Follow-up on Donna Nelson's Presentation "Science in the New Millennium: Our Grand Challenges"

Donna Nelson, Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oklahoma, presented the challenges facing science in the new millennium, which included recruitment and retention of people in the sciences---especially women and minorities. Nelson presented startling data from a survey about the demographics of undergraduates, graduate students, and professors in the sciences. You can view the raw data in the final report and make your own suggestions about how to address the challenges.

OurCS: Opportunities for Undergraduate Research in Computer Science

OurCS: Opportunities for Undergraduate Research in Computer Science

What: Conference for Undergraduate Women in Computer Science
When: Oct 5-7 2007
Sponsored by Women@SCS, Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft Research

It appears as though you would only need to pay a $25 registration fee and get yourself to CMU (Pittsburgh, PA) and the hotel is free. Talk to your advisor or contact the conference organizers if you have questions about how to secure registration/travel funding.

Some Advice From Women in Science

At Harvard’s fourth National Symposium on the Advancement of Women in Science, some leading women gave advice to the future women scientists:

• Beware the myth of “balance” between the personal and the professional. “Balance, imbalance — wherever you find yourself — my advice is make that choice and live with it,” Blakey told the group. “What I do is have an internal clock that tells me how much time to spend on the competing priorities. If there’s one thing I’ve tried to do, it’s whittling that list of priorities down to just what it needs to be — cutting it to just what I can handle. I don’t keep track of what I can’t handle, and I don’t worry about what I can’t control.”
  
• Learning from failure: “What I learned is that you’re not going to have breakthroughs if you don’t take huge risks,” Allen said. “All the work we did was good; it influenced future work even if it wasn’t successful for the project it was built for. One has to push the envelope as far as one can.”
  
• Communication skills: Heidi Hammel of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., whose professional honors include having an asteroid named after her (3530 Hammel), said, “There are hundreds of other people who are great scientists, but they can’t communicate to save their lives, or their careers … . Communication skills are as important as any math or physics course you’ll ever take.”
  
• The value of pursuing leadership positions: Lucy Sanders, co-founder and CEO of the National Center for Women and Information Technology, described herself as a “reluctant leader” when she first was offered an opportunity to move up the ladder at Bell Labs. “It’s scary, because a leader is vulnerable to criticism. There’s opportunity for tremendous failure and risk taking. … But leadership is very creative. It’s a great deal of fun. Something that will force you to learn new skills. It will make you a better communicator, better at lateral thinking. Leadership can be learned. … Please, please go after leadership positions.”
  

2007 Faculty Horizons Program Announcement

Applications are now being accepted for the 2007 Faculty Horizons Program at UMBC, which will be held July 12-14, 2007.

The Flyer

PURPOSE: The workshop, funded by the National Science Foundation ADVANCE Program, is intended to provide post-doctoral research fellows and upper-level graduate students, particularly women, in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics with necessary skills to become successful tenure-track faculty in the United States. Special attention is paid to including women from underrepresented groups.

APPLICATIONS: Due to limited space, everyone must apply on-line and be accepted to attend. The application is available from April 19, 2007 - May 18, 2007. Funds are available to defray the cost of participation.

Please email advance@umbc.edu for any additional information or questions. For the most up-to-date workshop information, please visit www.umbc.edu/advance and click on Faculty Horizons.

CRA-W to Hold Career Mentoring Workshop at FCRC 2007

Attention Senior Graduate Students:

The CRA Committee on the Status of Women in Computing research (CRA-W) will sponsor a Workshop on Research Career Mentoring for Women in Computer Science and Engineering at the 2007 Federated Computing Research Conference (FCRC). The two-day workshop will be held on June 9th-10th, 2007 in San Diego, CA.

The goal of the workshop is to provide mentoring activities targeting women in professional research careers. The two-track workshop will cover a variety of topics targeted to "junior" academic researchers and industrial and national laboratory researchers.

For more information about the workshop and to apply for financial support to attend, please visit the CRA-W Career Mentoring Workshop Web Site.

Deadline to apply for travel support - April 26th (extended)
Hotel cut-off date - May 8th
Early registration ends - May 11th

An Overview of What CS is Doing to Bring Women Back

The New York Times has a story called Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold that gives an overview about the challenges that CS faces in attracting women to the discipline and what people across the country are doing to address these challenges.

Sue Lister Presents The Social Impacts of Computer Technology in Africa

Sue Lister will be presenting The Social Impacts of Computer Technology in Africa on Wednesday, April 18 at 4 p.m. on Smith 102A.

CRA-W Newsletter Features UD Alumna

Amie Souter Greenwald, who received her Ph.D. from the University of Delaware in 2002, is featured in this month's issue of the CRA-W Newletter.

Grace Hopper Celebration Deadline Extension

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is being held in October in Orlando, FL. The deadline for submitting panels/workshops is April 15 and for posters, Ph.D. Forum, and BOFs is April 29.

For more information about submissions, see the GHC web page

If you would like to attend Grace Hopper this year, you should consider submitting a poster or leading a panel discussion. If you're interested in attending GHC and/or would like help in preparing a submission, email cisters@cis.udel.edu

Our group had a great time last year; we each learned so much and networked with a lot of people! You can read about our experiences on the CISters web site:

Our Follow-up Panel
Our Trip

Talk by Donna Nelson on April 26

WISE (Women in Science and Engineering) is sponsoring a presentation by Dr. Donna Nelson on Thursday, April 26 entitled Science in the New Millenium: Our Grand Challenges. She has impressive credentials (see her bio below), and this is a great opportunity to hear and meet with someone who is an outstanding scientist and very concerned about women's issues.

When: Thursday, April 26 at 4 p.m.
Where: 116 Purnell

An informal reception will immediately follow the talk.

SCIENCE IN THE NEW MILLENIUM: OUR GRAND CHALLENGES

Women and minorities are an increasing fraction of the US workforce. In order for the US to maintain a strong scientific workforce and face our grand challenges, it is essential that members of these underrepresented groups pass successfully through our scientific educational system. We report BS attainment (nationally for 15 science and engineering disciplines;
by race and by gender), PhD attainment (nationally for 15 science and engineering disciplines; by race and by gender), and faculty (100 top ranked departments in each of 15 science and engineering disciplines; by race, by rank, and by gender). One goal of our research is to illustrate demographic disparities between PhD attainment versus faculty hired, by discipline. A
second goal is to compare demographics of BS recipients versus all faculty, by discipline. Science and engineering disciplines studied were chemistry, physics, astronomy, math, computer science, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering, biological sciences, economics, political science, sociology, psychology, and earth sciences.

Dr. Donna Nelson, is an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Oklahoma. She received her PhD in chemistry from the University of Texas in 1980, did postgraduate work at Purdue University from 1980-1983, and joined the University of Oklahoma in 1983. Dr. Nelson's research has pertained to three grand global challenges, energy, environment, and scientific workforce development, and she frequently speaks on the interrelationship of these topics. She has received numerous honors, including the NSF ADVANCE Leadership Award (2006), SACNAS Distinguished Scientist of the Year (2006), Women's eNews 21 Leaders for the 21st Century (2006), AAAS Fellow (2005), Guggenheim Award (2003), Woman of Courage" Award from the National Organization for Women (2004), Oklahoma Outstanding Professor Award (2005), and in 2005 was
inducted into the Minority Health Professions Foundation Hall of Fame. In the last 4 years, she has spoken at over 100 national meetings of professional societies and organizations, US Congress Capitol Hill briefings, teleconferences, universities, and radio and TV programs, such as McNeil-Lehrer News Hour.