I fell behind with my blogs at the end of June, when my back pain flared up. I'd probably gone a bit overboard with driving and sitting/standing, and I spent Canada Day flat on my back, groaning. I'm again doing well with moving around and having the energy to stand and work. so I'm dealing with my 2 missing July posts, by (1) updating the […]
Women in Science
We celebrated one of my many great mentors at #Nomifest
I'm still recovering from an SI joint injury that slowed me down in the last 3 weeks. I couldn't move for 2 days. Luckily, acupuncture gave me enough mobility to fly to Boston for a celebration of the science and mentorship of Professor Naomi Pierce of Harvard University. I met Nomi when I was a grad student […]
Keeping on the bright side: High & Low points of my 2014 #HigherEd year in numbers
An Academic New Year's Resolution list: For 2015, 101 Big And Small Ways To Make A Difference In Academia http://t.co/DCBuVYWyLo — Conditional Accept (@conditionaccept) January 7, 2015 In my experience, what I do remains a mystery to most people both within and outside of Higher Education. When they were young, my daughters told me that […]
Confronting Structural Sexism in #STEM: Pt 3
Given the sexual harassment of female students that I directly witnessed when I was a student doing field work, I've been infuriated by the Jian Ghomeshi debacle with its victim blaming. Although the sexual harassment that I personally witnessed happened 30 years ago, it, too, still makes me cross. So, Clancy et al's 2014 PLOS ONE paper on what appears […]
Confronting Structural Sexism in #STEM: Pt 2
Because everyone who writes science blogs has written about this in the last few weeks, I'm joining the pack to give my 2 cents worth about the online attacks against those women in STEM who commented on the shirt worn by Dr. Matt Taylor of the ESA Rosetta Mission, while he was explaining the Philae probe's landing […]
Confronting Structural Sexism in #STEM: Pt 1
Women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Medicine) have made progress, but not as much as expected, as Dr. Mildred Dresshelhaus explains in her interview with Science. Direct sexual harassment aside (discussed in part 3 of this blog series), the structural sexism of #STEM has greatly concerned me for decades, and, I am unhappy to report, […]
More women ecologists: My peek into commercial academic publishing
Sad News over the Weekend: Update September 30 2015: I was very sad to hear on Sunday, that my chief editor and the lead author on Ecology: A Canadian Context 2nd Edition, Professor Bill Freedman had lost his battle with cancer. It's just under a year since Bill told me about his diagnosis. I've thought of […]
My Margaret Atwood Nomination for A Bold Vision Conference, Charlottetown 2014
It's 150 years since the Charlottetown Conference of 1864. But, what if the Fathers of Confederation had been the Mothers of Confederation, instead? This is the very cool idea behind the A Bold Vision Conference planned for September 2014 on Prince Edward Island. A summer and autumn of celebration is being planned, including this conference, aimed at […]
I'm aiming to break my class out of the cycle of "memorizing & forgetting"
I haven't taught BIOL 4090.40, Plant Ecology for nearly 10 years. It's been shifted from Fall to Winter term, meaning the entire lab. component needed changing because of the different season, and now we're on Moodle, and we have #SoMe (social media), so it was time for a mega-overhaul. AND, it's week 2 of the winter term, […]
Where are the senior women in STEM?
So, here's the thing: I'm a female Biology professor, and when I was an undergraduate (1977-81 UofT), there were more or less 50:50 male to female students in my classes. This bottom-up input of women into Biology has been happening for decades. So, thirty years on, where are the other female Full Professors? In fact, where […]
