Yesterday marks two years since the day of our very first meeting! Thanks to everyone who’s been involved, whether you were here from the beginning or you’ve just started. Here’s a timeline of some of the events and projects we’ve worked on during our second year as a student group.
Thanks to everyone who attended Wednesday’s member meeting! Here’s a recap of the events and projects we discussed.
We have lots of exciting events and projects coming up! October will be a particularly busy month for WCS-UW. Here’s a recap of some topics discussed at last week’s meeting.
The full recap can be found here. Some highlights:
Mindfulness workshop: The event with Meghann Gerber was very successful and we’re planning to repeat it, with Meghann again or possibly someone else, in January. We are also still working to compile and distribute a list of resources for dealing with grad school, from mental health to conflict resolution. If you have any links, mindfulness-related or not, please add them to the document!
Summer outing: Joan is organizing our first WCS summer outing! We’ve voted to rent boats, paddle around the Arboretum, and have a picnic. Fill out this Doodle poll to help determine when this outing will take place.
Book club: We’re reading Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do, and meetings will be on Tuesdays at noon in CHB 239, starting next week with a discussion of Chapter 1. If you want to participate, please add your contact information to this spreadsheet. The schedule, along with discussion leader and snack signup, can be found here.
Mentoring toolkit: Scott, Joan, and Addie are continuing to develop the mentoring worksheet and work with the chemistry department to encourage communication between grad students and advisors. The first version, based on MIT’s Postdoctoral Mentoring and Advising Toolkit, can be found here. After talking to someone at Stanford who has developed similar resources, they are planning to develop different versions for grad students at different stages of their education. There will be a meeting to brainstorm and get feedback.
Chem WMN reminder: Join the Chemistry Women Mentorship Network (co-founded by Brandi Cossairt, our faculty advisor) if you haven’t already!
Christy Haynes: Christy Haynes, a professor at the University of Minnesota, will be at UW in October for an analytical seminar. She will also give a talk sponsored by WCS on October 21st.
Women in Chemical Sciences is organizing a summer book club! We’ll be reading Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do by Claude Steele, which is available via Amazon and at the University Bookstore, and discussing various topics related to stereotypes and identity.
Meetings will be Tuesdays from 12 to 1 (or 1:30 if we have a lot to talk about) in CHB 239. We’ll read one chapter (usually 15-20 pages) each week, starting with Chapter 1 for the July 1st meeting. Each week, someone will lead the discussion and someone will bring a snack. You can sign up for either job, as well as adding any anticipated scheduling conflicts, on this Google spreadsheet if you’re interested.
If you are interested, please contact Heidi (hdnelson@uw.edu) or add your name and email address to this contact list. Reminders, discussion questions, meeting recaps, and other resources will be sent out to that list of people, posted in this Google Drive folder, and/or posted on the blog here.
Highlights from the WCS-UW member meeting on May 19th, 2014 (full recap here).
Here’s a review of some topics we discussed at last night’s member meeting. A full list can be found here on the WCS-UW Google Drive.
1. The Managing Up workshop with the graduate school was a great success, and Sarah is working on a recap/resource to distribute (via our mailing list and blog, but also through the department). Joan and Scott are also adapting MIT’s Postdoctoral Mentoring and Advising Toolkit for grad students. Using the toolkit will involve meeting with your advisor to go through a worksheet and have a discussion that clarifies your goals and expectations. Joan and Scott will send out the toolkit soon with more details for how to use it. We hope to have an event later this quarter where people can discuss their experiences using the toolkit and how to make it more widely used in the department.
2. Our next event will be a workshop on impostor syndrome with Professor Alexes Harris from the sociology department. This workshop will tentatively take place at noon on April 23rd, location TBD. More details will be posted soon.
3. This summer, we’re having a book club! Meetings will take place during lunchtime, probably every other week. We’re looking for ideas for science-related and/or women-related books. No particular preference for fiction or non-fiction, but a collection of essays or short stories might work well. Add your ideas to the brainstorming document on the WCS google drive, and we’ll vote later in the quarter.
4. Our budget includes funds to bring in one out-of-town speaker per year. We’d like to decide on a speaker and invite them this spring/summer for the inaugural WCS-UW Lecture this fall/winter. Add your ideas for speakers to the brainstorming document, and we’ll discuss and vote on which to invite at a future meeting.
5. The WCS blog is always looking for more content – upcoming events of interest, recaps of past events, reflections on articles or papers. Just register or log in via the links on the right-hand side of this page, and we’ll authorize your account to post entries if it isn’t already set up.
This weekend, several members of WCS-UW presented a workshop at the Expanding Your Horizons Conference at Seattle University. This event, which had over 450 attendees this year, provides an opportunity for 6th to 8th grade girls to participate in hands-on workshops and learn about careers in STEM fields. Last year, some of us helped out with supervising the students and directing traffic, but this year, we led our own activity.
