An awesome conversation with my daughter

Curie: Where does space end?

[discussion involving planets, galaxies and universes, scientists and more questions]

Dr. H: Hey, Curie, you ask really good questions, maybe you would like to be a scientist someday?

Curie: Oh! Maybe I will be a scientist princess!

Me: That's a good idea!

Curie: Mommy, can boys be scientists? Or just girls?

Me: Both girls and boys can be scientists.

Curie: Really, because I've never seen a boy scientist. Only girls.

Me: Daddy's a scientist and he's a boy.

Curie: No!

Dr. H.: A social scientist.

Curie: He doesn't look like a scientist!

Me: Really, he is. His college degree is in computer science, and his graduate degree is in psy..

Curie: Mommy! You are just making this up to play a joke on me!

Me: No, really, he is. And we know lots of boy and girl scientists.

Wrong on so many levels....

The other day I went to a Math seminar that had some relevance to BioChemPhys. At the end of the seminar, I took a cookie from the provided refreshments. As I did, a man I did not know said to me, "Those are fattening, dear."

Another Chapter

In my last post I told a little story about my eighth grade math class. Let me tell a more positive math class story that may put the eighth grade story in context.

Fifth grade was fabulous. My teacher, Mrs. Plunk, gave me and one other student the math book, flipped a good way through it and said, "Start here." The starting point for each of us was the first section we didn't already have proficiency in. While she gave the rest of the class a regular lesson, the two of us were allowed to work on material chapters ahead of the rest of the class on our own. When I felt like I had done enough practice problems in a chapter, I went up to Mrs. Plunk's desk and she gave me a post-test. If I got a 100%, I moved on.

That year was the year I discovered I loved math. Everything was so new! So cool! So much fun!

When I finished our book, she went and got the sixth grade book, flipped through it to the last unit and again said, "Start here." I asked about the earlier stuff in the book and she said "You know how to do all that." I looked through it. She was right.

That moment is the moment I realized that all the math books I had used in that state started all over again with addition and subtraction. At the time, I thought this was incredibly stupid. Later, someone told me this approach to math is called spiraling.

In sixth grade, I moved to a new school in the same state. The year opened with us studying addition and subtraction all over again. I told my new teacher "I know how to do all of this already." She said to me, "What do you want? A brownie button?" I didn't say much after that.

In sixth, seventh and eighth grade, I sat through math classes, bored out of my mind. Occasionally, I refused to do homework in rebellion. You have no idea how happy I was to go to high school.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Mrs. Plunk changed my life. From that year on, I thought of myself as someone who loved math and was good at it. But that one year did have the side effect of making the next three years really painful.

Girls = Boys: Math is not Hard

In case anyone possibly missed the Tierney business last week, go read this.

Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about: "Gender Similarities Characterize Math Performance" by Hyde, Lindberg, Linn, Ellis & Williams in Science, 25 July 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5888, pp. 494 - 495. This study, using recent data from 10 states, found no gender gap in math:

Effect sizes for gender differences, representing the testing of over 7 million students in state assessments, are uniformly <0.10, representing trivial differences (see table, top left, and table S1). Of these effect sizes, 21 were positive, indicating better performance by males; 36 were negative, indicating better performance by females; and 9 were exactly 0. From this distribution of effect sizes, we calculate that the weighted mean is 0.0065, consistent with no gender difference (see chart on p. 495 and fig. S1). In contrast to earlier findings, these very current data provide no evidence of a gender difference favoring males emerging in the high school years;

The author's suggest maybe earlier studies found differences in higher level problems because at that time girls took fewer and/or lower level math courses in school. (And I'm pretty sure that some dismissed this as a problem at that time, saying "See, girls are just more interested in people.") This isn't the case anymore, girls now choose these classes, and this may be why the gender gap has disappeared.

