Advancing Gender Equity in STEM Fields

Although great strides in gender equity have been made in recent years, STEM fields are among the areas where women still lag behind men. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) has long been a boy's-club of sorts. The nature of these STEM fields in no way deters female participation by definition; women should be no less effective in these areas than men. However, STEM is intimidating for women because relatively few women are present in STEM fields. To close the gap, it would take a strong push to successfully initiate more women into these fields. A recent publication of the American Association of Colleges and Universities' Peer Review offers insight into this issue and how women can become more prominent in STEM. 

Plagiarism and Fraud in Research Grant Funding

A new research report published in Nature identifies several suspicious grant applications among those submitted to major granting agencies like NSF and NIH. The researchers used a text similarity detection program to search over 600,000 grant applications. Their analysis identified 167 duplicate grant pairs. The researchers then inspected the published reports from those grants and found that some researchers failed to include all grant funding in their report. This duplication resulted in millions of dollars being wasted on duplicate funding.

The conclusion from the analysis is that some researcher submit grants to multiple agencies and occasionally receive funding from both, for the same project. The authors recommend using this text-matching software by granting agencies to detect suspicious applications. Their hope is to reduce waste in government funding and provide more researchers with legitimate funding.

To read more and engage in a discussion with others, see the Chronicle article on the report.
http://chronicle.com/article/US-Said-to-Have-Wasted/136921
To read the original report, including tables of duplicate funding in different agencies, see the article published in Nature.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v493/n7434/full/493599a.html

The Gender and Creativity Gap in STEM

The gender gap in STEM fields has been a common theme for many years, both in conversations about the future of STEM disciplines as well as in funding opportunities for STEM research. In a recent Chronicle article, Theodore Hill and Erika Rogers suggest that looking into the connection between creativity and math may serve as a bridge across the female-STEM chasm.
Read more here.
http://chronicle.com/article/For-Women-to-Think/131547/

The use of creativity and other engaging techniques to deal with student motivation has been proposed for a number of underrepresented groups in various fields. Let me hear about your experiences in using these engaging techniques and how you think it impacts student motivation and student learning.

Webinar on the Arts and Human Development

Please see the announcement below regarding a free webinar discussing the connection between community engagement, the arts, health, and human development.

For details, visit http://bit.ly/wd8rhM

On February 29, The National Endowment for the Arts hosts a public webinar to extend the conversation of the Interagency Task Force on the Arts and Human Development, a new alliance of 14 federal agencies and departments to encourage more and better research on how the arts help people reach their full potential at all stages of life.  Task force members include representatives from agencies and offices within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and others.  This series of quarterly webinars will share compelling research and practices along with information about funding opportunities for research in the arts and human development across federal agencies. Future webinars will take place May 30, Aug. 1, and Oct. 3, 2012.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012, 2:00 – 3:00 pm, EST Webinar will feature presentation on The Gamelan Project and collaboration between an ethnomusicologist/composer and neuroscientists that explores cognitive development

Guests and speakers

·         Sunil Iyengar, NEA Director of Research & Analysis, will moderate the webinar 

·         Dr. Soo-Siang Lim, Director, Science of Learning Centers Program, National Science Foundation

·         Presenting The Gamelan Project: ethnomusicologist, performer, and composer Alexander Khalil and neuroscientists Andrea Chiba and Victor Minces from the Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center, University of California San Diego.

The webinar is free and open to the public.  No registration is required. 

Media may RSVP to Sally Gifford, NEA Public Affairs Specialist at 202-682-5606 or giffords@arts.gov.

For details, visit http://bit.ly/wd8rhM

NSF Goes Global

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has launched a new program that connects scientists across international boarders. The Science Across Virtual Institutes (SAVI) program not only promotes international research collaboration, but it has a distinct interdisciplinary approach.
NSF has provided a fact sheet to further describe the program.

Managing Data Might Get Easier

A new consortium initiated by the National Science Foundation aims to make data sharing easier. New technologies make sharing of large data sets through networks possible. The availability of a stable infrastructure for multi-point sharing of large data sets will open many new opportunities for collaboration and effective data use.
Read more about the project in a recent Chronicle Article.

Research with Undergraduate Students

A recent article in the Chronicle highlights the value of undergraduate research experiences and identifies a funding source for faculty interested in participating in quality research with undergraduates.
The funding source is the REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) program at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Deadlines for the program occur every August.

Interview with TUES Program Officer on OFE Twitter Page

On February 4, 2011, the Office of Faculty Enhancement and the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs hosted an event called: What's Hot in STEM Research Funding. During the event, we interviewed Dr. Russ Pimmel, National Science Foundation Transforming Undergraduate Education in STEM (TUES) Program Officer. 

See the notes from the conversation on the OFE Twitter site:

http://twitter.com/#search?q=WhatsHotSTEM

Information about the TUES program can be found at the NSF website:

http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10544/nsf10544.htm