Project and Water News

Twenty-four ¹. That’s the percentage of STEM jobs held by women in the United States, yet women make up almost half the workforce and earn 41% of STEM PhD degrees. Universities and organizations across the US are trying to change these statistics, including the University of Wyoming, a CI-WATER partner.

UW is supporting women in STEM through a collaborative initiative called Women in Math, Science and Engineering (WiMSE). Other initiatives at UW support women at the graduate and faculty level, or in academic spaces, but until WiMSE began in September 2012, the support network for undergraduates was missing.

“WiMSE hits a unique niche,” says Dr. Dolores Cardona, Associate Dean of Students for Multicultural Affairs. “It’s an effort to try to help undergraduate women. We wanted to look a little bit more holistically in the sense of building a sense of community, building a sense of support and building a safe space to vent.”

The sense of community is what many women find lacking in their pursuit of STEM degrees and science work environments. There are numerous reasons for women leaving the STEM fields, including the sense of isolation ² that many scientific environments cultivate.  Dr. Cardona believes that by supporting undergraduate women through community and networking at this early stage in their careers that more of these women will continue on to STEM jobs after their studies.

April 10 will wrap up the year for this year’s WiMSE pilot program. Dr. Cardona hopes to expand the program into the summer, as well as support future women in STEM through scholarships and fostering more networking between high school, undergraduate and graduate school women. 

Listen to the Interview

Referenced Articles:

(1) Women in STEM: A Gender Gap to Innovation
(2) Why Women Leave Science

Call for Abstracts: The 2013 Spring Runoff Conference is accepting abstracts for oral or poster presentations on water-related topics through March 8. The conference will be held at Utah State University April 9 and 10. Students, faculty, citizen organizations and industry professionals are invited to share interdisciplinary perspectives on water resources in the Intermountain West.

Student registration for the conference is free.

Tonight, students at CI-WATER partner Brigham Young University (BYU) will be learning more about computer vulnerability in a lecture titled “An In-depth Look at Cross-site Scripting.” Part of BYU’s Cyber Security Initiative lecture series, the talk will be given by Chad Horton, Penetration Testing Manager at SecurityMetrics. Horton has written numerous security tools to assist in exploiting web application related vulnerabilities and, in two years as a penetration tester at SecurityMetrics, retrieved more than 20,000 social security numbers and 18,000 credit card numbers.

Tomorrow at 11 a.m., Morgan Stanley VP Glenn Judd will present on “Harnessing the Exponential: Challenges at the Frontier of Systems Research.” The colloquium will discuss cloud computing, big data and opportunities in computer systems research and development. Next week, Aeronautics and Astronautics professor Julie Shah will present on “Deploying Robots to Work in Concert with People: Human-Inspired Computational Techniques.”

Secondary-level Earth Science or Environmental Science teachers from Utah and Wyoming are invited to apply for the CI-WATER Summer Institute June 24–28, 2013 in Salt Lake City. In addition to learning about water science, participants will collaboratively draft curricula that explore water modeling for grades 9–12.

CI-WATER researchers are using computer models to study interactions between natural and human water resource systems, and how variables introduced into those systems may impact water availability. During this professional development event, educators will hear from these researchers and work together to translate what they learn for classroom use, identifying what students should know about water issues, sustainability and the use of models to guide decisions.

Participants will receive a $450 stipend and be eligible for two University of Utah graduate credits. Free lodging is available for those traveling more than 50 miles to attend. The online application (https://www.research.net/s/CIWater2013) is due March 21. For more information, contact University of Utah Program Assistant Steve Reest at steve.reest@utah.edu or 801-587-0886.