But wait! What about that variability thing? You know, the whole "it isn't that the boys are better on average, they just have more high and low achievers" thing Lawrence Summers spoke about? This study has some things to say about that too:

Data from the state assessments provide information on the percentage of boys and girls scoring above a selective cut point. Results vary by ethnic group. The bottom table on p. 494 shows data for grade 11 for the state of Minnesota. For whites, the ratios of boys:girls scoring above the 95th percentile and 99th percentile are 1.45 and 2.06, respectively, and are similar to predictions from theoretical models. For Asian Americans, ratios are 1.09 and 0.91, respectively. Even at the 99th percentile, the gender ratio favoring males is small for whites and is reversed for Asian Americans.

Did you catch that last part? In the 99th percentile, the ratio is reversed for Asian Americans. Interesting, no? On the Science website, the news note about the article mentions that Hyde (the lead author of the study) says this suggests there are complex cultural factors at work here. The study concludes:

Our analysis shows that, for grades 2 to 11, the general population no longer shows a gender difference in math skills, consistent with the gender similarities hypothesis (19). There is evidence of slightly greater male variability in scores, although the causes remain unexplained. Gender differences in math performance, even among high scorers, are insufficient to explain lopsided gender patterns in participation in some STEM fields. An unexpected finding was that state assessments designed to meet NCLB requirements fail to test complex problem-solving of the kind needed for success in STEM careers, a lacuna that should be fixed.

There is much more to the story and I recommend checking it out.

...

When I was in eighth grade, I was not permitted to take Algebra. Algebra was not offered as a formal class, but two students were allowed to study it with one of the student teachers on the side. I was not on of those students. This was not because I was a girl, but because of what happened during the free part of the math class period. You see, I was not one of the girls who went up to sit on the teacher's desk and giggle with him while he told dirty jokes. They got to take Algebra.

It would be nice if I were kidding. I am not.

Instead, I sat at my desk, wanting to stick a pencil into my eye to relieve the pain of doing 50 more math problems about something tedious I'd known how to do since the fourth grade.

My high school did not allow students to go directly into Algebra either. You had to get "permission" from your eighth grade math teacher. I brought him the slip. He looked at me, somewhat enjoying his little moment of power. "I don't know," he said, "this quarter you may be getting a B..."

Now, in fairness, I was getting a B. Why? Because I could not frigging stand calculating the area of a circle for the 121st damn time (by hand, this was 1981). So I may have missed an assignment or two. However, there was no frakking way this joker was going to prevent me from getting into Algebra. I knew it, too. I looked at him. I adopted my first and best ever Are you fucking kidding me? look. He looked at me for no more than a second after that and signed the paper.

At eighth grade graduation, he said to my mom, "I do believe your daughter was very bored in my class."

And that year we never got yearbooks. Something about my math teacher taking off with all the yearbook money. But maybe that was just a rumor.

Fortunately, high school was different. It wasn't all good, but at least it was different.

Two Institutions, Two Sets of Students

I decided during my senior year of college that I wanted to be a professor at a small liberal arts college. I expected to get married to another academic once I was settled into an academic job. I expected to have twins, a house near campus, and a dog, once I got that tenure thing out of the way.

Instead:
1) got TT job at regional master's level institution (loved it)
2) got cats after going to shelter "just to look around" (awesome, no regrets)
3) found a partner who was also an academic (in another city...oops)
4) got tenure (yea!)
5) got married (yea!) (also acquired 3rd cat by marriage)
6) took a leave and went into administration near husband's new TT job (missed teaching)
7) got a job at a small liberal arts college (same metropolitan area, woo hoo!)
8) bought a house (over 25 miles from both our colleges)
9) got another cat (yes, that is four for those keeping track)
10) had twins (Clomid)
11) got tenure (again!)

The first deviation from my original plan was taking a job at a regional master's level (public) institution. When I was considering my options in college, the truth is, I had no idea such institutions existed. In my world there were (1) larger public or private research universities (2) small private colleges and (3) community colleges. It was only in graduate school that I learned about M.S. granting mixed teaching/research institutions. A woman from one of these institutions was doing a sabbatical leave at my graduate school. She was asked to speak to a small group of grad students who were interested in teaching at primarily undergraduate institutions. She was shocked that "small group" turned out to be packed room of more than 20 (mostly women). I liked what I heard there. When applying for jobs, I found a job announcement at one such institution that seemed written for me. To make a long story short, I liked the place, they liked me, and I took the job.

