On Diversification: with Dr. Anna Garry and Professor Ursula Keller

When I posted on Diversification in STEM Fields, I mentioned Professor Ursula Keller's article in February's OPN. I reached out to Professor Keller with a few specific questions hoping to gather more insight on what a junior faculty member such as myself can do and what are the specific aspects of STEM academia that are keeping the door closed for women and minorities. Dr. Anna Garry, who works with Professor Keller on the issue of outreach and retaining talented women scientists, was kind enough to respond back with some very thought provoking responses.

If you haven't read Professor Keller's article, it can be found here (not pay link). I suggest you do so not only for the context of the questions but also for just general insights into the diversification problem in STEM fields. I've posted my questions so you can see the specific context with the shortened question and response below.

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[Original Question: I completely agree that senior male and female scientists/engineers will carry the most weight in changing the culture in STEM fields. However, as a tenure track faculty member who fits the stereotypical profile (white, male, American), how can I be an ally even in my early career stage for eliminating sexism and discrimination? Are there particular steps to take for someone in their early career to buffer themselves from outside influences which may lead to a more discriminatory view in the future? (For example, you start out with good intentions but change over time to get into the good ‘ole boys club.) ]

1. How can a new male tenure track professor buffer themselves from outside influences that can lead to a more discriminatory view in the future?

[AG] I think that the key here is to keep an open mind always about attitudes and assumptions that you see and hear. In addition you can speak up when you see something uncomfortable. Often women are told to lighten up, or not to take things so seriously, or that a person didn't mean it. If a male colleague/member of staff says that what is happening/said is not right, or that it's discouraging - this is really reinforcing for women, they feel supported and respected. For women the environment they work in matters enormously, the old "take it as a joke" attitude is very wearing if the joke is always on you.

Specific examples: I am not a physicist, I am a political scientist, educationist and writer. I am used to being in a more balanced workplace, gender wise.

In the current environment I hear general statements like "I cried like a girl" and there is also a common attitude of competitiveness that is not a natural approach for a lot of women. You have to be very confident in this environment to be different, and not become isolated.

In addition, because I am a woman I have (for the first time in my life) experienced the initial assumption, from men and women here who don't know me, that I work in a secretarial, assistant capacity. This is an awful experience (I have a BSc, MA and PhD), and it hasn't happened to me before. Dealing with this in an angry way would not work, because you are dealing with unconscious thoughts, and who do you talk to about this, if it is an underlying assumption. What I did was set out on a campaign of clarifying the situation to the right people. It worked, all is clear. But I am an experienced, confident, person who could do it, even though it made my heart sink that I had to (and may have to deal with it again). What I was dealing with was subtle, unconscious assumptions, rather than open minds about what the range of roles a woman can take.

I am also hearing from young women scientists that they have to deal with the uncomfortable situations where male colleagues will not/cannot look them in the eye when they speak, and that some men talk only to the men in the group. For male scientists to include women all levels in these group situations is vital and, ultimately, very encouraging.

As you are aware, I think it may be very easy for a successful male academic to adopt the communal departmental mind, if all the colleagues in a department are male. A second thing that is necessary for male scientists to realize is that women (and the research has shown this) are often very self-questioning, unconfident and perfectionist in their work. They may think they are not good, even if their marks are excellent. If they are not discouraged at this stage of initial nervousness, they can produce great work. Positive reinforcement and encouragement really helps in the retention of women.

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[Original Question: After reading your article, I agreed with the overall points you are attempting to make. Identifying borders, changing the work culture, and becoming an advocate of a new scientific culture all sound good but how do we go about initiating this change? Do you think there are individual differences and borders between STEM fields or are the obstacles to change largely uniform across all STEM fields?]

2. Are the obstacles similar across the STEM fields, or are their individual differences?

This is a huge question and I don't have the answer to this, but we will consider this question as we work. Certain areas of STEM have been studied more than others. I haven't, however, seen a great deal of work about the situation in Mechanical Engineering. One of my neighbours is a researcher in the ETH Mechanical Engineering department. There are two women there out of 40 researchers.

I think one answer is that the academic career has common issues across all of the science subjects in the sense of how a scientist deals with the obligations of scientific research, publications, conferences and dealing with family life.

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[Original Question: Another point you make in the article states that women are opting out of academia as it is now defined. And from that, I presume that some men do not opt out of academia, either because they are OK with its current definition or are willing to work in a system that has some significant drawbacks (tenure and funding rat-race, perpetual postdocs [specifically science fields], pressures to publish, to name a few). What is it about an academic position that is driving women away but not driving men away? Is it simply a numbers game where there are still enough men within the system that there will be some pursuing academic careers regardless of the drawbacks?]

