All Entries in the "STEM Fields" Category
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.
Two Universities Partner in Program Aimed at Increasing Women’s Opportunities in Asset Management
The University of Notre Dame in Indiana has partnered with the University of Pennsylvania and the educational nonprofit organization Girls Who Invest in a summer program designed to increase the number of women seeking careers in the asset management business.
Brown University’s Meenakshi Narain to Take Leadership Post With the Large Hadron Collider
Meenakshi Narain, professor of physics at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, has been selected to lead the collaboration board for U.S. institutions participating in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland. She is the first woman to hold the position.
Women Scientists Receive More Negative Comments on YouTube Than Men
The data showed that 14 percent of the comments posted on videos made by women were critical, compared to just six percent for men. Nearly 5 percent of comments were related to the woman’s appearance. Only 1.4 percent of the comments on men’s videos were related to appearance.
A New Study by Three Women Scholars Shows Why the Gender Gap in Physics Matters
The authors state that “women are especially underrepresented in physics because of a complex interaction of factors, including an unusually chilly climate for women, worse policies and resources for female faculty, and pervasive cultural stereotypes about the inaccessibility and masculine nature of physics.”
Brandy Gunsolus Is the First Holder of a Doctor of Clinical Laboratory Science Degree
Rutgers University launched the new degree program in 2014 to address an ongoing need for greater accuracy and cost efficiency in laboratory testing. It is the first doctoral program in the field at any university in the nation and Dr. Gunsolus is its first graduate.
Tufts University’s Diane Souvaine Elected Chair of the National Science Board
The National Science Board is the governing authority of the National Science Foundation and acts an independent advisor to both the president and Congress on policies related to science and engineering, and also education in those disciplines.
Do Women Face Discrimination From Examiners at the U.S. Patent Office?
Researchers at Yale University found that overall, women inventors’ patents were more likely to be rejected than those filed by teams of men. When rejected, women’s applications were 2.5 percent less likely to be appealed. When applications were granted, women’s patents often had more words added that reduced the scope of their patents.
Janet Westpheling Elected President of the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology
Dr. Westpheling is a professor of genetics in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on the genetic engineering of microorganisms to efficiently convert plants into biofuels.
North Carolina State University Project to Address Perceived Bias in Engineering Education
The new study aims to develop a set of best practices which can be implemented by universities to reduce perceived bias in graduate engineering programs, and possibly for other STEM graduate programs.
Stephanie Adams Will Lead the American Society for Engineering Education
Stephanie Adams is dean of the Frank Batten College of Engineering and Technology at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. She will serve one year as president-elect of the American Society for Engineering Education beginning in June and will become president of the organization in June 2019.
New Study Aims to Identify Best Practices in Mentoring to Increase Diversity in STEM Fields
Angela Byars-Winston, professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been selected to lead a committee of the National Academy of Sciences that will seek to identify the best mentoring techniques to bring more women and members of underrepresented groups into STEM fields.
The Next Dean of the College of Aeronautics and Engineering at Kent State University in Ohio
Dr. Christina Bloebaum currently serves as the Dennis and Rebecca Muilenburg Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Iowa State University. She will begin her new job as dean of the College of Aeronautics and Engineering at Kent State on August 1.
Why Do Women Leave Doctoral Programs in STEM Fields?
The research found that women were expected to do lab “housework” and were often left out of discussions about their research projects. Some women reported sexual harassment, being screamed at by superiors, and having their research findings questioned.
Indiana University Astrobiologist Will Be NASA’s New Planetary Protection Officer
Lisa Pratt, Provost Professor in the department of earth and atmospheric sciences at Indiana University, will be assigned the lofty responsibility of protecting the Earth from potential contamination by extraterrestrial life forms, such as microorganisms that could live in the ice on Mars.
Women Computer Science Students at CUNY Participating in Winternship
Short internships early in their college careers will give these young CUNY women exposure, experience and a set of credentials that make their resumes more competitive when it comes time to apply for summer internships and, ultimately, full-time jobs.
Two Young Scholars Aiming to Boost Gender Diversity in the Soil Sciences
Angelia Seyfferth, an assistant professor in the department of plant and soil sciences at the University of Delaware, and Samantha Ying, an assistant professor of soil biogeochemistry at the University of California, Riverside, thought 21 women were going to attend a networking event at a recent convention. Nearly 100 showed up.
Penn State’s Jenni Evans to Lead the American Meteorological Society
Jenni Evans is a professor of meteorology and atmospheric science in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Pennsylvania State University. She will serve for one year as president-elect of the American Meteorological Society and then will become president in January 2019.
