes:

for individuals:

• Master your skill sets and use them when in new and/or unintended situations. 
• Take advantage of opportunities when they arise and learn to sell yourself intelligently.
• Strive for work-life alignment.
• Celebrate science and never stop asking “Why?” 

for institutional leaders:

• Publish and make transparent the rubrics that are used in evaluating candidates for entrance and advancement.
• Avoid geographic and intellectual isolation. For example, hire and admit in cohorts.
• Acknowledge and remedy stresses, including financial diversity and mental health, that women and underrepresented minority scientists (URMs) may be experiencing.
• Confront bullying and harassment and create safe spaces for women and URMs.
• Create multiple on/off/return ramps to academics and careers.

Maria Mitchell said, "We are women studying together". We look forward to our future and to the organizers’ intended future offerings of the Maria Mitchell Symposium! 

For a full list of speakers and panelists, and more information (including pdfs of the presentations), visit the Symposium's website. You can also see photos at the Maria Mitchell Association's Facebook page and search twitter for #MMWISS for tweets by several people.

AASWomen Newsletter for November 16, 2018

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of November 16, 2018
eds: Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Cristina Thomas, Maria Patterson, and JoEllen McBride, guest ed. Alessandra Aloisi

This week's issues:
1. Does Astronomy Education Research have a glass ceiling?
2. Dreaming of Mars Since Age 13, Astronaut Abby Inspires Women in STEM
3. Caroline Herschel Prize Lecture
4. Scientists to write Wikipedia biographies of women in STEM
5. Why diversity helps to produce stronger research
6. Plugging the leaky pipeline for UK female chemists
7. Are you a scientist?
8. Positive Parenting: Drawing Girl Power in the Sciences
9. Betsy Devos to Allow Those Accused of Sexual Assault to Cross-examine Alleged Victims with New Guidelines
10. Can A TV Comedy Show Change The Game For Women In Tech?
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

Image Credit: Wellcome Collection, Free to use with attribution, CC License

Does Astronomy Education Research have a glass ceiling?

Saeed Salimpour

By Saeed Salimpour^1,a and Michael Fitzgerald<sup>2

1</sup>Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, Australia
²Edith Cowan Institute for Education Research, Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, Western Australia, Australia
^aCorrespondence: astrophysics_at_saeedsalimpour.com

The challenges associated with gender equity and equality have been the topic of much research over many decades. In the context of science, the issue of gender is even more pronounced, this is marked by efforts to engage more women in science, or more specifically STEM. However, the research has mostly centred around scientists and science research. This brief article highlights findings from a study which explored the issue of gender in the context of Astronomy Education Research (AER) – a rapidly growing field of research drawing in, not just astronomers, but also researchers from different fields, e.g., education, psychology, evaluation.

Michael Fitzgerald

The study used the iSTAR database (International STudies of Astronomy education Research) (istardb.org, link to summary paper). Over the years, iSTAR has grown to contain, or link to where appropriate, more than 1800 publications. These have drawn from major literature searches throughout the mainstream astronomy, astronomy education and science education journals, major conference proceedings and thesis collections. We presented the current status of iSTAR, at the recent RTSRE & iNATS conference in Hilo, Hawai’i, a recording of the talk is available here, and to see a fully referenced expanded version of this article, a pre-print of the article is available here.

AASWomen Newsletter for November 9, 2018

AAS Committee on the Status of Women

November 9, 2018

eds: Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Maria Patterson, and JoEllen McBride

This week's issues:

1. Rubrics and Resources for a Diverse Faculty and Graduate Student Body

2. Unforgotten sisters: The woman who bested Kepler 

3. This women-led space program is crowdfunding Kyrgyzstan’s first satellite launch

4. STEM: What’s holding females back?  

5. 10 Career Tips From The First Woman To Lead The Smithsonian Air And Space Museum

6. Women in tech call on global summit for greater roles as #MeToo hits

7. To address sexual harassment in science, the past can inform the way forward   

8. Job Opportunities   

9. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

10. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

11. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

Rubrics and Resources for a Diverse Faculty and Graduate Student Body

The editors of the AASWomen Newsletter are receiving many ads for tenure-track faculty positions and fellowship opportunities. Thank you for sending them! 

As we enter the "hiring season", please think about using rubrics in decisions related to hiring and, in the case of graduate school, admission*. Please also consider making them transparent by publishing them so that applicants are aware of the evaluation criteria. All of us are born with biases and they play out in our lives every day, especially when considering who to add to our department, field, and/or community. Rubrics allow us to compartmentalize those factors that are most important to us and allow a standardization of the factors to be considered, among all members of the decision committee.

I've listed some resources here that may be useful to you and/or your department. Feel free to share widely!

Faculty Search Toolkit (Michigan State University)

Faculty Hiring Evaluation Rubrics (University of Michigan, via the University of Washington)

   

Checklist for Hiring (Michigan Tech)

Multiple resources, incl. a variety of rubrics and a list of best practices (University of North Carolina at Charlotte)

More resources (University of Michigan)

While the above resources are focused on practices to hire a diverse faculty, the guidelines can certainly be applied to accepting graduate students and the rubrics can be revised accordingly. As far as I can tell, no one has developed any rubrics for graduate school admission, but the need is real! So, if you design one, it will be a great resource and the CSWA can help you disseminate it widely! 

A quick Google search on "rubric evaluating grad student applications" provided some promising links:

Holistic Review in Graduate Admissions (Council of Graduate Schools)

Connecting Graduate Admissions Practices with Goals: Questions to Consider (ETS and the GRE Program)

Finally, rubrics to evaluate PhD Qualifying Exams also exist. You can find one here (pdf) and here (doc).

Do you know of other resources? Let us know! and check out the CSWA's page for additional information.

* I thank my salon group at the Maria Mitchell Women in Science Symposium for the stimulating discussions that lead to this post.

AASWomen Newsletter for November 02, 2018

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of November 02, 2018
eds: Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Maria Patterson, JoEllen McBride, and Ale Aloisi (guest ed.)

This week's issues:

1. Intersection of Science and Politics -- Women Running for Office (#Witches in STEM)

2. Forgotten Women of Science & Maths Who Were Behind Some Of Humanity's Greatest Discoveries

3. Pitt's Susan Fullerton receives AAAS Award for Women in the Chemical Sciences

4. Always Bring Solutions

5. US proposal for defining gender has no basis in science

6. Mirjana Pović and Hungarian non-profit win inaugural Nature Research Awards

7. Fellowship Opportunity! AAAS Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellowship - Call for Applications

8. Job Opportunities

9. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

10. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

11. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

Intersection of Science and Politics -- Women Running for Office (#Witches in STEM)

By Angela Speck

All elections are important, but the impending mid-terms are especially so. All over the world there have been rightward swings in governments. And these new governments potentially impact so many groups that are not in the majority: not majority ethnicity/race, not male, not heterosexual, not cisgender, and so on. The intersection of “conservative” social policies with a tendency toward rejecting science means that we (Women Scientists) are feeling beleaguered (along with many other groups).

Many people, especially those in marginalized groups, were more than a little disappointed by the results of the 2016 US general election. Immediately after the presidential inauguration there were marches across the US in support of women’s rights. A few months later another series of demonstrations took place, this time in support of science.  While women are not the only group to feel embattled by the actions of the present administration, this blog is about women. Women and science in fact. And women in science have stepped up like never before to try and take control and be a part of how this country runs.