Category Archives: Events

Imposter Syndrome Workshop with Professor Alexes Harris

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Last week, Professor Alexes Harris of the UW Sociology Department discussed ways to combat imposter syndrome with us during one of our lunch-time workshops. Prof. Harris shared her own struggles with imposter syndrome as well as techniques she continues to use to overcome it. Below are some key points and suggestions from the discussion that resonated with us chemistry graduate students. Thank you to everyone who came for your excellent questions and participation!

– Develop a support group of your peers. Find people with whom you feel safe sharing your concerns and struggles. You will probably find many of your peers are dealing with the same issues as you and also feel like they are imposters. You will gain a sense of belonging and strength from your support group, as well as valuable advice and insight.

– Ask your friends/support group for a confidence boost when you need it.  Let them know exactly what you need and when. For example, you may want an (honest!) compliment before an important presentation or exam to remind you of your strengths and calm your nerves.

– Seek out people with a positive outlook and don’t let yourself be brought down by negativity. Politely minimize your interactions with negative people.

– End the self-doubt and guilt today! Promise yourself to not allow these unhelpful emotions to affect you. After all, they are only emotions, not facts.

– Give yourself time to decompress and relax, but most importantly, don’t allow yourself to feel guilty about it! You deserve (and need) at least a few hours a week to do something for yourself that you truly enjoy. Don’t feel guilty about the work you’re missing. Don’t be embarrassed about what you enjoy doing, no matter what it is (even trashy TV).

– Make a list of your goals and reward yourself when you complete them. Breaking projects down into small tasks will help you complete the larger goals. Perhaps make a board of post-it notes so that finishing a task requires the physical motion of removing the post-it note. Congratulate yourself for finishing even the smallest tasks.

– Regularly remind yourself of why you are here and what your end-goal is. Use your end-goal to motivate you to finish!

Jessica Wittman, WCS-UW Treasurer

Chemists Rock the 2014 FOSEP 1000 Word Challenge!!

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On Friday, March 21st, the Seattle Forum on Science Ethics and Policy hosted its second annual 1000 Word Challenge at the Burke Museum of Natural History. Last year, no chemistry graduate students or postdocs made it to the finalists round of the competition. This year, however, two of the prizes were taken home by one chemistry graduate student and one postdoc! Congratulations to us!

For this challenge, graduate students and postdocs crafted descriptions of their research using on the 1000 most commonly used words in the English language. The competitors then presented their research descriptions to 3 judges and other attendees. The descriptions were judged in three areas: Language, Style, and Presentation.

As we all know, chemistry can be quite difficult to explain to our non-chemist family members and friends, especially since we use so much chemistry vernacular. Thus, distilling our research down to a summary that only uses the 1000 most commonly used words is quite a difficult (and fun) challenge. How do we talk about the fundamental atoms, molecules, protons, electrons, nanoparticles, etc., that we study without just calling them very small things? They’re more complicated than that!

My lab mate, postdoc Miriam Bowring, and I decided to give it a shot. It’s funny how we came up with such similar descriptions, from the vocabulary to the structure, even though the first time we heard each other’s summary was at the event! I will admit that we do work on very similar projects. Here’s what we came up with:

Miriam Bowring: Winner – Best Style

“Unimolecular synthetic models to probe multiple-site concerted proton electron transfer.”

Everything in the world is made of very tiny bits. The very tiny bits are too small to see. They move from one place to another all the time. This allows people to live, leaves to grow, and power to work in our homes. No one knows exactly why the very tiny bits move the way they do, but I would like to find out. There are two kinds of very tiny bits that usually like to be together. When these two very tiny bits are together, and they both need to go somewhere else, they sometimes go faster by going together instead of one at a time. The funny thing is, the very tiny bits can go fast by moving together, even if they are going away from each other. Why is moving together better? I have made something to help me find out. I put the two very tiny bits in the middle, with places for the very tiny bits to go on either side. Soon I will use light to see how fast the very tiny bits go, and I will check if they are moving together and see what changes make them go slower or faster. This way, I will find out what the very tiny bits are doing, and what controls how fast they move. Since the very tiny bits make up our bodies and everything else, one day, my work might even help other people save lives!

Jessica Wittman: Winner – Best Use of Language

“Separated Proton-Electron Transfer in Ruthenium Complexes with Distant Carboxylic Acid Sites.”

