FairerScience Weblog

So have you ever seen the Lego kits designed for girls? Hope not- it's not a pretty thing. Oh wait they are pretty-in pink-with friends, gardens, cafes and beauty shops. BTW Kate Bacus wrote a great post about this entitled "Legos, spaceships, breasts".

Here is the alternative- a possible Lego kit featuring a girl that is way cool for girls and boys, LadyAda's Workshop. As they explain:

LadyAda's Workshop is a place where you explore all the cool things you build and use when you're an engineer! Computers, pick-and-place machine, laser cutter, soldering station and more! In Ladyada's workshop you can run your own open-source hardware electronics company, complete with Mosfet the cat.

Want to see this available at your favorite toy store from Lego? If yes you need to tell Lego to produce it. 10,000 votes are needed. Vote here. Full disclosure you need to register to vote but you can tell them not to send you e-mail or use your information (which happily is their default option)

PS Hats tip to Olga Wasserman for telling me about Kate Bacus and David Mortman for telling me about AdaFruit

Posted by Pat at 01:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Several months ago two friends, one younger and Black, the other older and White, started talking about race (guess which one I am). Both of us have PhDs and share a passion for science and a commitment to diversity. The catalyst for this conversation was David Thomas’ “The Truth About Mentoring Minorities: Race Matters”, originally published in April 2001 by the Harvard Business Review.

The conversation has been periodic, punctuated by weeks (months?) of silence, but has remained focused on the mentoring of doctoral candidates since we are concerned greatly about graduate education. This is just the beginning and we are not able to predict where the conversation will lead. Periodically, we will be sharing the results of our conversations on each of our blogs, FairerScience and iPhDgirl.

We thought we would start by writing a bit about where we are coming from.

I (Pat) am a former college professor with a strange hobby- I voluntarily read and critique dissertation proposals and drafts for folks who haven’t been getting enough guidance. Through the past 30 years I’ve read dissertations from a lot of folks, and almost all of them have been white women or women and men of color and I want to know why. It’s easy to say racism or sexism or both but that’s simplistic and not helpful. I want Andrea and me to dig deeper and explore our own perspectives and those of others- toward what is going on with good and bad cross-race mentoring in graduate school.

I (Andrea) am a biophysicist by training and a mischief-maker at heart. Having left lab science for policy my career focus has shifted to facilitating the practice of science--and people are at this heart of its practice. Academic science, in my opinion, seems to have a talent management problem. My perspectives on and interests in this topic are personal, intellectual, and professional. One key area to explore is that of graduate recruitment and "education". Why the focus on gender or race? Well, as a Black female it is somewhat personal. By many measures attempts to achieve diversity in the academic ranks has been a failure. But then again, although I'm not an academic or a researcher, I don't feel that I've failed. Moreover, I know that my educational outcome is indistinct from that of so many doctoral students (regardless of race and gender). So perhaps it's narcissism, perhaps it's intellectual curiosity, perhaps it's determination to "make things right". Still, I need to decide what significance I can take from my own experience, from that of others, and from the data. As with everything in life, race does matter. So does gender. But does it have to be a hindrance to anyone or a roadblock to achievement?

Posted by Pat at 04:47 PM | Permalink

The American Society of Engineering Education says the percentage of undergrad engineering degrees that went to women hit a 15-year low in 2009 at 17.8 percent.

The Association of American Medical Colleges finds that the percentage of medical school applicants who are women has been declining since 2003(from 50.8% to 47.3%) as has been the percentage of medical students who are women (from 49.6% to 47%)

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research reports that the percentage of associate’s degrees awarded to women by STEM field between 2000-2001 and 2008-09 has declined for every field except biomedical and biological sciences where it has stayed constant. Not only that between 2000–2001 and 2008–2009, the number of women earning short-term certificates (requiring less than one year to complete) and medium-term certificates (requiring at least one year but less than two years to complete) in STEM fields declined by half.

Folks we have a problem- a big one!

Posted by Pat at 12:19 PM | Permalink