Women In Science at Evergreen

Hey everyone!

For those of you unable to make it to the Career and Internship Fair on Wednesday, I decided to include some of the cool sciencey and women empowerment booths here for y’all to explore from the comfort of your own homes! Hopefully this will result in some of you getting a neat internship or volunteer position with one of these amazing organisations!

American Business Women’s Association (ABWA)

The mission of ABWA is to bring together businesswomen of diverse occupations and to provide opportunities for them to help themselves and others grow personally and professionally through leadership, education, networking, and national recognition.

They meet every third Tuesday of the month from 5:30 – 8:00 pm at the Puerto Vallarta Restaurant at 1400 Galaxy Dr. NE, Lacey, WA 98516. Their November meeting, which will be held on the 21st of this month, will feature a Damsels in Defense safety and self-defense workshop!

Also, they gave me 5 of these Equal Pay for Women bracelets – contact me if you’d like one!

Aloha Aina – Winter on Maui

If you’re looking for a SWEET Individual Learning Contract idea for Winter Quarter, check out Aloha Aina’s Winter on Maui program – you can choose between a one-month or full-quarter program studying permaculture, regenerative ag, climate science, and more!

From their website:

This program is open to all students of any age and from any culture. It will be taught in English, and we welcome students from overseas. We especially welcome any students local to Hawai’i. We welcome students from the Evergreen State College and are working with Evergreen faculty to sponsor students for college credit.

We’ve taken the standard international permaculture certification curriculum and extended it to a month-long integrated studies program that emphasizes hands-on skills, diverse farming techniques, and appropriate technology solutions for low-impact living and working.

I’m seriously jealous of anyone doing this program – there’s nothing better than being in sunny Hawaii during Olympia’s dreary winter months.

Nisqually Land Trust

The Nisqually Land Trust is an independent, private, nongovernmental organization incorporated in 1989 and federally recognized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation in 1990.

Their mission is to acquire and manage critical lands to permanently benefit the water, wildlife, and people of the Nisqually River Watershed.

Every Wednesday, they have Volunteer Work Parties in various locations from 9 am – 12 pm, where they participate in many restoration projects including tree/shrub planting, plant maintenance, weed control, and more!

They also have an internship opportunity that seems to be date-flexible, and can also probably be adapted for an ILC. The internship involves working with Land Trust staff on land management tasks including habitat restoration, site monitoring, sign/fence/gate installation, habitat maintenance, and more!

Water Education and Technology (WET) Science Center

The WET Science Center is a fun, hands-on place to learn about water. Exhibits and games focus on water conservation, wastewater treatment, reclaimed water use, clean water careers, and protecting the Puget Sound.

They hold several events every month (admission is free!), and are always looking for volunteers and interns (which you can get credit for)! If you’re interested in teaching the next generation about science, this would be a great opportunity for you! Check out their volunteer page here!

Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA)

YWCA‘s mission is to eliminate racism and sexism to advance political, social, and economic status of all women and girls. Their vision is a world where all people are valued, live free from oppression, and thrive in a just society. Sounds familiar, right?

These people are doing some amazing things – they have programs that foster confidence in young girls and encourage them to pursue STEM, as well as a lot of other things. Check out their Make an Impact page to apply to volunteer, or get an Independent Learning Experience intern position! The person at the booth told me their experience as an intern made a profound impact in their life.

I was able to make personal contact with them, and if y’all are interested, we can have them come visit and speak with us about what they do!

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Have a great three-day weekend everyone! ✌

Hey folks!

The college is holding a Career and Internship Fair this Wednesday, and interested parties should definitely check it out! It’ll be a great opportunity to get in contact with some employers and other people doing real work in your field!

From Evergreen’s website:

Wednesday, November 8, 2017 – 12:00 pm to 3:00 pm

Evans Library Lobby – Second Floor

Students and alumni will have opportunities to network and learn about organizations and career fields. Employers attending will represent both the private and public sectors.

Sponsored By: Academic & Career Advising

Hey scientists and feminists (or STEMinists, a term that comes from a blog I recently found about women in science)!

Just popping in again to provide you scholarly scholars with some awesome reading material for and about women in science!

