5 posts tagged “science”
It's a popular anecdote that girls start shying away from science and math during those awkward tween years. Actually, to digress, I did see in C&E News that women have made great gains in percentages of science degrees awarded (now ~52% up from the 40%s 10 years ago), but that good news was layered on a background of significantly declining numbers of science degrees awarded overall. Anyhow - so I usually try to make science cool for the young girls and tweens I know. You know, sprinkling a nature book here, a stuffed microbe there, to keep science off the not-cool list.
Recently I was told that I was an "outstanding" role model for girl/women scientists, so I've been dealing this week with Charles Barkley moments-of-denial. But I got a good email this week from my god-daughter's mom that put things into perspective. Apparently during school assembly, my god-daughter's elementary school class dressed up in lab coats, safety goggles and held lab notebooks while reciting a poem about the scientific method. I sent her a book called,
Trolling through the blogosphere I found Kathy Sierra's post on science, math and engineering education. There are aspects of her post that remind me of the saying "If you have a hammer...." (she disses current education as "waterfall"; she says we need agile systems!). But, as always, her passion comes through and you realize this woman could teach a hammer anything. My postdoc advisor's parting advice to me was to hire only people who had a twinkle in their eyes - that curiosity, suppressed passion and sense of humor - that Kathy also ends her post alluding to. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to be a fabulous teacher. But - can you imagine the energy, focus and hand-holding it would take to allow self-organizing teams of learning within our current institutions of learning!? I'd answer that the internet is probably already providing a framework for that community of interest to community of learning to community of practice needed!
I've been writing about the barriers to successful interdisciplinary biology (whether as a biotech business or as a cyberinfrastructure or as a scientific software project or in an open access world) a lot lately (apologies to the family and friends this blog was set up for!). It seems to be a developing theme amongst biologists - not just mine alone. I found this 2005 article (a pdf file) today by Brigitta Tadmor and Bruce Tidor from MIT's CSBI (systems biology) program. It was published in a now-defunct journal Biosilico. Unlike many of us stating the obvious, Tadmor and Tidor attempt to not only describe their approach, they identify some roots of the challenge, and propose ways to address them in curriculum development.
On another techie theme (semantic web - gaining buzz? - see this recent nodalpoint entry) - one of the guys who struggles daily with implementing a semantic web framework for life sciences (vpin.ncgr.org) sent this around a few weeks back and I finally had a chance to read it. It's a semantic web tutorial masquerading as a fantasy (with alot of reality thrown in) by Paul Ford. Ack - that might end up being my Halloween themed contribution to VOX tonight....oops - off to battle trick-or-treaters at the door before the Devil Dog Eutaw scares them silly................
The National Academy of Science has stirred up the women-in-science debate yet again by publishing a report titled, Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering. The blogosphere is buzzing and the New York Times is publishing on the topic - reflecting all the passion, frustration, and exasperation this debate engenders (couldn't resist the bad pun). I guess I should have the patience to wade through the report myself so as to be prepared for the inevitable dinner conversation when it comes up next. I tell you, though, it's making me tired.
My own anecdote from the postdoc years still defines the "bias" for me. The NIH ombudsman visited our university and advised the NIH postdoctoral fellows that our future success would be gauged by our productivity. When asked by a female postdoc the inevitable question about balancing or timing tenure vs. starting families he was quite dismissive of the concern advising to simply (emphasis mine) focus on productivity. I don't think anyone in the audience expected an easy answer to the question - but the group of male and female postdocs was shocked at his attitude of disregard and the room got quite heated. I don't think the gentleman or the faculty in the room expected the level of outrage he received; it was merely a prelude to Dr. Summer's experience nearly 20 years later.
I don't have any easy answers either after all these years. I took the omsbudsman's advice and tried to be as productive as I could manage; in trade, I certainly gave up a lot in my personal life. There isn't a woman I know personally in science or engineering who hasn't had to make her own path and set of choices and compromises navigating the dilemma - not one of them has taken the same path as the others; not one of them has taken a "traditional" path (BS+MS+PhD+postdoc+assistant professorship+tenure+promotion) without a gap or stutter step along the way. I still get rather heated myself when someone refers to a job candidate as having a "great pedigree." I think that's an open acknowlegement of the necessity to follow a certain career progression, work for an influential faculty member, and/or attend a particular university or sets of universities. Tolerance and understanding of the non-traditional path is probably one "solution" to the institutional bias.
The blogosphere is really a wonderful place. I'm a bit late to the obsession - but it seems to me that you can find discussions about all sorts of science out there that you couldn't find even six months ago. My colleagues are getting tired of me forwarding "you gotta see this" links to blogs. Friends and family are reluctantly dragged (some kicking and screaming - you know who you are!) into the blogosphere as I warn them my email frequency is tailing off.
Alot of times I get asked how I got a start in science. I have to credit my Dad. The way I remember it, he was always getting me into trouble in grade school. Once we were asked if we knew any words starting with "Q" that didn't start "Qu..." My Dad was happy to help me find "Qiana" for that assignment (he worked around polymers); the teacher refused to give me credit because it wasn't in the dictionary and the Qiana ad that I ripped out of a magazine was not considered valid. Another time he coached me for a quiz about the periodic table - teaching me that there were 103 (or something like that) elements. I got that wrong too the next day - because the periodic tables of the time hadn't added the "new elements" yet that my Dad knew about. I think he found a science article in the newspaper so that I could challenge the teacher on that grade. I remember she relented on that point faced with the evidence. So - I learned about being on the "cutting edge" from him - the ignominy, the exposure, the risks, the need to defend yourself, and the need to provide credible evidence to back your assertions.
So imagine my delight and nostalgia at surfing through the science blogosphere to find Island of Doubt's blog on Science Music. I got totally derailed on trying to comment (he throws down a grand challenge to identify more science music & lyrics) because he features one of my all-time favorites: Tom Leher's version of the Periodic Table. If you haven't yet - check out the animated version. Absolutely silly but delightful at the same time. For some unknown reason, my Dad had this recording that he unearthed a decade or so ago for me. I think the fact that this ditty is endearing to me is probably one obvious clue that I was destined to be a science geek. And I have my Dad to thank for pointing me to the cutting edge.
