Michelle Barboza
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@taorminalepore – ah shucks, thank you! I’m really excited about the next episode, which marks the start of guests on the podcast! The subject of the episode is environmentalist Rachel Carson, and I’ll be joined by ecologist Priya Shukla of the UC Davis Marine Lab. She’s a rad woman of color who runs a project called the Prosaic Mosaic, which is all about highlighting diversity in STEM.
Speaking of which, I think this is a good time to put a spotlight on a rad WOC in the paleontology sector: Thea Boodhoo. Thea is a writer and content designer who has collaborated with several paleontologists on digital outreach projects. These projects include a site about the fossil taxa of the Edelman Fossil Park in New Jersey (cretaceousmantua.com), an interactive version of the quarry at Dinosaur National Monument (CarnegieQuarry.com), and the Institute for the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs (mongoliandinosaurs.org). However, I would like to point out her latest project – a photo series highlighting paleontologists of color! The photographs were taken during the 2016 Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists meeting. Read about the project and view the photographs in this article.
Is anyone else working with female creatives for science? Let’s hear about them!
Welcome to the Women in Paleontology forum @kate-griener! I really connect with your note on unconscious bias. I’m a graduate student in vertebrate paleontology (I’m actually one of the many female grad students of @bmacfadden that @egardner mentioned!) but I’m also really interested in science communication and I run a podcast about the history of women in STEM. In the last episode of the podcast, I highlighted the story of 19th century American geneticist Nettie Stevens. Her story really clearly exemplifies the issue of unconscious bias!
Mary Anning will actually be featured on the podcast as well! I’m excited to have paleontology graduate students Amy Atwater and Meaghan Emery (hosts of the blog Mary Anning’s Revenge) join me as guests on the episode. I’ll let you know when it goes up in the late spring!
As for role models, @taorminalepore is doing super rad work as a paleontology educator at Alf Museum of Paleontology, where she works with high school students. You might want to check out the Women in Paleo: Spotlights section of the forum to learn about what other ladies are up to!
For those who may not know what we’re talking about, the Alf Museum of Paleontology in Southern California uploaded a great video on the International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2017 (this past Saturday, February 11). The video featured paleontologist @taorminalepore, giving us a quick word on what it is like to be a woman in paleontology. It was a great video! (Shout out and thank you to @gsantos for lending your talents and making this video possible!)
@jim-chandler since you enjoyed the video of @taorminalepore, you might want to check out the Project FOSSIL webinar she led just last month! You can watch a recording of the webinar HERE. Tara was the first paleontologist to be highlighted in the Women in Paleontology Webinar Series (running through Spring 2017). If you’d like to tune in, the next installment of the series goes live this Wednesday. No RSVP needed, just log on to https://bit.ly/WiPWebinar at 7pm Eastern to meet Dr. Brenda Hunda of the Cincinnati Museum Center.Anyone else know of videos like this, highlighting women in paleontology? @egardner @llundgren @jeanette-pirlo @cgrant @sholte @rnarducci @bmacfadden @sboessenecker
@hunter-thurmond @egardner I like this idea – the history science (earth science in this case, and the scientists who pushed it along) is something I try to read about in my spare time! I can’t commit to being a moderator, but I would be certainly be a regular reader. This does overlap with our Women in Paleontology forum, but I suppose we could cross post! Perhaps we could make this a more broad forum – “history of paleontology,” perhaps? Then we could focus on general paleontology history in addition to specific scientists. I would really like to learn more about paleontologists of color, and the history of paleontology in non-western countries.
@egardner I’ve been eagerly following the Trowelblazers/Raising Horizons project you posted about! Sad to think that despite being a traveling exhibit, being UK based means we probably won’t get a chance to see the Raising Horizons portraits in person. However, the project managers have been posting sneak peeks on their twitter account and they may be releasing a postcard set for purchase!
