skookumchick
Posts by this author
August 23, 2009
Okay. I've been back a week now, and am getting myself a little recombobulated, so now it's time to jump back in to blogging. Thanks for your patience while I've been offline.
Our trip out west was phenomenal. As I've mentioned, my parents have a cabin north of Vancouver, and it's really the…
August 17, 2009
I'm back. In person, and online. And not all that thrilled about it, but I'll cope. ;-) I'll regale you with updates on our fab trip out west, and on how my fall is shaking out, including teaching and research plans, but I first have to finish reading a dissertation that is being defended…
July 25, 2009
Folks, I know my blogging has been near non-existent recently. I've just come back from yet another workshop (this time on engineering and identity - v. cool) and tomorrow we head out on vacation. We're camping across the country, then spending some time with my folks in Canada, then camping back…
July 21, 2009
I cannot even believe this happened. Henry Louis Gates - Harvard professor, scholar extraordinaire (pdf), race theorist, PBS series host on African American Lives, most famous contemporary American black academic before Obama (maybe) - was arrested on July 16 for breaking and entering.
INTO HIS…
July 18, 2009
Hooray, the first male host of Scientiae! Abel Pharmboy is hosting the August Scientiae, and posts the following on his blog:
Summer days, driftin' away. . .
Consider how you balance the demands and pleasures of this season. Have you found ways to make progress on your must-dos while also taking…
July 9, 2009
I'm off visiting a set of archives for the rest of this week - Karen Tonso and I are trying to cook up a cool research idea (to expand into a manuscript) about engineering and identity in relation to this project. However, my attention was recently drawn to an article by Peg Boyle Single in Inside…
July 7, 2009
Patchi at My Middle Years has put together a great Scientiae carnival, reflecting (as it were) on Mirror, Mirror on the Wall. It's great -- go give it a good read, and share some link love for Patchi. Thanks, Patchi!
And wait until you see who the next Scientiae host is.... :-)
July 6, 2009
I recently got this email from Nikitha Sambamurthy, blogger at Diff-EQ (tweeting here) and undergrad at Purdue who regularly attends my department's seminar series. Nikitha is looking for some advice, and agreed to let me ask her question to teh blogosphere (below the fold).
Nikitha writes:
I'm…
July 5, 2009
Should have posted this yesterday; my excuse is that I'm still on Dutch time. Hope you had a restful 4th with you and yours. It rained all day here, but stopped in time for the fireworks. Of course, my husband and I were watching Casino Royale on TV instead of watching them... does that make us…
June 29, 2009
When I first started to go to conferences, I couldn't see what people saw in them. I didn't know anyone, I thought lots of the sessions were boring, and I found the whole thing overly stressful to deal with. Then I started making some friends who I would see at said conferences, and then started…
June 29, 2009
... where the wireless is cheaper than in Amsterdam. W00T! Conference starts tomorrow (really more like a workshop, I think). And I just wanted to share a photo of this cool tile I just bought. It's from the 1940s, and is of a canal and the Oude Kerk (Old Church, that's the one from the…
June 29, 2009
We're now at the end of the month of June, which Sheril inspired many of us to think about violence towards women and girls. We have had a few posts on the subject this month, but I can't help but think about all the stories that will never be voiced, all the violent men who will never be held…
June 28, 2009
I'm in Amsterdam, we're having a great time, I'm totally jet lagged, and I have decided I love Dutch coffee. Thanks for the advice on things to do - my best decision so far was not biking. Here are some photos; I'll try to update them when we next get some cheaper internet time (20 euros in the…
June 25, 2009
Somehow I've survived this week with only one really big "oops" (an IRB application I should have turned in weeks ago), and I am off tomorrow to continue my conference tour. I'm heading to a workshop in Delft, The Netherlands on gender and engineering research (along with a couple of R&R days…
June 23, 2009
There is irony in doing research on women engineering faculty members, and being a woman faculty member in engineering. One side of my brain tells me that the research says women (and men) who self-sacrifice for their students and colleagues burn themselves out, and instead should figure out how to…
June 17, 2009
Recall that for the month of June, a group of bloggers are trying to draw attention to the horror of violence against women and girls across the globe. Along this theme, I could write about sex tourism in Mombasa (a direct result of increased regulations in Cambodia) or the conversations about…
June 17, 2009
The New York Times Lens blog is regularly fascinating, especially to a wannabe photographer. Did you see the post on the Tiananmen Square "man and tank" photo? There's also incredible photos from the protests of the election in Iran. This week, the Lens blog as part of the Second Chances series…
June 16, 2009
Okay, so I have recovered from my visit to Washington, and my first JAM conference. Here are some highlights that are more edited than my lame live-blogging post is. ;-)
I didn't realize how big JAM is -- there were ~1200 people attending, and ADVANCE was only a very very small part. There were…
June 15, 2009
At JAM last week, a really useful session was conducted by Nakeina Douglas, an assistant professor in the L Douglass Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth. She also is involved in the Grace E Harris Leadership Institute, and teaches public policy and research…
June 15, 2009
Blog friend Pat Campbell and her colleagues Susan Metz, and Jennifer Weisman gave a great talk at JAM on getting your research message out to the press.