It turned out to be a great fit, in ways that surprised me. The student body consisted of a wide range of students. Some were quite weak, coming in needing remedial work in math and writing. Some students were hard working, some were distracted with other responsibilities, many were both. A few were absolutely brilliant. (Really.) What was remarkable and rewarding about this job was that I made a difference. And moreover, I made a difference to all those groups of students. I developed teaching techniques that "raised up the bottom" while still challenging the top. I rarely had to fail students - yet students often reported my class was the hardest they'd ever taken. I sent students to excellent grad schools. I also got to teach graduate courses in my specialty areas more than occasionally.

Leaving was hard, especially after attaining tenure. I did so to solve my two-body problem. That is a whole bunch of other posts in itself - which I will save for another time.

Today, I find myself at a small, private, liberal arts college, just as I always imagined. My students at SLAC, on average, are much better students than my students were at Regional U. This is nice for a number of reasons. I have to worry less about compliance on homework and class attendance. I also have to spend a lot less time working on basic math skills. These are all good things that make my life easier. On the other hand, the range of abilities demonstrated by my students is considerably narrower when I compare them to the students I had at Regional U. Here's one issue: this means that I don't feel like I make that much of a difference. These students are reasonably good students who will do okay with or without me. I would not have thought I would miss weaker students, but there you go. Something else unexpected: the narrower distribution at SLAC also means that while I have many strong students, I have yet to encounter any truly brilliant students. Maybe Regional U. was an anomaly, but I had two students in my short time there who blew my mind. (Cleverly, I sent one to my undergraduate institution to do an REU, and sent the other to my grad school to get a Ph.D., thus instilling in my former mentors a deep belief in my sound judgment.) My explanation for this is that some really incredible students chose Regional U. because of financial concerns - not something that is going to get such students to choose my SLAC over, say, Prestigious SLAC or Ivy U.

On the other hand, at SLAC, my students are really nice and I have a lot of freedom within the classroom. The faculty is 1/5 the size of Regional U, and the student body is 1/8 the size, which (often) means less bureaucracy. I have a lot more freedom to schedule classes, design new courses, even to pick textbooks, than I ever had at Regional U. I also feel I can make a big difference on campus. Lots of things on my campus are changing right now, and I feel very involved. Usually, that is a good thing. This is a different sort of making a difference than I mentioned before, but one that I also enjoy.

The last big difference between the two institutions is in research support. I had much more research support (time, money and students) at Regional U and consequently was able to do more research. Happily, however, my SLAC has started to put more resources into undergraduate research. I may be in a position to help direct how that happens. This is the last piece of the puzzle for me.

Now, if I could just find a way to shorten my commute....


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Transcending the Debate

My son plays with cars. He loves cars. He is all about cars. He quizzes people on where their cars are. People say to me: "He's such a boy!" Clearly, they are not aware of his fondness of pink and kitties.

My daughter seems to be showing an interest in math. She loves counting, asks about numbers constantly, and seems interested in thinking about addition and subtraction. Does anyone comment on this? No. Instead, I get comments about how much she looks like me, or comments about her verbal skills.

Most of the time, I don't bother to argue. I smile and nod. I may point out how much Dalton loves pink and how much Curie loves numbers when I can. I don't know if this is the best approach, but arguments that go nowhere are exhausting.

So, about transcending the debate: what do I think the most important thing women scientists can do? Be present. Be active. Be visible. Do what you love. Don't be shy about your love of science. Hopefully, when boys and girls see that women they know, and women who look like women they know, do science, the rest will follow.



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August Scientiae Carnival: Balance Questions and Answers

Here it is, finally! The August Scientiae Carnival. Happy reading! If I missed something, let me know. I will again blame Harry Potter. The next carnival is scheduled for September 1st at Zuska's.


Balance? Hmm, let's discuss.

Flicka Mawa at A Cat Nap has a blogosphere discussion about balance complete with reading list.

