Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
The narrator of this fictional tale by Daniel Quinn is a man in search for truth. He answers an ad in a local newspaper from a teacher looking for serious pupils, only to find himself alone in an abandoned office …
Read MoreLiving Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment
Poet, biologist, and cancer survivor, Sandra Steingraber investigate the links between cancer and environmental toxins.The updated science in this exciting new edition strengthens the case for banning poisons now pervasive in our air, our food, and our bodies. Because synthetic …
Read MoreLeadership Training fro Early Career Researchers
A decade ago, the “sink or swim” culture was widespread in research. But academic institutions across the United States and Europe are now investing resources in helping young researchers gain the skills they need for climbing the career ladder. Top …
Read MoreLeaks in the pipeline
Family issues can cause women to abandon academia at every rung of the career ladder. Policy- makers have addressed some ways to get more women on to the lower rungs of the ladder. But solutions at the higher steps — …
Read MoreLearning Through Life: Balancing Graduate School and Motherhood
There are salient similarities among the cultures of mothering and academia. They both, for example, place harsh demands on one’s body and mind. If one were offered a purview into homes across the country in the wee hours of the …
Read MoreImproving Your Success in AGU Honors
To reduce the barriers for engagement and success in this essential scientific enterprise, the American Geophysical Union is working to build a more transparent culture around the awards and nomination process.…
Read MoreInternational Contact and Research Performance
The scope of this article is to illuminate the relationship between degree of international contact and research performance among researchers in small countries. Comparisons are done between the natural, medical and social sciences, technology and the humanities. Three indicators on …
Read MoreInternational Collaborations in Behavioral and Social Sciences Research: Report of a Workshop
International collaborations in behavioral and social sciences research can be immensely fruitful. These collaborations enable researchers to go beyond a view of culture as a static variable to be examined in isolation or controlled in an analysis. They give substance …
Read MoreInfluential Women in Science and Scientific Publications
Three engaging women spoke of their lives and how all have worked to encourage other women in the sciences, from medicine to geosciences to astrophysics.
“In the early 1970s, Judith Curry was the only woman in her class at Northern …
Read MoreInformal relations
Women are more likely to realize career benefits from informal relationships with colleagues and others if they are in a discipline that comprises at least 15% women and are not simply tokens, finds
a study.…
Indecent advances
Surveys of sexual harassment and assault during field research and on campus reveal a hitherto secret problem.…
Read MoreIncreasing the Recruitment and Retention of Women in Academic Geosciences: Where We Are and Where We Should Be
Having just completed a Ph.D. in geological sciences and now preparing to embark on an academic career in geosciences, I am inspired by senior female professors who have successfully juggled raising families and climbing the ranks in academia. I often …
Read MoreHow to Leave Academia
Blog of peer-to-peer post academic support. From leaving, the transition, and career advice.…
Read MoreHow to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper
An essential guide for succeeding in today’s competitive environment, this book provides beginning scientists and experienced researchers with practical advice on writing about their work and getting published. This new, updated edition discusses the latest print and Internet resources. Preparing, …
Read MoreHow to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing
All students and professors need to write, and many struggle to finish their stalled dissertations, journal articles, book chapters, or grant proposals. Writing is hard work and can be difficult to wedge into a frenetic academic schedule. In this practical, …
Read MoreHot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth
A fresh take on climate change by a renowned journalist driven to protect his daughter, your kids, and the next generation who’ll inherit the problem.…
Read MoreHow Elementary School Teachers’ Biases Can Discourage Girls From Math and Science
We know that women are underrepresented in math and science jobs. What we don’t know is why it happens.
There are various theories, and many of them focus on childhood. Parents and toy-makers discourage girls from studying math and science. …
Read MoreHousework Is an Academic Issue
Scientists are likely not to be interested in thinking about housework. Since René Descartes, Western culture has stringently separated matters of mind from body. Housework is, however, related to the life of the mind. Scientists wear clean clothes to the …
Read MoreImmigrants’ Success in Science Education and Careers
Written by ESWN member, Gyami Shrestha.