Key ideas, themselves tailored to this audience:
MEDIA SURPRISE: don't agree to an on the spot interview; research the journalist first. What…
June 11, 2009
Wow, I am terrible at liveblogging. I get too caught up in the conversation to be able to blog it properly. Also, in some rooms, the wireless was spotty. (Blaming my tools.)
I took copious notes during JAM and twittered key points, and will write them up over the next few days. But because of…
June 10, 2009
Do you know a woman in science or engineering who has taken a career break
from her academic position?
The NSF-ADVANCE program at George Washington University is doing a study of women in career breaks, whether voluntary or not, to understand the pipeline of women professors in science and…
June 9, 2009
I'm liveblogging the Joint Annual Meeting of the HRD directorate programs, and although the internez is spotty, I will update as we can.
We began the morning with a keynote by Dr. Wanda Ward, Assistant Director for the Directorate for Education and Human Resources at NSF. The first half of her…
June 8, 2009
I'm sitting in a hotel room in D.C., at the first day of the 2009 Joint Annual Meeting, and I am hoping to liveblog tomorrow's sessions, depending on whether the wifi is any good downstairs.
In addition, I would like to note that I am a total hick, because I was just having some Thai food with some…
June 8, 2009
My university has reported that we have just increased our math requirements for admissions into the university. I guess that Purdue's requirements had been to require students have taken 3 years of math to be admitted, and now it will be 4 years starting in Fall 2011. The argument is that "[t]he…
June 7, 2009
Was that the train? Was it? The Scientiae train? Oh damn, I was in the bathroom!
A couple of posts were left off the train completely inadvertently, so please accept the conductors' apologies, and enjoy a pretty open compartment on the bullet train to catch up to the main locomotive.
Photo…
June 7, 2009
Purdue is now on summer time, which means it is a time for day-long retreats, meetings, and types of work. I've experienced two flavors of day-long meetings, and have one or two insights to share with you about each.
My first meeting was one scheduled months in advance, with various academic heads…
June 3, 2009
I'm heading to Washington DC on Monday for NSF's Joint Annual Meeting (JAM) with our team's poster on our ADVANCE project, and I know Pat of FairerScience will be there, doing her thing about "Why Don't They Listen?". Any other folks out there planning to be at JAM? Perhaps we could have a meet-…
June 3, 2009
A friend of my dad, Paul Robinson, who is also a professor here at Purdue, has just reported that he has successfully climbed Mt Everest to raise awareness and funds for a cheap, low-tech diagnostic test he is developing to diagnose HIV/AIDS. Read his blog here, and about his preparation here.…
June 2, 2009
Cornelia Dean at the New York Times reports on a new report by National Research Council on the status of women faculty in STEM fields. I haven't read it yet (just ordered a copy), but Dean reports one particular item of note, "The panel said one factor outshined all others in encouraging women to…