Propter Doc weighs up all the things that must be done and considers a few strategies for coping with it all. Hypoglycemiagirl provides some suggestions for traveling when your life is happening in three different countries and discusses how getting enough exercise is a challenge.

Amelie wonders whether hanging out with scientists all the time is good or bad and Veo Claramente now at Cool Immunology wonders if life in academia can be balanced.

Balance? Smalance! Let's see some science fun!

A carnival reader nominated these posts by Keet Leibowitz at
The Keet and Nini Show with Keet's drawings of girls doing science, along with discussions of burning magnesium and the all important difference between the word organism and a word that is spelled in a similar fashion.

Pat at Fairer Science Weblog decides: Balance No. Oobleck Yes.

Balance? First, can we all agree that academia has some serious problems?

Bug Girl lays out a persuasive argument that academia is a cult. Rob Knop at Galactic Interactions writes an amazing and frank post about leaving academia when he found that his career was interfering with his life. And this older and quite provocative Bitch Ph.D. post about kids, academia and life is very interesting and will likely provoke discussion.

Balance? Perhaps that's not the precise word we're looking for.

Dr. Free-Ride at Adventures in Ethics and Science writes about how her life involves juggling, not balance. Zuska wonders how one balances nothing and talks about what happens when health interferes with your career plans.

Balance? Yes? We think. Maybe.

Rebecca at Adventures in Applied Math describes how she tries to balance by finding a work schedule that works for her and I worry about how and where I choose to do my work influences how others perceive me.

Bug Girl writes about balancing her desire to do one thing for the good of the many with the strategic thing for the good of the one.

MrsWhatsit at I Love Science, Really discusses how you don't think about balance until it is absent and how to balance mental health and career.

Balance? Yes!

Dr. Shellie suggests running for improved balance. Estraven at Proving Theorems finds that balance is easier when you like your colleagues.

Flicka Mawa discusses how having a really full plate helps her achieve balance along with the attitude that grad school is not her everything.

Balance? In progress.

New mom Jane at See Jane Compute shares with us some of her insights and questions from taking Baby Jane to a conference. Among them, she wonders whether people finding out she has a new baby will make her appear less professional and wonders whether men even consider this question.

Two women starting tenure track jobs in the fall Skookumchick and Tenure Track Newbie find themselves already being drafted for committees and other service tasks months before they can expect their first paychecks.

And last but not least, Science Woman writes an incredibly inspiring post about how she will not be a foregone conclusion in her attempts to balance life and career as she begins her new tenure-track job this fall.

***********

A big thank you for all of you who submitted and nominated posts and encouraged others to do so!

Scientiae!

The July Scientiae Carnival is up at Amelie's Welt! Go check it out for mind map art, reading suggestions, female scientists in the movies and much more.

I'm excited to be hosting the August 1st Scientiae! A few people have been popping over from Amelie's, so I thought I'd give a heads up on the next month's carnival theme: balance. I would like this to be interpreted very broadly. Here are just a few suggestions, but please don't feel limited by them:

• career/life balance
  
• teaching/research/service balance
  
• science outreach or mentoring/own research agenda balance
  
• balancing what you want in a location/ what you want in a job
  
• balancing liking your colleagues/ research support
  
• couples balancing two careers
  
• finding the right balance of characteristics in a research advisor
  

I'm inviting everyone to submit something from their archives as well as new posts. I know many of you have written fantastic posts on this issue already and I would love to be able to include them!

Hungry for Equality - Two Debates about Single-Sex Events

A debate from last week:

Each year, we hold a women's research symposium on our campus. This event has been going on for some time and has been quite successful. There has been a call to open the event up to males - with a suggestion that the event is a type of reverse discrimination. We have no similar event for males or for the entire faculty. The nominal leader of the group of women running the event asked the women faculty listserv (you are signed up when the ink on your contract is dry) what we all thought of this.

