Positively Motivating Speakers - from Lori
Hi Everyone,
If we have discussions on balancing career & family, is there any way to make it less doom & gloom? Can we focus on women who have maybe used innovative choices to make their careers and families flourish? For example, Dr. Varadan suggested hiring household help, which is frowned upon in some sectors of American culture. Some WiSE women may have never considered how much a housekeeper could be helpful to their success.
Also, I'm a little worried about speakers who seem to support the feeling that it's nearly impossible to have a family and an academic career.I've found those talks to be highly discouraging.
In addition, it seems we never know what a speaker's story will be until they're speaking at a WiSE event. For example, one year, WiSE invited a prestigious speaker who was supposed to speak on balancing career withfamily. Instead, she told us that her career had been due to a seriesof mistakes, starting with her doctoral advisor confusing her with another student when he wrote her recommendation letter for her first position.Maybe she was being self-effacing and didn't want to take all the credit for her accomplishments. Nonetheless, it taught me little about how I could succeed on my own merit, while balancing a career with family. In the end, I found her observations to be discouraging because her career appeared largely dependent on luck.
Is it possible for us to know what our speakers will be presenting before they are standing before the WiSE group? Also, is it possible to have multiple lunches on different aspects of career & family?
Lori
The Sam Cook Colloquium
A colloquium on the topic “Confronting the Under-representation of Women and Minorities in Math, Science and Engineering” sponsored by the Samuel DuBois Cook Society. Dr. Shirley M. Malcolm, Head of the Directorate for Education and Human Resources Programs of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), keynoted the event.
Time: Wednesday Feb. 22, 1:00-4:30 PM
Place: Reynolds Theater, Bryan Center
WiSE PC member Lori and Heidi helped with advertising and general programming; Erica participated some of the skits that were played out for panel discussion.
NC SWE
WiSE made contact with
Eastern North Carolina Chapter of
Society of Women Engineers (SWE) through
Jamie Baier, who graduated from Duke ECE last year. Jamie has sent out our mentoring program blurb to the local proffesional SWE women.
Participation - From Lori
Hi Everyone,
I was chatting with one of my colleagues regarding women vs. minority issues. In his opinion, if the subject of any forum/meeting includes the topic of women and minorities, then women who are not minorities are less inclined to attend.
The Cook Colloquium on Wednesday will discuss both issues of women AND minorities. He's expecting that women who are not minorities will probably be in low attendance because the colloquium will discuss minority issues as well.
While I think that the issues for both groups can be widely divergent, I worry he might have a point that the women in math, science and engineering (MSE) may not attend the colloquium. Unfortunately this could feed into the perception that women don't attend events such as this one because women see such programs as only a service to the needs of minorities, while most women at Duke are not minorities, particularly not underrepresented minorities.
I'd like to know your opinion of his perception, in particular whether or not it is valid. I don't necessarily think he is correct, but I honestly don't know. If the program garners low attendance from women in MSE (particularly not minorities), would it be because of apathy among women in MSE for issues involving minorities, apathy for issues involving women or merely because they do not have time to attend?
Truthfully, I'm sending this out preemptively in the hopes that we'll all strongly encourage our women colleagues in MSE of all backgrounds to attend the colloquium (Griffith Theater, Bryan Center 1-5pm Wednesday Feb 22, 2006).
Lori
web update
I fixed the links to the women's center and gpwn. They should all work now. Let me know if you find anything else broken.
I also posted more info on the Cook Colloquium.
WiSE lunch discussion: Funding an Academic Research Lab: From Startup to Tenure
Speaker: Dr. Farshid Guilak
Time: Friday Feb. 17, 12-1:15PM
Place: Women's Center
Program Evaluation
Presentation Slides
PC welcomes Amy from CEE
WiSE welcomes Amy Deonarine to join the PC. Amy is a first year graduate student in civil and environmental engineering. She will be the new GPWN programmer as Heather is leaving this May.
Website Update
I updated the reading section of the WiSE website to include two articles that Heather sent out. One thing I noticed is that this part of the website could use some significant reorganization (seeing the demise of the reading group and all). Anyways, are there other glaring areas of the website that I should fix?
PC meeting - spring 2006
Time: Thursday Feb. 9, 4:00-5:30PM
Venue: CIEMAS conf. RM 3591
Mtg minutesSome updates on current work:
1. WiSE theme for 2006-2007
2. PC needs to decide 3-4 events for fall 2006
3. What to do with mentoring program - a volunteer to focus on the program? a mingle party?
4. Should we make some WiSE T-shirt for next academic year?