“The contribution of immigrants to the scientific and technological innovation and
progress of the United States is significant. Beyond the existing statistics describing their
status, this study explored the factors driving such immigrants’ success …
Igniting Girls’ Interest in Science
Girls’ interest, participation, and achievement in science decline as they advance in grade levels. For example, in fourth grade, the number of girls and boys who like math and science is about the same, but by eighth grade, twice as …
Read MoreHenry Rutgers Professorship in Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences
Rutgers University – New Brunswick seeks an accomplished scientist to serve as the first Henry Rutgers Professor of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences. The successful candidate will conduct innovative research as a member of Rutgers’ newly formed Institute of Earth, …
Read MoreHot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the astonishing expansion of the world’s middle class through globalization have produced a planet that is “hot, flat, and crowded.” Already the earth is being affected in …
Read MoreGreen Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution
In “Green Gone Wrong” environmental writer Heather Rogers blasts through the marketing buzz of big corporations and asks a simple question: Do today’s much-touted “green” products—carbon offsets, organic food, biofuels, and eco-friendly cars and homes—really work? Implicit in efforts to …
Read MoreHeatstroke: Nature in an Age of Global Warming
Around the world, climate change is indicated by natural events-especially in shifting migration routes-leading to results familiar (species die-out) and unexpected-like the discovery of a heretofore unprecedented “pizzly,” a bear cub with one polar parent and one grizzly. In this …
Read MoreHope for Graduate School Childbirth Policies
A majority of prospective and current female graduate students believe that academia is incompatible with a fulfilling family life. These concerns are exacerbated when institutional support regarding childbirth is unstated, incoherent across disciplines, or informal in nature.…
Read MoreHarassment in Science, Replicated
As an undergraduate student in biology, I spent several weeks in Costa Rica one summer with an older graduate student on a research project deep in the cloud forest. It was just the two of us, and upon arriving at …
Read MoreGlobally Diversifying the Workforce in Science and Engineering
To remain competitive in this global and technological world, academic institutions and corporations worldwide need to take serious steps to created a diverse, well-trained and multicultural workforce. To this end, the Global Alliance in Science and Engineering for Diversifying the …
Read MoreGlobal Warming: Understanding the Forecast
David Archer’s book is an accessible, entertaining, but detailed account of how scientists are trying to predict future climate change. It is an excellent book and should be the first port of call for anyone wanting to delve deeper into …
Read MoreGeoscience Education and Diversity: Vision for the Future and Strategies for Success
The second Geoscience Education Working Group (GEWG II) met on October 25-27, 2004 at the headquarters of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Arlington, Virginia. The GEWG II evaluated the effectiveness of prior and ongoing geoscience E&D programs in the …
Read MoreGendered Innovations in Science and Engineering
The discussion of gender and science can take place on many levels. Some focus on issues of bias in who gets to do science. Others use much broader definitions, looking at the impact of gender on scientific questions and findings, …
Read MoreGirls’ and boys’ math performance now equal
Girls now equal the performance of boys on standard mathematics assessment tests, probably because girls now match boys in the number and level of math courses they take in elementary and high school, according to a new study by researchers …
Read MoreGender Relations as a Particular Form of Social Relations
The attempt by Foord and Gregson (1986) to reconceptualize ’patriarchy’ through realist methods of analysis is excellent. We find ourselves in particular agreement with their arguments concerning the superiority of the concept ’gender relations’ over ’gender roles’, and with their …
Read MoreGender progress (?)
