Hi all,

Here is the meeting recap from last Friday:

Women in Chemical Sciences will be kicking off winter quarter with a member meeting this Friday, January 8th at 9:30 am in CHB 239. We’ll talk about several of the events and projects we have planned for this quarter, including the Danz lecture and on-campus Q&A with Anita Sarkeesian (don’t forget to buy your ticket and sign up for our carpool), a career talk by Prof. Arwyn Smalley from St. Martin’s University, and the second annual WCS lecture featuring Allison Campbell from PNNL (who is also the ACS president-elect). We’ve also got some fun outreach events coming up, and lots of ideas for more events and projects.

Let us know if you’re interested in helping us plan any of these events, or if you have any other ideas or suggestions. Hope to see you Friday!

Our first member meeting of the academic year will take place next Monday, October 12th at 5:00 in Rab’s room (Bagley 136A, down the short hallway across from classrooms 106 and 108). We’ll be electing new officers for 2015-2016! Any UW graduate student is eligible to run for an officer position (president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, webmaster, and outreach coordinator), and any UW undergraduate student can be the undergraduate liaison. For more information about these positions and their associated responsibilities, you can consult Article IV of the WCS constitution or contact wcsuw@uw.edu. In addition to elections, we’ll also be talking about the STEM-OUT program and our graduate school admissions workshop for undergrads, as well as brainstorming events for the rest of the quarter. Hope to see you there!

Thanks to everyone who attended yesterday’s member meeting! We have two major events coming up: the workshop “Social Justice in Action: Small Steps Leading to Change” with Caprice Hollins of Cultures Connecting (Tuesday, November 18th from 12 to 1:30 in CHB 102) and our inaugural WCS-UW lecture featuring Maria Klawe, an awesome computer scientist and the president of Harvey Mudd College (Thursday, December 4th in the evening).

A few more quick notes and contacts:

• Contact Stephanie (hemminst@uw.edu) to get involved with planning the Puget Sound Women Chemists’ Retreat.
• Contact Rae (eatonrm@uw.edu) if you’re interested in being interviewed by some design students for a class project on women in STEM.
• Contact Scott (scottpr@uw.edu) if you want to help plan the logistics of Maria Klawe’s visit, including dinner and advertising.
• Add your ideas for outreach activities for an elementary school science fair to this Google doc.
• Add your contacts and ideas for other UW student groups and possible collaborations to this Google doc.

Keep reading for more details about all of these topics, and a few others:

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Thanks to everyone who attended Wednesday’s member meeting! Here’s a recap of the events and projects we discussed.

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Our first meeting of Fall 2014 will be Wed., October 8th at 5:30pm in CHB 439. Come find out about all of the activities we have planned for October and how you can get involved!

Email wcsuw@uw.edu if you have any questions.

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.

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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.

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.