All Entries in the "STEM Fields" Category
Wellesley College Hosts Workshop Aimed at Teaching Middle Schoolers About Healthy Social Media Use
Throughout the workshop, the participating students engaged in discussions on how apps are created and learned about basic coding concepts. They also contributed to the design of a research-based app Dr. Charmaraman and Dr. Delcourt are developing to teach middle school students about healthy social media use.
University of Central Florida Sent the Only All-Women Team to a Cybersecurity Competition in Las Vegas
The University of Central Florida advanced from a field of 21 teams and competed as one of six finalists at the Las Vegas event. The competition pitted college teams against each other in industry-specific cyber-attack scenarios in a video game-like setting.
University Launches Complex Contraception Clinic for Women Who Need to Avoid Pregnancy
The clinic’s team from the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham will counsel women on evidence-based contraceptive options and develop temporary or permanent plans that best suit each patient’s medical needs.
Small Class Size Plays a Major Role in Women’s Retention Rate in STEM Majors
Using data obtained from 44 science courses across multiple institutions, the research team calculated that large classes begin to negatively impact women students’ participation when they reach enrollments over 120 students.
A Simple Explanation for the Gender Gap in High-Level Mathematics
In school, girls do just as well as boys in mathematics. A new study by scholars at the Paris School of Economics and Paris Dauphine University finds that the reason for the lower participation rate of women in high-level mathematics may be rather simple: They are better at reading and verbal tasks than they are at mathematics and outperform men in these areas.
National Institutes of Health Director Will Refuse to Serve on All-Male Academic Panels
While there has been much talk about how to expand the participation of women speakers at academic conferences, Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health is actually doing something about it. Recently Dr. Collins announced that he would no longer participate on academic panels where women were not represented.
Most Academic Conferences in Biology Do Not Have Codes of Conduct Governing Sexual Harassment
In examining nearly 200 conferences in the United States and Canada, researchers found that less than one quarter had developed a code of conduct for attendees. Of those conferences that did have a code of conduct, slightly more than half mentioned sexual harassment or sexual misconduct.
University of Georgia’s Women in Science Organization Establishes the “Females First Grant” Program
The group plans to award two to three small grants per year to be used for child care while women members of the organization attend a local or regional conference.
Liselle Joseph’s Milestone Achievement at Virginia Tech
Liselle Joseph was awarded a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. She is the first woman from an Eastern Caribbean nation to earn a Ph.D. in the field.
George Washington University Establishes the Center for Women in Engineering
The new center aims to increase the number of women students and faculty in engineering and support women in the discipline by hosting events and providing professional development opportunities. Rachelle Heller, a professor of computer science, will serve as the center’s inaugural director.
Study Finds Persistence of Stereotypical Negative Images of Women in Tech
The report found that women in tech fields are “portrayed in ways that overemphasize their appearance and sexuality.” They also found that women in tech are often referred to as “exceptional” implying that a woman’s achievements are “abnormal.”
Young Girls Can’t Do STEM? New Federal Data Says Otherwise
In 2018, the National Assessment of Educational Progress administered a nationally representative assessment of technology and engineering literacy to more than 15,000 students in the eighth grade throughout the nation. Girls scored higher overall than boys overall and in every content area of the test.
Large Majority of Undergraduate Women Physics Students Subjected to Sexual Harassment
The authors of a new study on women undergraduates in physics programs refer to the level of sexual harassment faced by women in physics as “insidious and significantly higher than is generally acknowledged.” They believe this level of sexual harassment can have a major negative impact of women’s persistence in physics and other STEM fields.
Harvard University Makes Great Strides In Hiring Women Faculty
Since 2004, tenured-track faculty appointments at Harvard University are up 14 percent for women, which is particularly striking since the overall number of tenure-track faculty has decreased by 18 percent over the same time period.
Princeton University Hosts Conference to Interest Young Women in STEM Fields
The 750 girl students in grades 7 t0 10 participated in hands-on activities, viewed various STEM exhibits, watched a chemistry show put on by Princeton faculty, and listened to panel discussions from early-career women scientists.
University of Pennsylvania Conference Promotes Women in Physics
Participating students had the opportunity to meet informally and share their work with Beth Willman, a world-renowned astronomer and deputy director of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.
Northwestern University Study Finds Gender Gap in First-Time National Institutes of Health Grant Amounts
The investigators found that first-time grant recipients who were men received a median grant of $165,721. For women first-time grant recipients, the median grant was $126,615. Thus, the median funding for male grant recipients was 31 percent higher than the median amount awarded to women.