3. Do women and men opt out of academia in different numbers?

[AG] This, I think, is an important question and I am trying to address this in my work. I haven't seen any figures or studies on this. My aim is to interview all the scientists I can, across our network, on key decision moments in their careers and identify then the attitudes of men and women to idea of remaining in academia, and the situations that cause them to leave.

My sense is that a lot of men opt out of academia too, for many reasons. It may be that we are also losing the type of men that would make a real contribution to changing the scientific environment for the benefit of the retention of women and minority groups!

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[Original Question: From your profile in the article and your current position, I see that you have lived and worked in multiple countries with different cultures. From my own experiences in the US and Europe, I have seen a dichotomy arise within STEM fields resulting from more cultures mixing. As the cultural diversity increases, the natural progression is to suggest discrimination over time will decrease due to the diversity. However, as more cultures are represented with differing views on societal roles for males and females, I find the progression has stagnated. From your experience, do you think this could be one (of many) reasons for why discrimination persists?]

4. The impact of cultural diversity on the stagnation of the situation for women scientists

[AG] This is an enormous question, and there hasn't been much investigation of this. There are certainly anecdotal stories on the problems that different cultural views of the role of women create. I don't think it is possible to answer this, but it is certainly something that we are alert to. It may be that someone who we commission for the OPN "Reflections on Diversity" column, from a minority scientist point of view will address this topic.

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Ok, interview over, back to my normal GEARS voice. Dr. Garry has also mentioned to me that OPN will be launching a column in the near future called "Reflections on Diversity", discussing Women and Minorities in Science.

While there is a lot of information to digest in Dr. Garry's responses, there's two items which immediately jump out to me: the lack of eye contact (Q1) and that men which may make a real contribution to changing diversity might be the ones leaving academia (Q3).

I definitely have been in interviews and meetings where the speaker will not make eye contact, and from asking around, most people seem to say the same thing. I'm not sure why people don't make eye contact (without staring!) but when you're talking to someone and they're talking to the wall, it's very annoying.

More importantly, I think Dr. Garry brings up a hugely interesting suggestion in Q3. Because academic jobs are limited, there will always be people leaving academia after their PhD/Postdoc. But maybe the men that are leaving are the ones that would be the type of person to try and effect change. But since they leave for industry, the majority of men left in academia are of the type that perpetuate the current standard or focus on their research without thinking of things outside of it. I'd love to see some evidence of that but it is a very interesting proposition.

I would like to thank Dr. Anna Garry and Professor Ursula Keller at ETH Zurich for taking the time to respond and for giving some thought provoking insights. More information on Professor Keller's group can be found here.

Diversification in STEM Fields

One of the reasons I started blogging was to share my tenure track experiences with others. And like all other bloggers, you start reading other blogs and get a lot (well, sometimes) of useful information for what other tenure track faculty did in certain situation. Underneath all of that info though, there is an undercurrent always discussing the topic of diversification within STEM fields. This isn't just limited to blogs but in real press as well.

In February's OPN (pay link), Professor Ursula Keller at ETH Zurich tackles the topic by proposing that senior faculty (both male and female) need to be the main advocates for diversification. Professor Keller also states that we need to change the present working culture, something which I think is nicely summarized by GMP's post on Work-Life Balance. The thing is, I'm just a n00b at all of this (no seniority) and I have no real insights into how to effect change because I am a stereotypical, white male engineer.

This same exact question was asked by Hermitage: "What would you like to see from tenure-track and not-yet-tenure-track menfolk? How can they pitch in?". [For details see] However, the respondents didn't really come up with any profound ideas (not trying to offend...), but rather stuck to basically saying stop being an asshat. There were other items mentioned like try to disassociate the sex of the author when reviewing/judging/commenting and to speak up when you see an obvious case of sexism.

But what else can someone in my situation (young, male tenure track engineer) do to not perpetuate the norm?

In a professional world, I don't think someone should be characterized as a humorless bitch, nor is asking is it that time of the month. On one hand, I'm actually shocked that faculty members would ask that but on the other, I can't say I'm surprised - we can be asshats for no reason. But is that essentially the list of things a male faculty member can do to help?

1. Treat female faculty members (and other minorities for that matter) as just "normal faculty". Their record should speak for themselves, not their outward appearance.
2. Maintain professional courtesy even when women/minorities aren't around.
3. Just work based on the work, not the authors.
4. Try to more vocal about your work-life balance.