The correct answer was not, apparently, what I said. I tried to open a structured dialogue. I asked some questions. One question in particular that everyone ignored was "Are there goals of the symposium which would not be met by opening up the symposium to men?" Several e-mails came back. At least a few were angry. One even used ALL CAPS for some points. Can I just say how fond I am of people YELLING AT ME via e-mail? In the end, my attempts to bring a discussion together failed miserably.

I have participated in many female-only events that encourage female participation in math and science. I've done this because it is the case that significant inequalities persist that result in discouraging girls to pursue SEM fields. In other cases, I gravitate towards moving single-sex events to all-inclusive events, such as Dr. H and I did with our co-ed bachelor/bachelorette party. I thought perhaps a discussion on the listserv would help suss out our views on the subject. Turns out, everyone had already made up their mind. I could summarize it as follows: One group (humanists) said not understanding the need for this event was like putting one's head in the sand and and denying the need for affirmative action. The other group (social scientists) said "We're scientists, not women scientists." I was the only natural scientist naive enough to enter the discussion.


A debate from many years ago:

I received my Ph.D. at an R1 with a large and vibrant Expanding Your Horizons program for middle school girls. This program encourages girls to continue to take math and science in high school. Over 300 girls participated each year. Dozens and dozens of postdocs, graduate students and undergraduates worked hard to pull this event together each year - from coordinating promotional materials and sponsors to developing science workshops to shuttling groups of girls around campus. The number of women-hours put into this was huge. Every year, the question about inviting boys came up - because the women who want to help girls succeed in science are the same women who are concerned about equality and fairness. These same women all saw the value of a single-sex event. My favorite quote: "Girls need to see that women who look like women they know do science."

Finally, after much debate one year, a woman said something like this: "Look, this comes up every year. The truth is female postdocs and grad students on this campus put in countless hours of planning and preparation for this event. Some have the support of their advisors, some don't. The take time aways from their research to do this because this issue is very important to them. They have experienced sexism. They have withstood attempts to discouraged them from pursuing science. So, I say if the male grad students and post docs want to run a workshop for boys, let them. We'll even help." In my recollection, there was no further discussion that year, or the next.


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Scenes from a Life: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

...and why reasonable people make a big difference.

Act I: The Good

Setting: Graduate school. Reasonable male graduate student (RMGS) walks into our shared lab space and sits down at the computer next to me.

RMGS: Congratualations on your job offer.

Me: Thanks!

RMGS: I was really wondering what was going on with the job market recently.

Me: What do you mean?

RMGS: Well, it seemed like the female graduate students were getting all the academic jobs. I was really beginning to wonder why.

Me: Uh....

RMGS: Then I realized that all the finishing graduate students I know are women! [makes self-deprecating gesture]

Act II: The Bad

Setting: Graduate school.

Younger male graduate student (YMGS) is told by advisor to give group meeting in three weeks on project involving a collaborator from a sexist European country (SEC). YMGS proceeds to do more work in the following three weeks than he has in the last year. He gives a good group meeting presentation. He then leaves for a term of collaborative research abroad, unrelated to current project.

Advisor assigns me additional work on project, gives me paper to write up and puts me on as second author. This is totally reasonable. The SEC collaborator is added because he made the stuff we did our stuff on, though the making of said stuff is not described in this paper.

Authorship is as follows:

YMGS, Me, Advisor
R1 University, USA

and

Collaborator
SEC University

We send the paper to our collaborator in Sexist European Country.

Authorship comes back:

YMSG and Advisor
R1 University, USA

and

Male Student, Another Male Student, Collaborator
SEC Univeristy

Act III: The Ugly

Setting: e-mail message to administrator at my small college

To: A. Dean, Academic Affairs
From: Male Chair, Physchemology
Time: June
Subject: Twice

I understand that Professor Twice may have had to take it easy at the end of the semester when she was pregnant with twins. However, she had the babies almost two weeks ago! Why isn't she back working?

Epilogue I

Advisor's Office

Me: Do you have a minute?

Advisor: Come in. What is it?

Me: Um, we got this paper back from Collaborator at SEC U. He's added the names of two of his students, which I am okay with, as I assume they made [stuff]. But, um..., my name is no longer on the paper.

