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MentorNet News – July 2010 Volume 2
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AFE Newest MentorNet Partner
| The Association for Facilities Engineering (AFE) has 5,000 members and is the premier organization for facilities engineers and operations professionals.
Click here to read full press release. |
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Featured
Opportunity
|  | The Undergraduate Computational Engineering and Sciences (UCES) Award Program sponsored by the Krell Institute is seeking applications for the 2010 awards which will be presented in conjunction with SC10 in New Orleans this November.
The program seeks to recognize innovations in computational science education. A complete description of the program and an application form can be found here.
The deadline for applications is August 1 so time is short (but the potential rewards are great!).
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Want to Share?
Do you want to contribute to our newsletter? If so, please send submissions to editor@mentornet.net-MentorNet Editor |
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Only 11.1% Women: Computer Science's "God Problem" and the Promise of Mentoring
| Computer science knows it has some big challenges.
I've just returned from the Computer Research Association's biennial conference in heavenly Snowbird, high in the Utah Rockies. The atmosphere was rarefied -- literally and figuratively -- as the CRA brings together chairs, deans and other leaders from the top research universities in the U.S. and Canada.
But as they themselves noted, they have plenty to worry about.
As their own studies show, they are attracting fewer undergraduate majors, especially from the U.S. and they are struggling with diversity. Their already poor record in attracting women into CS fields is getting worse. And they don't show up on the National Research Council's list as a standalone discipline (IT and Modeling and Simulation do, but not Computer Science or Engineering per se.)
All these problems stem from the same core issue: they have a bad case of what we can call "The God Problem." (Maybe it was that heavenly setting that made me think of it that way.)
- Computing and computers touch every facet of our lives and undergird virtually every new development or global civilized advancement.
- CS seems all-powerful: dominating communications, driving the economy, speeding up simulations, shrinking the world, and propelling almost all human activities.
- CS is invisible, not just on the NRC list. The computer has melted into the background like electricity: we flick on the switch and the lights come on. We take it for granted. It's invisible.
Let's see: Ubiquitous. Omniscient. Invisible. That's the same problem God has.
Click here to continue reading.
--David Porush, CEO
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Anne Condon's Habermann Award Acceptance Speech
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Dr. Anne Condon
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Dr. Anne Condon was selected as the 2010 A. Nico Habermann awardee by the Computer Research Association, recognizing her outstanding contribution to increase the success of underrepresented groups in the field.
In her speech, Anne had inspiring words about the role of mentoring, which are (quite liberally) paraphrased below.
"We need to [mentor] visibly and with conviction every day so that the next generation of researchers knows that mentoring matters [and] talented people who have different life experiences, fresh perspectives, and innovative ideas will stay and enrich our community. Their future is our future."
Anne was generous enough to give us permission to publish her acceptance speech, which you can find here in its entirety. Anne is a professor of Computer Science and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at U of British Columbia. You can read Anne's biography and the history of the Habermann Award here.
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The Chronicle Declares MentorNet a Valuable Asset to Postdoctoral Scientists
| Zoe Smith and Ariana Sutton-Grier, post-doctoral fellows themselves, write in The Chronicle of Higher Education that getting a mentor is an important part of postdoctoral work and suggest MentorNet as the place for finding such a mentor. They say that "voicing your ideas, achievements, and worries with someone else can provide valuable insight about your career progress and can help you alleviate self-doubt, which is not uncommon among postdocs."
Other advice the post-doctoral fellows impart? Making a plan for the future, getting a head-start on collecting pertinent data to one's work, taking advantage of professional development opportunities, networking, and acquiring international experience.
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Women Improving Comparable Pay - Sort Of
|  The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that while a woman between the ages of 35 and 44 earns 73.6% of what her male counterpart earns, a woman between the ages of 20 and 24 makes 92.9 percent. These wage gap statistics are in part due to the fact that 69% of women work in low-paying industries such as health and education, while only 9% work in engineering and computing.
Read the full article here.
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MentorNet is a 501(C)(3) California non-profit educational organization. Our mission is to help aspiring engineering and science students and professionals at the university level - especially women and underrepresented minorities - achieve their career goals by matching them with mentors and guiding their one-on-one relationships over the Web. We are funded by fees from our campus, corporate, government laboratory and society partners and by grants from public and private foundations.
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