WIMS Teacher-Scholar Cohort

This page seeks to organize the notes/thoughts/suggestions of our WIMS teacher-scholar cohort. The original proposal

• make STEM more relevant and accessible for women and non-majors
• generate ideas on how to leverage the IQ Center to improve our pedagogy and research

While WIMS faculty understand the continuing–sometimes masked–challenges for women in science (who doesn't have a good story about that?), our students tend to be blissfully unaware. There are general issues on campus with women's hesitation to take on leadership positions.

• These issues aren't isolated to WIMS; they're pervasive throughout W&L culture. How can we make positive change across the campus?

• How to teach persistence/following through? There is a lot of failure and negative results in STEM. How do we teach that that is okay?

• Show examples of women in the field
  • act as role models
  • show there are different ways to be/do a scientist/mathematician
  • how questions change with women's involvement
  • more speakers - finding female speakers

• Rethink the problems we assign
  • not the stereotypical “think pink” and make the problems more feminine, but …
  • questions that are more interesting/relevant to a general audience, perhaps social implications …

• Change how participation happens in class
  • allow more time for students to formulate an answer first before calling on someone or asking for volunteers to answer
  • encourage female students to keep talking if they are cut off

• Involve male colleagues with these ideas/changes

• Use both one-on-one mentoring and group encouragement
  • during one-on-one mentoring let students know that they're not alone in how they feel – give personal examples
  • fight the “imposter syndrome”

• The HHMI grant has funds for course development and supplies for a new course or module that relates to STEM
• Emphasize transferable skills

• Discussion leader: Lynn Chin, Sociology – November 6
• Starting discussion:
  • assigning roles
  • size of teams
  • leadership within the team
  • sense of ownership
  • defining expectations

• Invite panelists: Shana Levine, Nicolaas Rupke, Megan Schneider, and Jeffrey Shay
• Invite participants: students and faculty, with a (slight?) WIMS emphasis

• Starting questions:
  • what is leadership?
  • how do you develop leadership skills?
  • how do you find leadership opportunities?
  • how do faculty/upperclassmen help encourage/nurture leadership skills in students?