Dawn's Blog and General News Items

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, […]

Perspective on the rise of administrators and audit culture in Higher Education

Update: The books examining and exposing audit culture, the rise of the managerial class in higher education, just keep on coming, e.g .Derek Sayer's forthcoming Rank Hypocrisies. The main proponents of audit culture in higher education often seem to be former academics who've entered the one-way street of administration. They're unlikely to return to active teaching […]

On recognizing the intrinsic multi-dimensional nature of Research & Teaching

Academic policy makers, administrators and many academics simply don't seem to get how to deal with the multi-variate nature of higher education. Despite having access to the tools and statistics to take account of all this, it is generally ignored. In my opinion, the recent attempts by HEQCO , the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, provide […]

To students AND professors: on being a better [Science] Communicator

A recent survey carried out by the Council of Canadian Academies, found that most Canadians value science (see results infographics at left & right), yet funding to higher education research is a drop in the bucket of Ontario's and Canada's overall budgets. The report by the Expert Panel on the State of Canada’s Science Culture: SCIENCE CULTURE: WHERE CANADA […]

Leadership & management lessons learned directing IRIS: Part 2

In 2006, when I took over as director of York University's Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS), I was very concerned with how to improve my skill set for effective leadership and management. In many ways, my experience as a sustainability researcher from 2006-14 was as much about observing and learning from other […]