I've been back in our wired world for 2 weeks after being off the grid in the arctic for August. While I did have a pricey satellite phone with me, in case my family needed to contact me, I didn't at all miss the internet and the world of cheap mobile phone minutes Lots of […]
Science Education
August 15 post: Biodiversity & Watershed Management Field Course
The 2016 Biodiversity and Watershed Management field course that ran in the first half of July was awesome! This exclusive course is tailored for YorkU students who can't get away from their weekend summer jobs to go on pricey field courses in distant locations. Read the student blog: Urban Watershed Management & Biodiversity I made the posters for […]
Six steps to making your very own Ada Lovelace Day in Fall 2016
Suw Charmin-Anderson launched International Ada Lovelace Day in 2009 as a way of both recognizing, and taking action to reverse the under-representation of women in STEM in Wikipedia. The official day is the 2nd Tuesday of October, but events run through the Fall. I first heard about her project in 2013, and threw around the idea of […]
Doing Public Science with Let's Talk Science & Science Rendezvous
Here's my belated June 1st post: I've always believed that learning, teaching and doing science should be fun. Amazingly, while I've been having fun with this over the last 35 years, I've received many disapproving looks from science teachers, professors, and "serious" research scientists. I have concluded, that they have absolutely no sense of humour, and I've simply ignored their frowns, […]
#WomenInSTEM Resources for the Symposium for Women Entering Ecology & Evolution Today (SWEEET)
Nearly 100 early career ecologists and evolutionary biologists, plus a helping of mid to late career folks, many of us with jet-lag, made it to a lecture hall in Memorial University's Education Building for SWEEET 2016's 09:00 start on Thursday July 7th 2016 . Participant ages ranged from a few months old to mid-70s! We were fortunate that the Canadian […]
#WinterTerm2016 is a wrap: some of what went down
It's Friday of Week 13, and next Monday is the last day of classes, before final exams begin, next Wednesday. York University's Winter Term 2016 began earlier than any other Ontario university, so, we finish early, too. Here are some Plant Ecology students today, weary, yet still smiling (ok, I asked them to smile), from left […]
Resources for understanding implicit bias & other barriers to #WomenInSTEM
Also published at YorkU Women In STEM blog. In the last few years, we have seen a new wave of awareness and data about the ongoing challenges faced by Women in STEM. Many of the insights about their subtle nature come from peer-reviewed research by colleagues in the social sciences. They deal with diverse topics, ranging from implicit or unconscious bias, […]
@YorkuScientists project wants you!
Project Page -- Check Availability of Dates -- Sign Up Form Many STEM researchers and teachers have found found Twitter to be an efficient and effective way of communicating about their work with each other, and a broader audience. In addition to individuals tweeting, the institutional account is also a thing. But, as many institutions discover, creating and […]
#ProfChat: Male undergrads think that the smartest Biology student in the class is unlikely to be female
One of the reasons for the renewed interest in addressing systemic barriers to women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) is a plethora of recent social sciences peer-reviewed research into implicit or unconscious bias, stereotype threat, and the Dunning Kruger Effect. I think that Ben Schmidt has created the most compelling data visualization tool for illustrating […]
UK Academics aren't supposed to work over 37 hours per week. Seriously
UPDATE: This is my 15 January 2016 post, which is finally going live on 7 February 2016. This Winter Term has been much more hectic that Fall Term 2015, because I'm teaching 2 four-credit biology courses: BIOL 2010.40 (Plant Biology) and BIOL 3290.40 (Plant Ecology). Each course has 3 lecture hours a week, and between 1 to 6x3 hour labs, […]
