Steph van Willigenburg is looking for a job back home. But she is doing a maths postdoc in Toronto and home is an ocean away in the UK. The distance can make even simple tasks like finding job ads in the daily newspaper into an almost impossibly hard chore. At least it could in the days before the Web. Now, all the job information she needs is just a click or two away. "Certainly all the jobs I'v...
Even if your supervisor is not the stereotypical ageing white male, he or she may not always be your best 'learning assistant.' Mentoring may traditionally be one of the roles of your research supervisor, but, whether you're having problems with your research or facing worries about your future direction, there is an alternative. Peer mentoring has been popular in the United States since the 1970...
Amy Ney is a chemist. And a mother. But the two roles occasionally conflict. "During my first pregnancy, I had to inventory and dispose of my predecessor's 20-year chemical collection," says Ney, who teaches chemistry at a U.S. high school and acts as the chemical hygiene officer for the department. "Everyone said it was one of the biggest chemical messes they had seen with radioactive materials,...