Despite some success, the proportions of women in Nature’s pages and as referees are still too low.…
Read MoreFrom Research to Manuscript: A Guide to Scientific Writing
Observations Plus Recipes It has been said that science is the orderly collection of facts about the natural world. Scientists, however, are wary of using the word ‘fact. ’ ‘Fact’ has the feeling of absoluteness and universality, whereas scientific observations …
Read MoreGender Equality in Academia: Bad News from the Trenches, and Some Possible Solutions
Despite numerous scholarly discussions of gender politics, there is little work on the situation of women within the Academy itself. Several recent reports and the brouhaha surrounding public comments about innate limitations on women’s scientific abilities by the former president …
Read MoreGender issues related to graduate student attrition in two science departments
This study explored the gender issues that contributed to the differential attrition rate of men and women graduate students in two science departments (biology and chemistry) at a large research university. Departmental records were used to compute the student attrition …
Read MoreGender differences in conference presentations: a consequence of self-selection?
Women continue to be under-represented in the sciences, with their representation declining at each progressive academic level. These differences persist despite long- running policies to ameliorate gender inequity. We compared gender differences in exposure and visibility at an evolutionary biology …
Read MoreGender and Letters of Recommendation for Academia: Agentic and Communal Differences
In 2 studies that draw from the social role theory of sex differences, the authors investigated differences in agentic and communal characteristics in letters of recommendation for men and women for academic positions and whether such differences influenced selection decisions …
Read MoreFrom Summers to Sommers
Lest anyone think the academic world has settled into a consensus on the status of women in the sciences during the two years since a very public controversy thrust the issue onto the national stage, Christina Hoff Sommers all but …
Read MoreGender imbalance in US geoscience academia
Geoscientists explain women’s under-representation in our field along three dominant themes: the structure of academia, historically low numbers of women, and women’s views and choices. Which factor they perceive as most important depends overwhelmingly on their gender.…
Read MoreGender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering and Mathematics Faculty
The 1999 report, A Study on the Status of Women Faculty in Science at MIT, created a new level of awareness of the special challenges faced by women faculty in the sciences. Although not the first examination of the treatment …
Read MoreFast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems as American, and harmless, as apple pie. But the industry’s drive for consolidation, homogenization, and speed has radically transformed America’s diet, landscape, economy, and workforce, often in insidiously destructive ways. In …
Read MoreField Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change
Elizabeth Kolbert’s environmental classic “Field Notes from a Catastrophe” first developed out of a groundbreaking, National Magazine Award-winning three-part series in The New Yorker. She expanded it into a still-concise yet richly researched and damning book about climate change: a …
Read MoreExpectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines
The gender imbalance in STEM subjects dominates current debates about women’s underrepresentation in academia. However, women are well represented at the Ph.D. level in some sciences and poorly represented in some humanities (e.g., in 2011, 54% of U.S. Ph.D.’s in …
Read MoreFour Ways Women Stunt Their Careers Unintentionally
Looking back through scores of interviews we’ve conducted in the course of training and coaching engagements, and returning to the 360 reports, these are the four specific low-confidence behaviors cited by managers (male and female alike):
-Being overly modest
-Not …
Feminism & Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge
Geography is a subject that throughout its history has been dominated by men; men have undertaken the heroic explorations that form the mythology of its foundation, men have written most of its texts, and, as many feminist geographers have remarked, …
Read MoreEloquent Science: A Practical Guide to Becoming a Better Writer, Speaker and Scientist
Eloquent Science evolved from a workshop aimed at offering atmospheric science students formal guidance in communications, tailored for their eventual scientific careers. Drawing on advice from over twenty books and hundreds of other sources, this volume presents informative and often …
Read MoreEarth: The Operator’s Manual
Since the discovery of fire, humans have been energy users and always will be. And this is a good thing-our mastery of energy is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom and has allowed us to be …