Advisor, hiding anger: I will take care of this.

Epilogue II

E-mail message from female administrator with three kids.

To: M. Chair, Physchemology
From: A. Dean, Academic Affairs
Date: June
Subject: [Re: Twice]

As far as the college is concerned, Professor Twice is on medical leave for eight weeks after the date of her surgery.

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Not the Motherly Type

Recently I ran into an adjunct from another department right before her class. She was freaking out about finding a VCR for the new classroom she just moved into. I told her she was in a smart room (hate that phrase - more on that some other time). Well, that did not suffice to calm her down - she doesn't have a key to the console and doesn't know how to use the equipment. I helped her out, in the 5 minutes before our classes began, as my students swarmed around me in search of the density of olive oil. Have you heard of Google people?

In any case, she came to my office after class, effusive in her thanks. It's really okay, I tell her. No big deal.

She sees a picture of my kids and says she doesn't know how I leave them. She tells me she only picked up her career again once all her kids were in school. It must be so hard for me to leave them.

Well, surprisingly no. Millions of men don't seem to feel guilty about this, why should women? Of course, I should point out that I have fantastic day care that I am very satisfied with. On the few occasions where I had different arrangements, it was hard. This leads me to wonder a few things: Is the guilt women feel about leaving children in daycare social conditioning (feeling what we are told we should feel)? Is it uneasiness with the particular day care arrangement? Is it our own particular situation? (I have on good authority that I am not the first parent of twins to take a deep breath after dropping them off, for example.)

Or perhaps in my case the answer is simpler As good friend and colleague once told me, I am "just not the motherly type.''

Women in SEM - Still Room for Improvement

The NSF has just come out with a new report on women and minorities in science and engineering fields. The Chronicle has a short summary in which they report:

Over all, women have earned more science and engineering bachelor's degrees than men since 2000, the report notes, and the number of such degrees awarded to women has increased every year since 1966, reaching nearly 228,000 in 2004.

This can, in fact, be seen from the report in this graph.

However, there is one key point that I am afraid will be overlooked: as of 2004, men still greatly outnumber the women receiving bachelor's degrees in the physical sciences (42.1% women), engineering (20.5%) and computer science (25.1%). By 2004 we find there is parity or near parity in some other SEM fields. So how is the total number of SEM degrees larger for women? Psychology. This is a field in which the problem is not undergraduate women, of which there are many, but female representation in the professoriate. I'm worried some will focus on just the one line "over all, women have earned more science and engineering bachelor's degrees than men since 2000" and ignore the very real issues that still exist.

The imbalance for Ph.D.'s is even worse. In 2004, many fewer women than men received Ph.D.'s in fields like the physical sciences (25.9%), engineering (17.6%), computer science (20.5%), mathematics (28.4%) and earth, atmospheric and ocean sciences (33.9%). Pipeline problem anyone? Even in math and the earth/atmospheric/ocean sciences which seem close to parity at the undergrad level, show a pipeline problem at the Ph.D. level. Biology, which ranges in the 50% to low 60% range for women receiving undergraduate degrees over the last decade drops below 50% (to 46.3%) when considering women receiving Ph.D.'s. The narrowing pipeline analogy holds across most fields even if you consider Ph.D. rates in 2004 and compare them (more appropriately) to bachelor's degrees 5-7 years earlier.

And, some may wonder, am I not concerned about a possible over-representation of women in the biological sciences at the undergrad level? What about the men?! Well, yes and no. More undergraduate students are women, which is a whole different issue I don't want to go into, but this accounts for some of the discrepancy. And the rest? I don't know. Wild speculation on my part leads me to suggest that maybe a small number of these women would choose some of the other underrepresented SEM fields in a different world. In this different world, those other fields would be equally welcoming. And maybe some women in social science or non-science fields would choose biology and those other SEM fields. And everyone would study happily ever after in a field they are passionate about. In this world, Barbie never said math was hard.


Sources of 2004 data:

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/pdf/tabc-4.pdf

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/pdf/tabf-2.pdf

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