by, for, and about women in science, technology, engineering, & math

Welcome, new members/readers! Don’t forget that you can learn more about how to use the site by browsing the administrivia category of posts — and that if you have any questions or suggestions, you can get in touch with me at clara@stemming.org.

• There are four women in space right now, which is the most women that have ever been in space at one time. (See also: howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com)

• Teen Skepchick posts a satirical ten step guide to intellectual discussion in high school

• Gail Carmichael recaps her successful Carleton Celebration of Women in Science and Engineering

• Under the Microscope summarizes some recent studies on Women’s participation in STEM (most of the studies cite stereotypes and preconceptions as the main factors keeping women from entering these fields in greater numbers)

• Sophie Scott of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience critiques a Guardian profile of pharmacologist Susan Greenfield

• The AAUW posts about efforts to recruit women to teach physics

• Under the Microscope’s JoAnne Growney shares some of her mathematically-inspired poetry

• Girls Gather for Computer Science is a new summer program aimed at middle school students

• Kansas State’s Women in Engineering and Science program has been honored as the nation’s outstanding women in engineering program

• Greg Babe, CEO of Bayer, writes about why it’s important to encourage women and minorities in STEM

• The Anita Borg Institute profiles Jodi Forlizzi as part of their series on Women in Human-Computer Interaction

• Women at Ohio University are more likely to want to teach math than study it

• Don’t forget to be awesome: Geek Feminism shares a reserve of self-confidence tricks

Found (or created!) something cool you’d like to link to? Post your links in the comments here, or create a new post of your own!

• If I were to link you to all the awesome Ada Lovelace Day posts that came out this week, we’d be here all day. Fortunately there’s already a list for your browsing pleasure! Obviously more than enough to read, but hopefully you’ll find something about a technical woman you didn’t know about or whose contributions were/are bigger than you realized.

• Geek Feminism posts about how NOT to observe Ada Lovelace Day; the purpose of the day is to increase the visibility of women in science and technology, and they call out some posts that don’t help with this goal

• 18-year-old Erika DeBenedictis just won the Intel Science Talent Search top prize for her work on a software program to direct interplanetary travel. Congratulations, Erika!

• AAUW has released a report, Why So Few, that studies the factors keeping women out of STEM fields — some of the report’s findings, including evidence that women will respond to stereotype threat and score worse on exams if told that women tend to score worse on those exams, are summarized in the San Francisco Chronicle.

• Psychology Today posts on an experiment where children weren’t taught math until sixth grade — these children were able to catch up quickly to their peers in mathematical ability, while remaining way ahead of other children on other measures. The article’s author argues that it could be beneficial to adopt this approach to elementary education across the board. What do you think?

• Kathy Kleiman is raising money to produce a documentary on the six women who programmed the original ENIAC computer! These women have received little credit for their work developing a lot of the ideas we use in programming today.

• Geek Feminism has a thread seeking advice from commenters on how to mentor a geeky teen.

What awesome links have you dug up this week? Do you have a favorite Ada Lovelace Day post this year (or did you write a post)? Post them in the comments, or in your own post!