Read MoreEncounters with the Archdruid
In “Encounters with the Archdruid” John McFee recounts three episodes in the life of famous environmental activist David Brower. The three people he encounters are a geologist, a land developer, and a dam builder.According to a review from the Wall …
Read MoreElite male faculty in the life sciences employ fewer women
Women make up over one-half of all doctoral recipients in biology-related fields but are vastly underrepresented at the faculty level in the life sciences. To explore the current causes of women’s underrepresentation in biology, we collected publicly accessible data from …
Read MoreEl tesoro de una científica rebelde
Ana Roqué de Duprey (1853-1933) was an educator, suffragist, and one of the founders of the University of Puerto Rico. This article talks about her book “Botánica antillana” in which she described more than 6,000 species of plants and trees. …
Read MoreEnough is Enough
Power differentials among individuals are inevitable and they certainly exist in academia, where power comes from the perception that an individual is more influential and has greater access to resources than the majority of their peer group. This influence then …
Read MoreDumping In Dixie: Race, Class, And Environmental Quality
To be poor, working-class, or a person of color in the United States often means bearing a disproportionate share of the country’s environmental problems. Starting with the premise that all Americans have a basic right to live in a healthy …
Read MoreDouble Jeopardy? Gender Bias Against Women of Color in Science
This report asks a long-standing question: do the patterns documented in experimental social psychologists’ labs reflect what is actually occurring at work for women in the STEM fields? (Mitchell & Tetlock, 2006). The answer is yes. Gender bias exists, and …
Read MoreDual-Career Couples and Academic Science
Society is increasingly accepting women in the work force, couples are having fewer children and sharing more responsibilities, and employers are increasingly faced with the task of recruiting and accommodating both men and women who are making career decisions constrained …
Read MoreDoes gender matter?
The suggestion that women are not advancing in science because of innate inability is being taken seriously by some high-profile academics. Ben A. Barres explains what is wrong with the hypothesis.…
Read MoreDouble-blind review favours increased representation of female authors
Double-blind peer review, in which neither author nor reviewer identity are revealed, is rarely practised in eco- logy or evolution journals. However, in 2001, double-blind review was introduced by the journal Behavioral Ecology. Following this policy change, there was a …
Read Moreeaks in the pipeline: separating demographic inertia from ongoing gender differences in academia
Identification of the causes underlying the under-representation of women and minorities in academia is a source of ongoing concern and controversy. This is a critical issue in ensuring the openness and diversity of academia; yet differences in personal experiences and …
Read MoreDoes gender bias influence awards given by societies?
AGU is a participant in a U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)–funded project called Advancing Ways of Awarding Recognition in Disciplinary Societies (AWARDS), which seeks to examine whether gender bias affects selection of recipients of society awards. AGU is interested in …
Read MoreDirt: the erosion of civilization
David R. Montgomery is a geomorphologist who studies how landscapes change through time, argues persuasively that soil is humanity’s most essential natural resource and essentially linked to modern civilization’s survival. In “Dirt: the erosion of civilization” he traces the history …
Read MoreDiet for a New America
“Diet for a New America” is John Robbins expose of America’s “factory farms”. Since the 1987 publication of Diet for a New America, beef consumption in the United States has fallen a remarkable 19%. While many forces are contributing to …
Read MoreDo Babies Matter in Science?
Federal investigators of Title IX, the law that forbids sexual discrimination in education, have only recently discovered that there may be a problem for women in science.
Investigators for the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and …
Read MoreDo women have less success in peer review?
Peer review assesses what is of value in science, yet it has been widely criticized for biases. One such perceived bias is gender. But evidence for such a bias has been contradictory.…
Read MoreDiversity at 100: women and underrepresented minorities in the ESA
The 2015 Ecological Society of America (ESA) centennial celebration will recognize important efforts to recruit both women and underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities in the field of ecology. To determine the impact of these efforts, we evaluated the degree to …
Read MoreDiversity Isn’t Rocket Science, Is It?
Back in the bad old days, the workplace was a battleground, where sexist jokes and assumptions
were the norm.
