The way we used to teach math mirrors our effective interventions for those students struggling as low achieving/learning disabled, writes Barry Garelick in EducationNews.org.  Maybe the modern way of teaching math (no facts, no procedures, but learn to grasp concept and to problem solve) is wrong?

Also, maybe understanding math requires deeper focus that can be easier achieved in solitude rather than in group collaboration? Perhaps the last few decades of educational mantras about math learning were misguided…

Read the whole article here.

Curt Rice  discusses why young women scientists leave academia in far greater numbers than men, identifying three reasons. During their time as PhD candidates, large numbers of women conclude that (i) the characteristics of academic careers are unappealing, (ii) the impediments they will encounter are disproportionate, and (iii) the sacrifices they will have to make are great. Read more…

To celebrate March 8, the International Women’s Day, Silicon Republic published the profiles of 8 remarkable women who have reached the top in some of the top IT companies.

As a budding inventor and scientist, Shree Bose, in second grade, tried to make blue spinach. In fourth grade she built a remote-controlled garbage can. In eighth grade she invented a railroad tie made out of recycled plastic and granite dust, an achievement that got her to the top 30 in a national science competition for middle school students.

In 11th grade Ms. Bose, a 17-year-old in Fort Worth, tackled ovarian cancer, and that research won her the grand prize and $50,000 in the Google Science Fair last week.For the winning research Ms. Bose looked at a chemotherapy drug, cisplatin, that is commonly taken by women with ovarian cancer. The problem is that the cancer cells tend to grow resistant to cisplatin over time, and Ms. Bose set out to find a way to counteract that.

She found the answer in a cellular energy protein known as AMPK, or adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase. She observed that when AMPK was paired with cisplatin at the beginning of treatment the combination diminished the effectiveness of cisplatin. But added later on, when the cancer cells were growing resistant, the AMPK worked to maintain the effectiveness of cisplatin, allowing it to continue killing the malignant cells, at least in cell cultures.

Read the entire article here

Yesterday three young women beat out some of the country’s smartest youngsters to be crowned winners of Google’s inaugural science fair. In all, 15 science-fair finalists put their projects on display in Google headquarters for more than 1,000 onlookers as well as an esteemed panel of judges including a Nobel Laureate, National Geographic Explorers, and some of Google’s own.

The tech giant searched through more than 7,500 entries from more than 10,000 students in 91 countries. In the end, the judges picked just three winners – all of whom were girls.

“This year was all about girl power,” Google declared. In the 13-to-14 age group, Lauren Hodge won for her project studying varying carcinogen levels in grilled chicken — depending on sauce type. In the 15-to-16 age range, Naomi Shah tried to prove that tweaking the environment indoors can improve air quality and lessen people’s reliance on asthma medication.

The Grand Prize winner (and winner in the 17-to-18 age group) was Shree Bose, who found a way to improve ovarian cancer treatment for patients when they have built up a resistance to certain chemotherapy drugs.

Read the entire article here

University leaders from approximately 80 countries gathered for the triennial International Association of University Presidents conference this weekend. Topics of discussion included access, quality and quality assurance, the creation of partnerships, trends in learning technology, and the role of higher education in conflict resolution.

“This is an organization that seeks to facilitate education as a solution,” said J. Michael Adams, the new president of IAUP and president of Fairleigh Dickinson University, in New Jersey. “Give me a problem and I will tell you the solution: the solution is education.”

Presidents also discussed the importance of working toward equity in their own ranks. On Saturday a panel of women rectors from Europe discussed the continuing gender imbalances in university leadership. Maria Helena Nazaré’s experience is perhaps indicative.

“I am living proof that the ceiling is breaking because I was elected president of the European University Association,” said Nazaré, the former rector of Aveiro University, in Portugal. Elected in April, she will serve as the EUA’s first female president, beginning in March 2012.