Inside every person, animal, tree, or TV, tiny, tiny bits that are too small to see are moving around in an ordered way. Some of them are friends who like to hang out and move around together. When a pair of tiny bits who are friends have very little space between them, and then one moves away, the other misses it very much and wants to leave, too. It’s sort of like when your best friend at work leaves and then work’s not as fun anymore. Other tiny bits start out with a lot of space and other stuff between them, so when one moves, it doesn’t matter so much to the other. This would be like if you had a friend in another state who moved to a farther away state; it doesn’t really change your day-to-day life.

I am studying how close the pairs of tiny bits have to be for one to notice when the other moves. If we know how close they have to be to notice each other, we can keep it in mind when we build our own things out of these tiny bits. In some cases, we don’t want the tiny bits to be sad and miss their friends because then they can be a real pain in the ass. In other cases, we want the tiny bits to be sad so we can push them to go to a new, better place!

Also, congratulations to the other winners, especially the grand prize winner from the biology department, David Slager! We all had a blast, and maybe we can do another one of these events later this year!

Life lessons from Justice Sonia Sotomayor

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By Joan Bleecker

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UW offers its students amazing opportunities to meet professional women who are making a difference in the nation and the world. Last November, Women in the Chemical Sciences invited Harvard Business School Professor Amy Cuddy of “Power Pose” fame. This March, Undergraduate Academic Affairs hosted sitting Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

The format of the event was question and answer. Students submitted questions online which UW Provost Ana Mari Cauce read to the Justice. Unexpectedly, Justice Sotomayor asked each student who wrote a question to stand up so she could greet each by name, thank him/her, and gather all for a group photo. You could tell the organizers were caught off guard by this, but the Justice seemed un-phased. It was inspiring to see her break protocol and connect with her audience. It made me think of how often I stick to the script and do what’s expected of me, even if it means sacrificing meaningful interactions.

I was also struck by how Justice Sotomayor paused after each question, sometimes for quite a long time, to think about her response. Even though video cameras and thousands of eyes were focused on her, she was not rushed or ruffled. Accordingly, almost everything she said was quotable. (I was scribbling fairly furiously trying to take down my favorite ones).

Justice Sotomayor admitted she is her own worst critic. “You don’t judge me, I judge me.” This belief has helped her dismiss outside criticism, including criticism leveled by U. S. Senators at her confirmation hearings, who said she was not intelligent enough for the position, and a time when a court employee called her “honey”. She politely told him it was “Justice”.

Though loath to give advice, Justice Sotomayer shared some great insights. She emphasized the importance of community and connecting with others, admitting “I didn’t make it to where I am by myself.” She spoke about how important her grandmother’s unconditional love and care were to her growing up saying “You need someone to talk to who can comfort and help you.”

As a women and Latina in high office, she received many questions about how minorities can move up in society. One of her more blunt answers was “make money”, but overall her message went beyond race or gender to what makes life fulfilling, “The greatest contribution you can make to the world is figuring out what you think is important to you. What kind of work is meaningful? What are you good at?” She emphasized that you didn’t have to be a Supreme Court justice or a community leader, but you must “…think outside of your own needs to look around and say, there is this little piece of my world that I want to make a difference in.” She also admitted “I cannot guarantee outcomes. No one can. The frustrations with that are sometimes the most difficult to deal with.” She admitted it was about “moving a mountain an inch at a time” and in spite of adversity there is always hope.

When asked what made her a great leader, she said she never meant to be a leader, but “if you have enough strength of character you can convince others to join you.” She also talked about being in power, “The thing you learn about power is that it’s shared,” and, “Power can corrupt. I watch it and I know it can make you full of yourself if you let it. And I’m trying to work very, very hard to always remember that I didn’t get to where I got by myself. And I tell my friends I made a very thick book [My Beloved World] so that when they think I’m getting conceited, they’ll hit me over the head with it.”

Sometimes being a woman in a “male” profession feels like facing an uphill battle. At such moments I can recall Justice Sotomayor’s core principles: I can answer demands on me at my own pace, take advantage of the care, concern, and knowledge of those who support me, and know it is not the magnitude or notoriety of what I choose to do but the meaning of the change I can make in the world that counts.

WiSE Conference 2014: An Inspiring Event for Students and Professionals in Science and Engineering

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This past Saturday, I attended the annual Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) Conference on the UW campus. This was my first time at the conference, and overall it was a very inspiring experience! The program featured keynote presentations from Dona Sarkar, a Principal Systems Engineer at Microsoft, and Randi Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Zuckerberg Media and former Director of Market Development for Facebook. These women are exceptional role models for women starting out in the tech industry. The day also included a variety of workshops and panel discussions on topics relevant to women scientists and engineers at every stage of their education and career. Event sponsors, including Intel, Boeing, and Microsoft, hosted a mini-career fair in the morning as well.