Six Medical Schools Partner With TIME’S UP Healthcare to Support Women in Medicine
The participating institutions are the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University, the Drexel University College of Medicine, the Mayo Clinic, the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin Health, and Yale School of Medicine.
University of South Florida Launches New Health Center Exclusively for Women
The new center features six spacious exam suites as well as spaces for doctors to review lab results and other medical information one-on-one with women patients.
Yale University Launches Web Application Highlighting Careers and Achievement of Women in STEM
Yale University has recently launched Science Stories, a linked-data, image-based web application highlighting the careers and achievements of women in STEM fields. Currently, Science Stories has archived nearly 600 profiles of women scientists.
Thomas Edison State University Launches the Journal of Women and Minorities in Technology
The new publication will be an open access journal that provides quality peer-reviewed articles written by academic and professionals in the fields of aviation, nuclear technology, cybersecurity, and information technology. The articles will provide technical and soft-skills information aimed at helping women and minorities succeed in these fields.
Case Western Reserve University’s Program to Boost Women Entrepreneurs in STEM
Through the program, the participating women will learn about processes of entrepreneurship and innovation, create a service, process, system or product that solves a societal problem and introduce it into the marketplace.
Arizona State University Launches an All-Women Student Group for Underwater Robotics Research
Arizona State University has established an all-women student engineering organization that focuses on underwater robotics. According to the university, Desert WAVE (Women in Autonomous Vehicle Engineering) is the second all-female underwater robotics team in the world.
Stetson University Receives Funding for Science Camp for Girls and Other Underrepresented Youths
The Nina B. Hollis Research Impact Awards provide grants for Stetson research projects that explore ways to improve preschool through high school educational outcomes for girls and other youth who are underrepresented in mathematics and computer science.
Study Finds Academic Engineering Remains Largely the Domain of White Men
The study found that from 2001 to 2015, the number of women faculty members at U.S. medical schools increased by 34 percent. But the number of women faculty members in schools of engineering increased by only 4 percent from 2006 to 2014.
CalTech Seeks to Boost the Number of Women Pursuing Graduate Study in Physics
Recently, the California Institute of Technology hosted the inaugural “FUTURE of Physics” event. The program brought junior and senior college women who are majoring in physics to CalTech for two days of panels and mini-workshops.
Meredith College to Host Two-Day “ChickTech” Workshop
The event will be free for 100 girls from local school districts that have been nominated by a teacher or community advocate. They will participate in a wide range of projects and will receive mentoring from industry professionals and academics from high-tech fields throughout the workshop.
A Half Dozen Women Among the 2018 Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering
Each of the 18 new Packard Fellows will receive $875,000 over five years for them to use to pursue their research interests in physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, astronomy, computer science, earth science, ocean science, or engineering. This year, one third of the new cohort of Packard Fellows are women.
Cornell University is Launching a New Program for Women Entrepreneurs in STEM Fields
Andrea Ippolito, executive director of the engineering management program and eLab instructor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, is launching a new program called W.E. (women entrepreneurs) Cornell. Program participants will be provided with networking opportunities, mentorship, and leadership development.
Florida International University’s New Mentorship Program for Women in STEM Fields
Many of the 600 women from underrepresented groups who have graduated with STEM degrees from the university over the last five years, most likely were never taught by a woman.
A Major Milestone in Gender Equality in STEM at Cornell University
For the first-time ever, 50 percent of undergraduates enrolled in the College of Engineering at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, are women. This far surpasses the national average for women in engineering programs, which stands at 22.9 percent.
Nonprofit Partners With Six Universities to Address Gender Inequality in Artificial Intelligence
This summer, Boston University hosted AI-4-ALL, a program designed to promote greater gender diversity and inclusion in the overwhelmingly male artificial intelligence field. Also partnering with the organization are Stanford University, Princeton University, University of California, Berkley, Carnegie Mellon University, and Simon Fraser University in Canada.
Ten Women Scholars With Ties to Academia Elected Fellows of the American Chemical Society
The American Chemical Society has announced the 2018 class of ACS Fellows. Twenty-one women were recognized with this prestigious honor. Ten of these women are affiliated with higher education in the United States.
Three Women Scholars Honored With Election as Fellows of the Entomological Society of America
The three women honorees are Christina M. Grozinger, Distinguished Professor of entomology at Pennsylvania State University, Ann E. Hajek, professor of entomology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and A. Alma Solis, a research scientist and former associate dean of the College of Math Science and Technology at the University of Texas at Brownsville.
Elizabeth Boyer of Penn State Honored by the American Geophysical Union
Elizabeth W. Boyer, associate professor of water resources in the College of Agricultural Sciences at Pennsylvania State University, will deliver the Witherspoon Lecture at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in December in Washington, D.C.