Women in Chemical Sciences at UW will be participating in several exciting outreach events in the next few months. We’ll provide supplies and are planning to coordinate transportation for all of these events, but we’re looking for volunteers!
Outreach planning meeting: We’re meeting this Saturday, January 25th at 12:00 in CHB 239. We’ll focus on putting together the chemistry mystery workshop for the Expanding Your Horizons conference, but we’ll also discuss other activities and future projects. The chemistry department has generously provided us with funding for outreach supplies, and we’re excited to expand our outreach efforts!
1. Echo Lake Science Night: 6:30-8:30 pm on Thursday, February 6th at Echo Lake Elementary School in Shoreline. This is an open-house setting with lots of hands-on exhibits for elementary school students. WCS-UW will be helping students make iridescent bookmarks with clear nail polish thin-films, demonstrating how the properties of materials change on the nanoscale. Contact Sarah (svorpahl@uw.edu) if you’re interested!
2. Greenwood Elementary Science and Health Fair: 6:00-8:00 pm on Thursday, February 27th at Greenwood Elementary School in north Seattle. This event needs judges for students’ science fair projects. Contact Heidi (hdnelson@uw.edu) if you’re interested!
3. Seattle Expanding Your Horizons Conference: 8:15 am-1:30 pm on Saturday, March 15th at Seattle University. This is a conference aimed at middle-school girls who are interested in science. This year, WCS-UW will be running a workshop in which students solve a mystery using chemistry! The conference also needs general volunteers to guide students around the event, serve pizza for lunch, etc. If you’re interested in helping plan our workshop and/or volunteering on the day of the event, contact Heidi (hdnelson@uw.edu).
4. Paws on Science: All day, weekend of April 4th-6th at the Pacific Science Center. This is an event where UW researchers from all departments show off their research for kids and families. WCS-UW will tentatively be collaborating with the Ginger group to present a booth with information and activities related to solar energy. If you’re interested in helping out, contact Sarah (svorpahl@uw.edu) and we’ll let you know more details as the event gets closer.
If you’re interested in any of these events, please let us know ASAP, since some of them need a volunteer headcount very soon. Also feel free to contact Sarah or Heidi with any questions!
Last week, we celebrated one year of WCS-UW (pictures to come)! Here’s a quick timeline of what we’ve done in the past year:
October 18, 2012: Our very first meeting!
November 29: Our first speaker, Professor Brandi Cossairt, discusses her career in a talk entitled “Paths Through Academia: First Generation College Student to Assistant Professor.”
December 6: Jessica Wittman leads a discussion on “Effects of Gender Preconceptions on Scientific Careers: Stereotype Threat.”
January 18: Professor Sarah Keller gives a talk entitled “My Nonlinear Career Path and Random Walks Through Other Topics.”
February 22: Sarah Vorpahl leads a discussion: “It’s Not Just You!: A Workshop on Impostor Syndrome.”
March 1: Dr. Colleen Craig provides her perspective on science in a presentation called “How to think about science without doing scientific research: A lecturer’s story.”
March 16: WCS members volunteer at the Expanding Your Horizons conference at Seattle University, helping to supervise and organize middle school girls interested in STEM.
April 24: Mackenzie Barton-Rowledge leads a gender workshop for chemistry graduate students, discussing gender stereotypes and preconceptions in society and how they affect our everyday lives.
May 11: WCS members volunteer at the Girl Scouts Discover STEM Science Fair at Einstein Middle School in Shoreline, demonstrating the properties of nanomaterials with iridescent thin films.
May 23: Professor Wendy Thomas from the UW Bioengineering Department, our first non-chemistry speaker, talks about “My Experience Being a Woman and a STEM Professor.”
June 19: Jessica Wittman leads a science communication workshop in which participants are challenged to describe their research using only the 1000 most common English words.
Ongoing projects also include bringing Dr. Amy Cuddy to campus this November as part of the UW Graduate School Public Lecture Series, and planning a symposium focused on international research collaborations for the fall 2014 ACS National Meeting.
Our first speaker of the new year will be Betsy Harasek, J.D., Associate General Counsel at the Xerox Corporation. On Thursday, October 24th, at 11:30 A.M. in CHB 102, she’ll discuss her career in a talk entitled “From chemistry major to patent attorney for General Motors, Boeing, and Xerox: My life in science and patent law.”
Thanks so much to everyone who’s attended these events and supported our group, and especially to all of the members who have helped with planning and organization, and most especially to Sarah Vorpahl, our president and the driving force behind WCS-UW. It’s been a great year and we’re all excited for what the next year has in store. Keep reading this blog, join our members and/or events mailing lists, or contact wcsuw@uw.edu for more information about our upcoming events and projects!