As for the podcast, while it may not be exclusively dedicated to spotlighting women in paleontology/geoscience, I agree that it may be of interest to those on this forum! I launched the Femmes of STEM podcast in January 2017, and invite you all to take a listen. The Femmes of STEM is a bi-monthly show focusing on the history of women in STEM: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. We will be having an episode on Mary Anning, featuring Meaghan Emery and Amy Atwater of the Mary Anning’s Revenge blog this March, so stay tuned!
A great place to learn about historical women in American paleontology is “Daring to Dig.” The outreach project is run by The Museum of Earth at the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) in Ithica, New York, and was recently (Fall 2016) awarded a grant from the Museums for America program to expand the currently online program into a traveling exhibit. You can visit the program online at DaringtoDig.com for a brief history of women in American paleontology, profiles on historical women in paleontology (1700s+), and profiles on current women in paleontology.
Learn more about the project by checking out this article from the Ithica Voice.
@egardner @llundgren – how do we log on to watch the webinar? I’ve been able to find the past webinars on the videos & tutorials page, but I don’t know where to go to watch the live webinar 🙁
Hi everyone! As some of you know, the spring 2017 webinar series is specifically dedicated to Women in Paleontology. I’m super excited about this series, and I wanted to get your opinions on how we can make this series useful for and accessible to high school students (specifically juniors/seniors who are in the process of preparing for college and learning about career options).
I’ve found that our Women in Paleo forum serves as a great resource for women who have already entered the field of paleontology, and our in person events like She’s A Scientist! and the Women in Paleo Fest are great for middle school students, and I think the webinar series could be a great way to engage our high school and early college audience.
One way I thought we might entice students to tune in to the series is partnering with teachers to create a worksheet or something along those lines and make attendance worthy of extra credit? I need to look a little bit more into teaching standards/goals for 11-12 grades, but this is where I thought your input would be valuable.
One of the big hurdles keeping women from science is balancing career and family, so I wonder – how many grant making organizations allow applicants to allocate grant money toward family care?
I’m happy to report that efforts to support women in paleontology are taking place in organizations beyond the myFOSSIL forums, and I thought I would share this article written by @taorminalepore, highlighting the actions taken to support women in paleontology at the 2016 annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate paleontology.
The article was posted in the PLOS paleo community, a blog hosted by the online, peer reviewed journal, PLOS one: http://blogs.plos.org/paleocomm/2016/11/17/women-in-science-at-the-society-of-vertebrate-paleontology/
I’m excited to see how initiatives concerning women in paleontology continue to evolve over the upcoming year, especially those highlighted at professional conferences! What steps might professional societies take to include/expand these efforts?
@egardner, we’ve been planning via email, but for other readers who may be interested, @taorminalepore is going to be the first speaker in our Spring 2016 “Women in Paleo” webinar series! The first webinar, hosted by Tara, will take place on January 25, 2017.
On another Women in Paleo note, National Geographic came out with a great little article this past week, highlighting the excavation efforts of paleontologist Elizabeth Nichols, curator of marine reptiles at Canada’s Royal Tyrrell Museum. Her (successful!) work to exhume a 75-foot-long ichthyosaur fossil (which was deemed by all but here to be too big, too fragile, and too isolated to excavate by everyone else) is regarded as one of the most ambitious fossil excavations ever undertaken.
<div>The article may be read online on the National Geographic News website: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/elizabeth-nicholls-explorer-moments-finding-a-220-millon-year-old-giant-reptile-in-Canada/#</div>Hi @lydia-tackett, thank you for sharing, this is a great post. I think the author calls out an important point – it is not only gender bias that affects the acceptance of scientific papers/abstracts/presentations, but many women’s own self doubt. From other blog posts and personal conversations with women in science, the imposter syndrome is strong, and affects women even at the height of their careers.
So what is to be done? The author does not point fingers, but calls out both men and women. Women – don’t wait on men, invite yourselves. Men – don’t be blind, and take action in seeking diversity.