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Barack and Michelle Obama recently invited Amy Chyao, a 16-year-old high-school junior from Texas who is working on a new cancer treatment, and Mikayla Nelson, a high-school freshman from Montana who designed an innovative solar-powered car, to sit in the first lady’s box during the president’s State of the Union Address.

It was a nice gesture, but the president didn’t tell the truth about the girls. He left that to Eva Longoria’s flighty character on Desperate Housewives.

“Now girls, if it were up to me, I’d say avoid math and science—they cause serious frown lines,” Gabrielle Solis advised high-school students during a recent episode. “Young girls today need to know the dangers of long division.”Obama didn’t mention that, as good as Chyao and Nelson might be at science and math, those subjects would not hold their interest in the long run. If they were like their peers, their proclivities would emerge once they finished college: When it came time to pick a profession, they would find their hearts were not in science and engineering.

Read the entire article here

The Edmonton Journal reports (May 14th, 2011), mentoring and awareness programs are gradually working to increase the number of female students in science and engineering. Women currently represent just 17.5 per cent of enrolment nationally. About a quarter of the students at the University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering are women, but Agnes Soos didn’t let the malecentric image stop her from pursuing her passion for the career.

Soos, a recent chemical and biomedical engineering graduate, is now pursuing her master’s degree in biomedical and plans to go on to earn a PhD in the field.”I guess I’ve got used to the fact there aren’t as many girls (in engineering),” she says. “It definitely makes a difference if there is somebody there that can encourage you.”Role models are persuasive when high school girls are considering a career path, but the male-oriented image of certain fields in science and engineering remains a barrier.

When casting director Irada Seli, of Cream Productions, put out a casting call for Know It All -an upcoming Discovery Channel show that pits successful professionals, both male and female, from a wide range of fields against each other in a match of wits -90 per cent of the response was from men. “I am looking for females, not just engineers, but women who are into mechanical activities -mechanics, welders, engineers, IT -anything that would make them get out of their comfort zone and get into this particular workforce,” says Seli, who recently started targeting her search at universities.

Read the entire article here

Despite small gains, few disciplines continue to scream “man’s world” quite as much as engineering. It registers a noticeable shortage of female talent both on the job and in the pipeline. In 2008, for example, women made up more than half of working biological scientists but comprised only 11 percent of practicing engineers.
What is it about the field that’s so odious to women? And are they avoiding engineering altogether, or are they entering the field with plans for a career that they then cut short?
Some important new studies may give us needed clues. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center for the Study of the Workplace released a comprehensive report showing that of those female engineers who exited the field, nearly half said they left because of working conditions, too much travel, lack of advancement or low pay. What’s more, one out of every three women left because they did not like the workplace climate, their boss or the culture. One study respondent noted, “At my last engineering job, women were fed up with the culture: arrogant, inflexible, completely money-driven, sometimes unethical, [and] intolerant of differences in values and priorities. I felt alienated, in spite of spending my whole career trying to act like a man.” All the female-friendly policies in the world, it seems, can’t turn around an inhospitable environment.

Read the entire article here

GenomeWeb (May 4th, 2011) Women are now catching up to men in the upper ranks of science, Discover magazine reports. In 2009, five of the 13 Nobel Laureates were women and in that same year, women earned more than half of the doctorates awarded in the US. But women remain underrepresented in their fields and are still finding it difficult to gain equal treatment. Discover’s Sheril Kirshenbaum recently sat down with four leading female scientists to ask them about how the research community can begin to “bridge the gap” and make the most of the women working in science. Shirley Malcolm, head of the directorate for education and human resources at AAAS, told Kirshenbaum that gender discrimination isn’t just a problem for women, but for families and institutions as well, and that it’s important for institutions to accommodate family life for both men and women. Yale’s Joan Steitz said that while men and women have a nearly equal success rate in getting NIH grants, women tend to ask for less money and resources than men do, on average. MIT’s Sara Seager told Discover that it’s important for female scientists to find peer support groups and mentors, and above all to be “assertive” and “have confidence.”