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Wednesday, June 14, 2006
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Any website about gender and science that has this as a header certainly seems promising. And when you find it's associated with Patricia Campbell, well, then you just start salivating...my friends, you must go visit FairerScience.org
FairerScience is a joint project of the Wellesley Centers for Women and Campbell-Kibler Associates, Inc. It is funded by the National Science Foundation's Research on Gender in Science and Engineering Program and lead by Dr. Susan Bailey, executive director of the Wellesley Centers for Women and Dr. Patricia Campbell, president of Campbell-Kibler Associates, Inc.
If nothing else, you should just check out the FREE resources on this website.
FairerScience has a blog. There you will find Richard Petty speaking in a very Petty manner about women racecar drivers.
...NASCAR king Richard Petty still doesn't think that women belong on the race track. "I just don't think it's a sport for women," Petty said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Hmmm. Richard, men don't belong in the newspapers being quoted as to what women should not be doing. "I just don't think circumscribing women's opportunities is a (very attractive) sport for men," said Zuska.
In a new feature of Thus Spake Zuska, I will occasionally be prescribing virtual gender justice alignments where necessary. Mr. Petty: one sound wallop to the side of the head with a 3/4 inch gender-equity socket wrench. Repeat as necessary.
5:29:45 PM 
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I spent three days in Pittsburgh at the WEPAN conference and I'll be doing a series of posts that you could loosely call reporting from the conference. Okay, it's my analysis of the bits and pieces I was able to attend and/or that I think are most interesting/relevant/juicy. But isn't that reporting?
Some of it was on the program, some of it wasn't. We'll start with Tuesday's luncheon keynote. The speaker was Dr. Priscilla P. Nelson, Provost and Senior VP for Academic Affairs, New Jersey Institute of Technology. The lunch was turkey wraps with a pasta salad. I sat between two other folks who, like me, had dietary restrictions. Despite our filling out registration information months ago and being reassured at onsite registration that the kitchen knew all about our needs and our meals would be specially prepared, the wait staff went into panic mode and seemed completely unable to cope. Okay, I'll admit, "no onion" is a bit of an unusual one. And the woman next to me who wanted no beef - that's a little easier, but who would have suspected the pasta salad had beef stock in it? Okay, just give her a damn fruit cup and be done with it. But what really floored me was they absolutely did not accommodate the gentleman with diabetes in anyway whatsoever. Now, come on. Diabetes? That's got to be one of the most common dietary issues encountered in the hotel/restaurant industry!
There, I feel much better after that rant.
Anyhoo, Dr. Nelson gave an excellent luncheon speech, "Partnering Across Sectors: Close Encounters of a Flexible Kind". The partnering across sectors stuff was less interesting to me than her description of her career path to her current position. One usually thinks of that path as a very narrow, linear one: undergrad, grad school, postdoc, assistant prof, tenure & promotion to associate prof, promotion to full prof, department chair, dean, provost. Very linear, very academic. Here's what Dr. Nelson gave us on one slide as her "career path"
Geologist, Housepainter, Peace Corps, Singer in a Bar, Trans-Alaska Pipeline Construction, Structural Engineer, Tunnel Engineer, Professor at UT Austin, Consultant, Superconducting Supercollider Project in Texas, NSF, Provost at NJIT
She has a master's degree in geology (Indiana U.) and another in structural engineering (University of Oklahoma), and a PhD in geotechnical engineering (Cornell). She taught herself variational calculus so that she could successfully complete her graduate studies.
I mean, this woman just keeps going and going and going...
But as you will surely have noted, she did not go down that rigid, narrow academic corridor...no, she has wandered gloriously in space and time, and all that nonlinearity has made her into a fantastic leader. She noted that many of the women of her generation had nonlinear paths, which she feels is responsible for a great deal of their effectiveness, but also, perhaps, for some of their isolation. "Women in technology experience isolation, even in a crowd." She also made these observations about women in science and technology careers:
Now, lest you think Dr. Nelson is some kind of outlier data point, go read Journeys of Women in Science and Engineering: No Universal Constants. And if you are just starting your own journey through graduate school, check out the Woman's Guide to Navigating the PhD in Science and Engineering. Zuska wishes for all of you a gloriously messy nonlinear career full of fun.
4:01:38 PM
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If any of the following alphabet soup makes sense to you or a friend or a relative:
AP, PSAT, SAT, ACT, FE, PE, GMAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, USMLE, or TOEFL,
and if these demons are not in the past, but currently tormenting yours or a loved one's existence, I offer you this helpful prayer circle announcement. You can forward it to your friends and have them all join in to cheer your or your friend/relative on to great success. I must give all due credit to Alayna Waldrum, who crafted it for her friend Eric. But as you will see, we are Eric; Eric is us.
This is the first prayer circle that I have ever organized, so I am not sure of the etiquette. You have all been selected because I think that you are sympathetic and because I have prayed for each of you at one point or another - believe it or not.
I've prayed that you get some job you were up for, that you got out of Lubbock/Ohio/Gainesville, that you or your enemies spontaneously combust, that your spouses get new glasses/stop collecting bizarre things that take over your garage/learn how to hail a cab like a normal person and - hell, I've prayed that some of you just show up for happy hour.
Some of you know Eric, some of you don't. So why would you pray for someone that you don't know? Or that you know but aren't that fond of? Well, because Eric is taking the LSAT today and because, really, on a basic level Eric is each of us.
If you have ever had to sit for an exam that you thought would make or break your life...ever charted your hopes and dreams in the abstract design of a scantron form...if you have ever looked at your current employers, friends, lovers, family members and thought "In the name of all that is holy and sacred, I promise that one day I will scrape you all off my shoe like gum on a summer day" then this is the circle for you.
So my friends, whatever your faith, please take a moment this morning (and throughout the day) to send Eric well wishes and good thoughts as he sits for what represents just one in a never-ending series of tedious, meaningless, arbitrary hoops that we are all forced to jump through to get to the unattainable goal of peace and fulfillment.
I myself will be praying to the Gods of $5.00 happy hours and rich friends that will let me live with them (the real reason that I am pulling for Eric to become obscenely rich and powerful with a huge house, and a pool and pool house - kind of like on the OC where Ryan lives, but I'm not picky).
3:26:07 PM
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© Copyright
2006
Suzanne E. Franks.
Last update:
7/6/2006; 4:56:37 PM.
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