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!