Women were shut off from promotion by an old boys’ network that favored its own. They went to meetings and were …
Read MoreCoal: A Human History
Coal has transformed societies and shaped the fate of nations. It launched empires and triggered wars. Above all, it fuelled the Industrial Revolution in Britain, propelling the rise of a small rural kingdom into the greatest commercial empire in the …
Read MoreCollapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Jared Diamond’s “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” is a follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize winning book “Guns, Germs and Steel”. In “Collapse” the author explores how climate change, the population explosion and political discord create the conditions …
Read MoreDead Pool: Lake Powell, Global Warming, and the Future of Water in the West
In his book “Dead Pool” author James Lawrence Powell talks about the emptying of the arid West’s precious reservoirs, Lake Powell. This reservoir was created when the Colorado River was dammed in 1963, submerging Glen Canyon, one of the planet’s …
Read MoreCorrespondence: Gender Bias
Correspondence about multiple perspectives on gender bias.…
Read MoreCompetition and Careers in Biosciences
The rapid progress of biomedical research should be rewarding young scientists with bright careers. Instead, the National Research Council (NRC) reports a “crisis of expectations” as career opportunities fall short of those in comparable occupations. Our analysis suggests that the …
Read MoreCombining Intercontinental Parenting and Research: Dilemmas and Strategies for Women
One of the biggest challenges for parents conducting research abroad is how to manage either with one’s children or without them during that time. These days, the pressures of dual-career marriages have meant that it is rare to find a …
Read MoreBrag!: The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn without Blowing It
The renowned communication expert’s subtle but effective plan for selling your best asset – yourself – without turning off those you’re trying to impress.
By Peggy Klaus. Published in 2004.…
Read MoreCadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
In this meticulously researched and updated study of the economics, politics, and ecology of water author Marc Reisner covers more than a century of public and private desert reclamation in the American West.…
Read MoreBroadening Participation at the National Science Foundation: A Framework for Action
The National Science Foundation (NSF) supports the best ideas from the most capable researchers and educators in all fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Creating opportunities and developing innovative strategies to broaden participation among diverse individuals, institutions, and …
Read MoreChild Care, Research Collaboration, and Gender Differences in Scientific Productivity
Large differences in scientific productivity between male and female researchers have not yet been explained satisfactorily. This study finds that childcare and lack of research
collaboration are the two factors that cause significant gender differences in scientific publishing. Women with …
Beauty and the Beast: The Aesthetic Moment in Science
Beauty and Science. Where’s the connection? Doesn’t science have more to do with the quantifiable, the verifiable, and the applicable than with beauty?The relationship between scientific discovery and the pursuit of beauty has existed for centuries. In the earliest years …
Read MoreBillions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium
In the final book of his astonishing career, Carl Sagan brilliantly examines the burning questions of our lives, our world, and the universe around us. These luminous, entertaining essays travel both the vastness of the cosmos and the intimacy of …
Read MoreAt the Helm: Leading Your Laboratory
Since 2002, the first edition of this best-selling book has helped thousands of newly appointed principal investigators successfully transition to running their own labs. But changes in technology continue to transform the way science is done, affecting ways in which …
Read MoreBlue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis
Americans see water as abundant and cheap: we turn on the faucet and out it gushes, for less than a penny a gallon. We use more water than any other culture in the world, much to quench what’s now our …
Read MoreBias Persists for Women of Science, a Study Finds
Science professors at American universities widely regard female undergraduates as less competent than male students with the same accomplishments and skills, a new study by researchers at Yale concluded.
