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 […]
Women in Science
#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 […]
SWEEET 2016: Symposium for Women Entering Ecology & Evolution Today
I've gotten way behind on my bi-monthly blog posts since mid-April. I'm down 5 posts, so my #SciComm goal while I'm at the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution, is to finish 5 draft posts, and get caught up. Yesterday, on my way to Memorial University, St. John's, Newfoundland, as is so often the case […]
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, […]
How to talk to a professor about your career
I've long been interested in the mentorship aspect of higher education, not least because I have had many excellent mentors over my career in biology, as I described to Dr. Marie McNeely in a People Behind the Science Podcast. Plus, I've had lots of opportunities to be a mentor, and I take this part of my prof's job […]
Ada Lovelace Day 2015 at York University: 26th & 29th October 2015
Ada Lovelace Day was launched in 2009, by Suw Charman-Anderson, as way of drawing attention to and celebrating the under-appreciated contributions of women to STEM fields: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. I first came across Ada Lovelace Day in 2013, when I added a post to the international map (below right), about one of my female mentors, Professor Emerita […]
Open Letter asking the Canadian academic STEM community to improve gender balance in speaker line-ups
To my tenured, and tenure-track colleagues in the STEM subjects in Canada, and also to administrators in organizational units that control budgets providing funding for STEM speakers, and conferences. Re: The need, across Canada, for targeted policy on achieving gender balance in STEM conference plenary and prestigious lecture speakers, that is widely adopted at all academic scales: from individuals to institutions I'm a Full […]