The first thing I would like to stress about the conference is how the atmosphere was so positive and supportive. It was not difficult at all to find and start conversations with women professionals in science or engineering that were eager to give career advice. Everyone I talked to was also willing to continue the discussion at another time, and many business cards were exchanged. I’ve never been to an event where people were more proactive about talking to new people. I believe that many of the post-collegiate attendees come to this conference with the goal of providing guidance and advice to science and engineering students. Additionally, the organizing staff, mostly made up of WiSE students from UW, exuded a positive attitude without fail for the entire day, which definitely caught on with the attendees.

Of the day’s events, Dona Sarkar’s and Randi Zuckerberg’s keynote presentations were particularly inspiring to me. Both women talked about their paths to their remarkable career achievements in a personal and entertaining way that made them both very relatable. I came away from both talks feeling that these women were not so unlike myself, and that I can achieve great things in my career even if they may seem unattainable to me right now. I also was heartened to learn of Dona Sarkar’s personal hobbies. She accomplished the impressive feats of both becoming a published novelist and starting a fashion line without sacrificing her dedication to her work.

I thoroughly enjoyed my day at the UW WiSE conference. I made great connections and left feeling much more confident in my career prospects as I begin my search for a job. I highly recommend this event to all science and engineering students, from undergraduate to graduate, as well professionals in these fields and high school students interested in a career in science or engineering.

Jessica Wittman, WCS-UW Treasurer

Pregnancy During Graduate School, a workshop and discussion

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Yesterday, Shoshanna Barnett hosted a workshop on pregnancy during graduate school at the University of Washington.  We discussed some of the more common issues that you might expect (what concerns should lab workers have if they are expecting?) as well as some that were surprising (did you know UW doesn’t have a policy in place for maternity leave for its graduate students?).

Shoshanna brought up many good points, including a discussion on the predominant cultural idea within science that graduate students should wait until after our degrees to start families.  How does this idea affect us and how does it lead to hidden sexism within our workplace?

This was a very valuable workshop for those who are considering families but also for those who are not, but want to support gender equality in the workplace through both policy and attitudes.  Thanks, Shoshanna!

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Amy Cuddy Round-Table and Lecture

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Women in Chemical Science was excited to host visiting lecturer Amy Cuddy last Wednesday, November the 13th.  We started off our time with her having a round-table discussion about being in graduate school.  Amy listened to us talk about our unique takes on graduate school and gave us advice on giving lectures, taking second year exams, and managing in a field full of dominant personalities.

Later that evening, we met for a private reception where we all mingled with the Graduate School, who were fundamental in organizing this event.  Finally, we sat down to watch Amy’s lecture Connect, Then Lead.  Amy discussed the importance of interpersonal warmth in addition to (and oftentimes ahead of) competence as a necessary tool for leadership.  She also summarized her TED talk (found here) and discussed the many responses she’s received on it.  Of course, being a horse person, my favorite story would be how a horse trainer used power posing to bring out the confidence in a horse named Vafi!  (Check it out here!)

Thank you Amy Cuddy for an unforgettable day!  Many of us agreed: it was one of the best days ever!

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Amy Cuddy – “Connect, Then Lead”

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amy cuddy photoAmy Cuddy’s lecture is upon us! The lecture is tomorrow, Nov. 13th, in Kane Hall and begins at 7:00pm.  Hopefully you already have your tickets because the event is already at capacity. However, there may be stand-by seating available for patrons on a first-come-first-serve basis starting at 6:50pm. Hope to see you there!

Betsy Harasek – From the Bad to the Not So Bad Days for Women in Science

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Betsy Harasek gave a presentation today about her experience being a woman in science as a patent lawyer for General Motors, Boeing, and Xerox.  She spoke about her path through college and law school, shared anecdotes about what kept her sane, and gave advice on how to find jobs in today’s markets.

She discussed her difficulties being the “token woman” at some companies, and the frustrations of being a working mother who would often travel internationally.  She told us about her time learning how airplanes work, and her experiences with different cultures at different companies.

Thank you, Betsy, for a riveting talk about non-academic careers in science.  Your topics were interesting, your advice was spot-on, and your stories about your friends and family that have helped you through it all were inspiring!

Thanks to everyone who attended and made this event a success!

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Looking back at one year of WCS-UW

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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!