As a result, the report found, the professors were less likely …
Read MoreBalancing the Scale: NSF’s Career-Life Balance Initiative
At a time when other nations are increasingly developing and retaining their own science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) talent, it is critical that the United States develops its own globally competitive, domestic STEM talent in order to ensure future …
Read MoreBeyond Patriarch: A Class-Based Explanation of Women’s Subordination
In the last five years or so, one of the major challenges to conventional thinking in geography has come from feminism. Feminist scholars have forced many geographers into an uneasy rethinking not only of their ways of seeing and analysing …
Read MoreAuthorship, Collaboration, and Gender: Fifteen Years of Publication Productivity in Selected Geography Journals
In academia, publication productivity, defined as the number of peer-reviewed articles published and the frequency of citations, is a primary factor in the assessment of tenure and promotion. One of the most cited gender differences in academia is the “productivity …
Read MoreAsk For It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want
From the authors of Women Don’t Ask, the groundbreaking book that revealed just how much women lose when they avoid negotiation, here is the action plan that women all over the country requested—a guide to negotiating anything effectively using strategies …
Read MoreArticles from Nature about women in science
Science remains institutionally sexist. Despite some progress, women scientists are still paid less, promoted less frequently, win fewer grants and are more likely to leave research than similarly qualified men. This special issue of Nature takes a hard look at …
Read MoreAn international study of the gendered nature of academic work: Some cross-cultural explorations
This study explores the gendered nature of academic work based on the Carnegie Foundation’s International Survey of the Academic Profession. Characterisation of related yet discrete aspects of academic work describes commonalities between men and women, and in particular, highlights the …
Read MoreArticle about The academic jungle: ecosystem modelling reveals why women are driven out of research
Understanding how a species battles to sustain itself in a challenging habitat is a cornerstone of ecological research; now scientists have applied this approach to science itself to discover why women are being driven out of academia. Their results, published …
Read MoreAlternative Careers in Science, Second Edition: Leaving the Ivory Tower (Scientific Survival Skills)
Book by Cynthia Robbins-Roth containing advice for those dissatisfied with work, but not with science.
* An insider’s look at the wide range of job opportunities for scientists yearning to leave the lab
* First-person stories from researchers who successfully …
Achieving Broader Impacts in the National Science Foundation, Division of Environmental Biology
Since 1997, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has guided reviewers to use two criteria to evaluate proposals: intellectual merit (the potential to advance scientific knowledge) and broader impacts (the potential to benefit society). The introduction of the Broader Impacts Criterion …
Read MoreA Test Case for Sexual Harassment
Philosophy professors at the University of Colorado’s flagship campus here thought they were taking a bold step.
They wanted to help solve their field’s longstanding problems over the treatment of women and find ways to improve the climate on their …
Read MoreA Short Guide to Writing about Biology
Providing students with the tools they’ll need to be successful writers in college and their profession, A Short Guide to Writing about Biology emphasizes writing as a means to examine, evaluate, share, and refine ideas. The text teaches students how …
Read MoreA Short Guide to Writing About Chemistry
Providing students with the tools they’ll need to be successful writers, A Short Guide to Writing about Chemistry emphasizes writing as a way of examining, evaluating, and sharing ideas. The book teaches readers how to read critically, study, evaluate and …
Read MoreA Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions
Most Christian lifestyle or environmental books focus on how to live in a sustainable and conservational manner. A CLIMATE FOR CHANGE shows why Christians should be living that way, and the consequences of doing so. Drawing on the two authors’ …
Read MoreA Lab of Their Own
Attract them as students and recruit them as faculty. Do what you can to keep them in the academy. That’s generally been the mantra of those who are concerned about the dearth of women in university science.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute …
Read More2009 Nobels: Break or Breakthrough for Women?
Article from 2009
“The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901. But this is the first year that more than one woman has been chosen as a science laureate. Indeed, the four distinguished scientists in the class of 2009—Elizabeth Blackburn …
Read MoreA Message to Women From a Man: You Are Not “Crazy”
You’re so sensitive. You’re so emotional. You’re defensive. You’re overreacting. Calm down. Relax. Stop freaking out! You’re crazy! I was just joking, don’t you have a sense of humor? You’re so dramatic. Just get over it already!
Sound familiar?
If …
Read MoreA Bad Reputation for Academic Careers
Why are more and more graduate students turning away from careers at research universities?…
Read MoreA New Frontier for Title IX: Science
Until recently, the impact of Title IX, the law forbidding sexual discrimination in education, has been limited mostly to sports. But now, under pressure from Congress, some federal agencies have quietly picked a new target: science.
The National Science Foundation, …
Read More“So What Are You Going to Do with That?”: Finding Careers Outside Academia
Graduate schools churn out tens of thousands of Ph.D.’s and M.A.’s every year. Half of all college courses are taught by adjunct faculty. The chances of an academic landing a tenure-track job seem only to shrink as student loan and …
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