The post “Presentations without representation” was embedded in the article shared, and it has some concrete suggestions for increasing diversity in symposiums. It’s not only worth a look for the people frequenting this forum, but should be presented to the members of our paleo societies, for serious consideration in our upcoming meetings.
Comments, thoughts? @egardner @llundgren @taorminalepore @sboessenecker @jeanette-pirlo @jbauer @tmorgan @jessie-matheny @bmacfadden
The Association of Women Geoscientists has some deadlines coming up!
The AWG Lonestar Chapter has a Rising Career Scholarship that provides professional development funding for women geoscience professionals seeking to resume their geoscience careers after having been out of the workforce, or female geoscience students following a non-traditional education timeline seeking to enter the workforce in a geoscience related field within the next two years.Applications are due October 31st.
The Brunton award promotes the future of field mapping and data acquisition for the upcoming generation of women geoscientists. The award will go to a female geoscience student at the senior level or in her early graduate studies who has been a summer intern, excelled at field camp, or performed field data collection that leads to a senior or graduate thesis. The award is funded by Brunton.
Applications are due November 15th
You can find more information at http://www.awg.org/awards
@egardner, I spoke with Tara immediately after our planning meeting – I was super excited to invite her! I am happy to say that @taorminalepore was just as excited to be invited – she’s on board!
@taorminalepore – sorry to respond so late, but as you now know, I was not able to make it to the SVP conference this year! However, I think you, @gsantos, and I ought to (virtually) get together and discuss this matter further.
Additionally, @egardner – do you think this might be a good subject for a new forum?
Wow, thanks for the share @john-christian! I’ve been doing some research into historical women of paleo, but had never before heard of the Newnham Quartet. This jut reinforces my desire/the need for a book about early women in paleontology!
The blog you linked to, “Letters from Gondwana,” also has a great article on historical paleobotanist Mary Stopes. You can find the article here: https://paleonerdish.wordpress.com/2015/06/22/marie-stopes-and-her-legacy-as-paleobotanist/
With one of the biggest paleontology conferences just around the corner (The 2016 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference in Utah), here’s a great article to consider: “Women Need to be Seen and Heard at Conferences.”
The article, from Nature, is free to read online. In summary – a neuroscience group created a site called “Bias Watch Nuero” in order to call attention to, well, bias and inequality in speakers at conferences, in attempt to boost the number of female invited speakers at meetings – and they’re inviting other disciplines to do the same.
What do you think about this initiative, and how to we get a “Bias Watch Paleo” group in the works? Perhaps reaching out to leaders of our various societies?
Comments? @bmacfadden @taorminalepore @gsantos
Article: http://www.nature.com/news/women-need-to-be-seen-and-heard-at-conferences-1.20825
Yesterday, the Paleo Society shared a link to STEPPE’s running database. They’ve got information on fellowships, internships, and collections grants. https://steppe.org/funding/
Both societies are worth taking a look at. The Paleontological Society covers both vertebrate and invertebrate paleontology, and STEPPE is focused on research and education on deep time.
This is not necessarily an answer to what professional societies can do, but I recently came across an article titled “Calling All Men – Five Ways You Can Be A Feminist At Work.” I thought it was a great article because the fight for empowerment of women in society and the workplace is not a burden that should fall solely upon women. Feminism is not a gendered term – feminism is not just for females! This article lists five great ways men can be proactive, but it is just a great a read and about as relevant for women. Owning your feminism, speaking out, and taking action are the key points. While it seems to have become more acceptable to call oneself a feminist, I still see some people, including women, struggle with the term – it’s almost like a dirty word!
Thoughts? @bmacfadden @gsantos @vperez @erscott @smoran @jbloch @aaron-wood @afarke @egardner @llundgren @tmorgan @jbauer @jessie-matheny
Article: https://theconversation.com/calling-all-men-five-ways-you-can-be-a-feminist-at-work-61403