In 2013, Eileen Pollack, who has since published the novel The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science is Still a Boys’ Club, wrote an article for the New York times titled Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?, where she explores the struggles that many young female scientists face when pursuing STEM degrees and careers. It it she interviews the astrophysics professor Meg Urry, who recounts her experiences with discrimination in college and beyond (see her own article – Diminished by Discrimination We Scarcely See).

Also, if you’re into the more philosophical side of this issue, a great resource is the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, which has TOMES worth of knowledge regarding feminist perspectives of many sciences:

• General Science
• Epistemology
• Biology
• Environmental Philosophy
• So much more!

I hope you find all this as exciting and educational as I did. Cheers!

Hey all!

It was great to see everyone again for this month’s meeting, thanks to everyone for another great time!

Here’s a summary of what all we talked about (thanks Gabi for notetaking!):

• Introductions
  • About 10 people showed up! I was really glad to see everyone.
  • Note: I forgot to take roll, and also didn’t give “new member surveys” to any of the first timers, but I’ll try to remember next time. Bad Tessa.
• Halloween-ish Themed Discussion: Witches!
  • Trinity had the great idea to bring up ancient witchcraft as a form of science, specifically in the medical field, with tinctures and herbalism and whatnot.
  • I found a really great article about women healers, including witches, by Barbara Ehrenreich, acclaimed author and feminist – read it here!
  • Pauline gave a great brief history of women practicing medicinal herbalism:
    • Since they were unable to be formally educated, women taught themselves and passed down the healing properties of herbs and tinctures.
    • Hildegard von Bingen was a Catholic nun whose medical and scientific texts are still widely respected documents, and she helped establish the teaching of herbalism. Also, Catholic medicinal herb knowledge was applied to making beer, whereas Protestants broke off to make beer with hops instead.
    •  Herbalistic knowledge seems to originate from ancient hunter-gatherer humans, where the women would orally communicate the knowledge of cultivating herbs across generations. Indeed, even in modern culture a lot of agricultural knowledge is retained by women.
    • Were women delegated to this informational gatekeeping because they were held back to keep the social construct of women as domestic housekeepers alive?
• Official Student Group Stuff
  • For some reason, our initial startup budget of $90 still hasn’t come through, even though I put in the request weeks ago.
  • This might have something to do with our status as a Registered Student Organisation… but since we did all the stuff they wanted (and booked a room for meetings, which only official RSOs can do), I think it’s a problem on Student Activities’ end. Updates to come.
  • Maybe next quarter we should relocate to a room with media capabilities to avoid another projector mishap?
• Tessa’s ILC: Feminist Epistemologies
  • So far, I’ve read chapters from John Alcock’s Animal Behavior, Sexual Selections by Marlene Zuk, and Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine. Next on my list is Queer Ecologies by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson.
  • Keeping in mind that I read the 2001 edition of Alcock’s book, I noticed various expressions of sexist language, many of which were stark enough that I was surprised at their presence in such a commonly used animal behaviour text. One can only hope that these excerpts have been edited out in later versions.
  • Sexual Selections ties in directly with what I noticed in Animal Behavior, and after reading it I was able to make more comprehensive critiques. Zuk describes the various ways in which scientists have described and observed animal behaviour, specifically reproductive behaviour, that have been shaped by our human biases, and suggests ways to be more objective in our search for the truth about what animals really do. It’s a great read, and if anyone is interested in behaviour studies, I highly recommend it!
  • Delusions of Gender is a book that, in my opinion, should be read by all of us – Fine debunks stereotype after stereotype about gender and ability, illustrating that men and women do not differ significantly in spatial reasoning skills or empathetic care, but that societal norms, neurosexism (“it’s biological”), and our own perception of ourselves is what causes more men to be employed in the sciences, why they are paid more than women for the same job, and why so many women turn their backs on their dream career in a male-dominated field. Seriously. Read it.
• TED Talk: Alyson McGregor – Why Medicine Often Has Dangerous Side Effects for Women
• Closing Thoughts
  • Since many of us discovered that we’re studying and doing homework in the library almost every day, we decided to try something new – weekly WISE study sessions!
    • Be productive while surrounded by other cool people also being productive!
    • Weekly schedule TBD based on everyone’s availability

Have a great weekend everyone, and keep up the great work!