10 Friday Oct 2014
Posted in General
18 Thursday Sep 2014
Posted in General
Very nice to see commercials that envision a new tomorrow… Thank you, GE, for sharing that vision:
12 Tuesday Aug 2014
Posted in Balancing gender, General
The f-word came up a few weeks ago and now it seems I cannot get away from it…
When I started this doctoral program to research the gender balance in engineering question, I wanted to completely avoid the f-word. In fact, during my final presentation at the end of the first residency period, I said outright that I am not a feminist. A feminist would want to be known as a female engineer but my greatest wish is that I am no longer introduced that way. I’m just an engineer. Continue reading
07 Thursday Aug 2014
Posted in Balancing gender, General
Dr. Randy Newman, Professor of Psychology at Acadia University, presents brief overview of the history and barriers leading to women’s underrepresentation in science. This informative talk is humorous and professional … and filled with a great historical reference that I shall be following up with!
Reference:
Gornick, V. (2009). The History of Women in Science. Feminist Press, The City University of New York. ISBN: 978-1-55861-587-8
28 Monday Jul 2014
Posted in General
I have been receiving a number of comments on my blog. Thank you, so much! Nice to know that I am posting something of interest. I try to respond as quickly as I can.
I’ve been getting some, though, that are oddly crafted: supportive but encouraging me to expand my reach by signing up at a particular website. I heard a report on Spark (cbc.ca) about programs that are written to post comments directing people to their sites. Well, I’m glad I moderate the comments here, because this is one of them that I received. Continue reading
25 Wednesday Jun 2014
Posted in General
Interesting comments from the past US-presidential family… I will have to find Chelsea’s data. The article gives interesting anecdotes from women who were discouraged in middle school and high school. From the ASEE aggregator:
The Denver Post (6/24, Torres) reports that Chelsea Clinton took part in a panel discussion at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on Monday, calling for greater efforts to promote gender diversity in the technology industry. The paper quotes Clinton saying, “There are fewer girls who are aspirational in the math and science fields in the United States than there were 20 years ago. We have significantly fewer women graduating with computer science degrees. We have significantly fewer women graduating with mechanical engineering degrees than we did in the mid and late 1980s.”
23 Monday Jun 2014
Posted in General
Tags
engineering, gender, STEM, UK
From my good friend, Gord Stuart, another great and relevant article. I’m curious whether this is simply in response to confusion around a new educational system. Warrants further investigation in my mind…
From ACM TechNews: Female Tech Staff ‘in Decline’ in the U.K. BBC News. The gender gap in the U.K. information technology industry is getting worse, according to a new report from BCS, the chartered institute for IT, and E-Skills U.K. The Women in IT scorecard indicates women account for just 16 percent of the British IT workforce. Moreover, the study found the problem starts early, considering girls consistently outperform boys in computing A-level results, but only account for 6.5 percent of test-takers. Girls also make up only 13 percent of entries for computer science General Certificates of Secondary Education (GCSEs). Meanwhile, the proportion of women working as self-employed IT specialists has doubled over the past decade, and women earn 16 percent less on average than men. “The continuing decline in women entering the IT profession is a real threat for the U.K. and an issue that clearly we need to address,” says BCS Women chairwoman Gillian Arnold. E-Skills U.K. CEO Karen Price also notes “this joint report provides the evidence we need to face the problem head-on, and to develop hard hitting and effective interventions to solve it.”
18 Wednesday Jun 2014
Posted in General
Tags
From the ASEE aggregator, a very interesting engineering application:
In a post for LiveScience (6/18, Gupta), Nikhil Gupta, an associate professor of composite materials at NYU, writes that since 1970 Adidas has resigned the official ball of the World Cup, and that it often “incorporated materials and technologies that were innovative advances for their time.” The Brazuca ball for the 2014 World Cup, is no exception and it is an “example of cutting-edge engineering and advanced materials.”
There is video from the lab in the LiveScience article, or view this talkSPORT review by two renown players:
10 Tuesday Jun 2014
Posted in Balancing gender, General
Tags
Very interesting… I may have to interview her for my research. Later. From the ASEE aggregator:
Kristin Brown writes in “The Tech Chronicles” blog of the San Francisco Chronicle (6/5), Stanford just hired Persis Drell as its first female dean of its school of engineering. Brown calls this “a small step” but “a big deal” for the field in which “women are vastly outnumbered by men.” It is a movement towards changing the perception of engineering as a masculine field, which is “a major obstacle” to women pursuing it as a career.
The “Tech Chronicles” of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (6/5) also provided coverage of this story.
08 Sunday Jun 2014
Posted in General
Tags
I missed the email from ASEE that included this article. This is very interesting and something I may be able to incorporate into my research. From the ASEE aggregator last month:
WBUR-FM Boston (5/27) reports on line that while statistics show that men greatly outweigh in engineering programs, Olin College of Engineering, “a small school of fewer than 400 students in Needham, founded in 1997,” has “wanted to attract more women to engineering” from its start. The piece reports that Olin President Rick Miller “said the way engineering colleges teach engineering turns women and other students away who might otherwise be great engineers,” and reports that Miller said that he views engineering as “a performing art.”
