Grad student cartoon (Jorge Cham) (Jorge Cham) Dressed in satin and sequins, Roald Hoffman has ridden atop the first science-themed float in Rio's famed Carnival. Once a month, he appears on stage at a New York City café to host a revue of science and the arts. It's all part of what Hoffmann, a 1981 Nobelist for his work on the theory of chemical reactions, calls his “extreme outreach to the comm...
It's Jeannine Cody's job to take the call when an environmental biologist contacts the National Science Foundation (NSF) about a grant proposal. Her master's degree in the field has taught her the lingo, and she helps find reviewers as well as writing up the minutes of panel meetings where the proposals are discussed. But Cody isn't the typical NSF research administrator. She's a science assistan...
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) says it's time to get serious about producing more minority biomedical scientists. [Courtesy of Science News]
OTHER GRANT WRITING ARTICLES The National Science Foundation (NSF) is finding that old habits die hard. Specifically, NSF officials are unhappy that many reviewers are ignoring the broader impact of proposed research when scoring proposals. So last week NSF director Rita Colwell sent out an "important notice" to university presidents and others asking for their help in "conveying the importance o...
The U.S. National Science Foundation has a long way to go in attracting more minority students and women into science and engineering doctoral programs, according to a new report on one of NSF's flagship training programs. (Courtesy of Science magazine)
From the 23 June issue of Science. There seems to be little relationship between pay raises and job satisfaction among young scientists, according to the National Science Foundation (NSF)--especially if you're a physicist. The biennial Science and Engineering Indicators 2000, released this week, reports that physicists who earned their Ph.D.s within the past 5 years get larger raises than other s...
For years, U.S. postdocs have been complaining about paltry salaries, lack of benefits, and lowly status. This week, they won some high-level support. A committee of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering and the Institute of Medicine has validated many of the complaints and lent its considerable weight to efforts to provide greater institutional support for postdocs. At the same time...
From the 30 July issue of Science , page 647. Preliminary signs are that biomedical research again will be the big winner in the 2000 budget, while other disciplines fight to keep from losing ground. Last week, the House appropriations subcommittee for Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education scheduled a vote on a bill to raise the budget of the National Institutes of Health by 8.6% in 200...
Reposted from Science magazine, 30 May 2003 The federal government needs to take action on several fronts to guarantee an adequate supply of U.S. scientific workers, according to a new report by the National Science Board. The report calls for a variety of measures, ranging from better salaries for public school science and math teachers to increased funding for basic research. But the quickest p...
The U.S. Department of Justice concludes that programs designed to increase minority participation in the sciences discriminates against Caucasian students. [Reposted from Science News]
Reposted from Science magazine, 22 August 2003 What will it take to produce a more diverse U.S. scientific workforce? A lot of academic carrots and a few sticks, said participants in a daylong workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) last week. But no combination of incentives and penalties will succeed, they warned, unless universities take the problem more seriously and gradu...
From the 29 October issue of Science magazine. As a third-year graduate student in organic chemistry at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Donald Probst is well on his way to becoming a professor or an industrial chemist. But on Tuesdays, Probst takes a detour from his career path, driving 40 minutes along Interstate 70 to spend the day at an inner-city high school in Kansas City, Kansas. He tea...
For the past 30 years, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded institutional training grants and fellowships that come with a major proviso: for U.S. citizens and permanent residents only. But that is about to change. NIH is quietly launching a training program for the 2004-05 academic year that will be open to all, regardless of citizenship. The agency is now reviewing the first set ...
Reposted from Science magazine, Dec. 7, 2001. Having children improves a man's chances of becoming a full professor but hinders a woman's progress in academia. That's one of many provocative findings from a National Research Council (NRC) panel that has been exploring gender differences in the careers of U.S. scientists and engineers. Issued last month, the panel's 340-page report * eschews the u...
From the 16 April issue of Science magazine. Last month the National Science Foundation (NSF) selected 900 aspiring young scientists to receive its prestigious graduate research fellowships. But the news was tempered by the fact that the number of minorities chosen had dropped by more than half from last year's total, from 175 to 76. The decline, following the cancellation of a separate competiti...
Reposted from Science magazine, July 18 2003. In most years, the idea of spending $250 million to help African-American, Hispanic, and Native American undergraduates bridge the digital divide would be a hard sell. Aside from the hefty price tag, the program's focus on a racially defined group would normally be anathema to the Bush Administration and Republicans who oppose affirmative action and c...
BACK TO MAIN ARTICLE While graduate students are battling university administrators over their efforts to unionize, postdocs are taking a decidedly less confrontational approach. So far, it seems to be paying off. Take the 4-year-old Stanford University Postdoc Association, which represents 1400 postdocs on campus. The association has worked with the university administration to help its members ...
From the 30 April issue of Science magazine, p. 727. Mildred Dresselhaus isn't proud of the fact that she took a total of 4 days' maternity leave from her faculty position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the course of giving birth to four children. But as a young electrical engineer in the late 1960s in a bastion of masculinity, she didn't think she had much choice. "In my y...
