Re: How To Recruit Women to Tech and IT Classes

["Daniel L. MacIsaac" <Dan.MacIsaac@NAU.EDU>]

> On Thu, 24 Aug 2000, Jim Green wrote:
>
> > Let me go way out on a limb and say that I think it would be a rare woman
> > who would trade her children for as much as a Nobel Prize in physics.  And
> > be pretty unfortunate to do so.
>
> Hmm...just curious but how many *men* on this list would trade his
> children for a Nobel Prize?

...depends on their most recent behaviour :^)  If I have two kids, do I get
two prizes?  The cash award makes a very attractive price per pound...

I would like to point out a tangential story here: there is only one Nobel
Laureate who earned two Nobels, then raised a daughter who won a third
before the French Academy of Sciences invited her to join their group. I
suspect she'd not get tenure either...

I had hoped this discussion wouldn't center on just more women physics
profs; we need more women and minorities in EVERY technical field, which
means making their HS and undergraduate physics experiences less alienating
and reforming the culture of teaching these subjects to nonmajors.  The fact
that professional academic physics culture is impoverished due to it's
systemic alienation of women counters societal needs for more technically
trained people.  There is no shortage of professional academic physicists,
just a shortage of ones who are promoting and encouraging women and
minorities into technical fields.  Could be the wrong people are working
as physics profs, not that aren't enough physics profs...


Dan M

Dan MacIsaac, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Northern AZ Univ
danmac@nau.edu          http://purcell.phy.nau.edu         PHYS-L list owner