Joanne Chory Awarded a $3 Million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences
Joanne Chory is a professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California and an adjunct professor of biological science at the University of California, San Diego. She was honored for “discovering how plants optimize their growth, development, and cellular structure to transform sunlight into chemical energy.”
Brown University’s Jill Pipher Elected as the Next President of the American Mathematical Society
Jill Pipher, the Elisha Benjamin Andrews Professor of Mathematics and vice president for research at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, will serve a two-year term as president of the American Mathematical Society, beginning in 2019.
Smith College’s Calculus Training Groups Aim to Increase Retention in STEM Disciplines
The calculus training groups were established in 2016. Four women training groups meet for an hour each week outside of class to review assignments and practice skills, Peer mentors, who are paid for their work, help guide first-year students through their mathematics assignments.
The Ann Johnson Institute for Science, Technology & Society Established at the University of South Carolina
Ann Johnson served as an associate professor at the University of South Carolina, where she held joint appointments in the departments of history and philosophy. After her death in 2016 at the age of 51, Dr. Johnson’s father made a gift to establish an institute in her name on the university’s campus.
Mentoring Programs May Be the Best Way to Retain Women in Geoscience Disciplines
A new study by researchers at seven universities finds that faculty mentorship is the most important factor in retaining women in geoscience disciplines. The programs can expand a student’s network of support by connecting them with people, particularly other women, they view as role models.
Two Women Scholars Named Moore Foundation Inventor Fellows
Two women – Viviana Gradinaru of CalTech and Jennifer Dionne of Stanford – are among this year’s Moore Investor Fellows. The honorees each receive $825,000 over the next three years to further their research in science, medicine, and environmental conservation.
Women Making Huge Advances in Research Grants at the University of California, San Diego
In 2013 women were the principal investigators on grant programs that amounted to $24.5 million. In contrast, men led grants totaling $133.3 million. In 2017, women were the principal investigators on grants totaling $89.1 million, while men led grant programs totaling $72.5 million.
The Gender Pay Gap for Physicists In and Outside the Academic World
The study found that for all physics faculty members and for women who hold physics Ph.D.s but work in the private sector, women earned, on average 18 percent less than male physics faculty. When all credentials are equal, women physicists still earn 6 percent less than men.
Georgetown University Study Examines Why Women Transfer Out of STEM Majors
The study found that women who are threatened by the prospect of low grades, are in fields with a low number of women peers, and are subjected to stereotypes that they are unlikely to succeed, are likely to switch majors. Only when all three factors are present are women likely to transfer to another field, according to the research.
Large Gain in Women Engineering Students at the University of Southern California
The percentage of women in undergraduate program in engineering at U.S. colleges and universities hovers around 20 percent. But at the University of Southern California, women now make up 38 percent of the undergraduate students and 44 percent of the entering class.
For the First Time, Women Are a Majority of First-Year Students at Carnegie Mellon University
This year, there are 857 women in the entering class at Carnegie Mellon University. They make up 51.1 percent of the entering class. Four years ago in 2013, women made up 44 percent of first-year students.This is a significant milestone for a university that awards a majority of its degrees in STEM disciplines.
FEMTech: A Technology Support Group for Women of All Majors at Berkeley
Established two years ago, FEMTech has a full series of programs including speaker events, web-development workshops, tutoring services and a robot building team. It hosts weekly speaker events and workshops, and is helping make critical STEM skills accessible to women at Berkeley.
Women Are Making Progress at Schools With Large Numbers of STEM Graduates
A new study by the labor market analytics firm Emsi and published in The Wall Street Journal finds that at nine of the 10 universities with the largest number of degree earners in STEM fields, women made gains from 2012 to 2016. At six of these 10 schools women earned at least one third of all STEM degrees.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute Shows a Huge Jump in Women Students
Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts has announced that the Class of 2021 which recently arrived on campus has the largest percentage of women in the university’s 152-year history. Women make up 44 percent of the first-year students, up from 34 percent a year ago.
For Students Good at Math, Women Are Less Likely Than Men to Have Confidence in Their Abilities
A new analysis by a professor of behavioral science and a research scientist in behavioral economics at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, finds that women who are good at mathematics are less likely to have confidence in their abilities than men who are good at mathematics.
How MIT Closed the Gender Gap in Mechanical Engineering
According to the American Society for Engineering Education, only 13.2 percent of all bachelor’s degrees awarded in mechanical engineering in 2015 were earned by women. But at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 49.5 percent of all undergraduate majors in mechanical engineering are women.
Addressing Sexual Harassment in the Environmental Sciences
Erika Marín-Spiotta, an associate professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is partnering with scientific societies and geoscience faculty colleagues from colleges and universities across the country to develop sexual harassment bystander intervention training for the earth, space and environmental sciences.