The first three to me seem like they should be a no-brainer. I'm married to a female engineer with a PhD so I don't need any other justification for woman's competency in engineering (and all STEM). But I think the 4th item on the list can really go a long way to making a difference. That's especially the case for my situation because I'm in academia (flexible working environment) whereas my wife works in industry (structured working environment). I expect I'll be doing my fair share of dr's visits (like today!) and staying home with a sick child, and so on.

But that brings me to a grand question that I can hopefully get some answers from the blog'o'sphere.

Are male faculty members that have female partners in STEM fields better allies for diversification than those whose partners are not and does that make for a better work-life balance?

The worth of employee knowledge

Today, over at Engineer Blogs, I follow up on the question I posed a while back on "Where's the column for Knowledge Learned on the balance sheet?". This question was essentially posed in a NY Times article on why companies are spending more on equipment than employees.

Solving the World's Problems

Today, on Engineer Blogs, I solve some of the world's problems the engineering way. Check it out if you like a good political debate.

Manufacturing and Corporate Responsibility

The New York Times had an interesting article a few days ago stating the Future of Manufacturing is Local by Allison Arieff. It’s quite an interesting article and it brings up many good points. Overall, the article describes how in two (expensive) cities, San Fran and NYC, local manufacturing and production businesses have sprung up, which are different from our traditional notions of manufacturing. Rather than large manufacturing plants like traditional setups for cars, airplanes, etc., these companies have smaller, just-in-time manufacturing facilities that are more able to adjust to changing demands.

This is another example of how manufacturing in the US can change to meet today's new manufacturing environment and be successful. I'm reminded of another example of how novel manufacturing techniques can put the US back on the map as a manufacturing power. I used the example of high speed machining in my first Engineer Blogs post. Apple changed from using folded sheet metal and rivets/screws to single body aluminum frame for it's notebooks. Not only is the design lighter, stronger, and cheaper to make than its folded counterpart, but all of the chips from its single aluminum block can be recycled and melted down to make new aluminum billets. They have a video of it here. While I think Apple, the Brand, is sooo pretentious, I have to commend Apple, the Company, on using this technique.

What I don't like about Apple is that they still manufacture their stuff overseas, where they do not have to consider the environmental impact of their manufacturing processes. This is the so called "green manufacturing. Last fall, I was at a conference where the keynote speaker was from GE and he made no attempt to say they were switching to green manufacturing and avoided the questions about manufacturing in the US. (GE as a company is in my doghouse because GE doesn't pay taxes like everyone else.) These local companies appear to care about their environmental impact and are trying to employ green manufacturing.

And in addition to green manufacturing, the people managing the companies are coming together to help support each other to maintain their products are greener and more locally sourced, which helps them directly impact their local community. Providing jobs, increasing local commerce, renovating derelict buildings, etc. That's something you don't see big companies doing now. These companies seem to be willing to sacrifice a significant portion of their bottom line to have a greater local impact. Large multinationals should take notice.

As someone who grew up in the greater NYC Metropolitan Area in NJ, I have seen and grew up around the ruined husks of once large manufacturing hubs like Newark, Jersey City, and Hoboken. I think it is a fantastic idea that these companies have focused on making their products locally to try to revive local manufacturing. Sure, they pay more in property taxes and their employee costs are more than overseas manufacturing. But they also don’t have to worry about shipping costs from around the world and they are better positioned to deal with changes because they are overseeing the complete manufacturing process.

And as I move to a Rust Belt city where SnowU is located, I'm hoping to connect with local companies And I will adapt my research topics to help impact them. And I will hope to get them more involved in the university (if they aren't already), which can help further strengthen the local community.

Giving everyone an A is a terrible idea.

A few days ago, Cherish the Scientist tweeted out an article (@mareserinitatis) on how Everyone Should Get an A. David MacKay brings up a few interesting points in the article. These are largely centered on two themes. The first is the rate at which a student learns in conjunction with their starting position. If everything is linear, this is the classic Y = mX + b where Y is the level you’re trying to obtain, m is the rate at which you learn over time, X is the time it takes, and b is your offset starting position. (Yes, whenever you use an equation, you should explain the variables…). The second theme is there should be a minimum obtainable threshold that students should achieve. Thus, if students are “forced” to achieve an A to graduate, they should be allowed to take longer. The first issue is persuasive but has a problem when applying it to real life. The second argument, on the other hand, has some serious holes.

I don’t have any hard evidence for this but the thought process should fit match most anecdotal preconceived, prejudiced notions. Your b value when you begin in college is a very important aspect. If students took more AP classes, generally they’re going to start with a higher b. The same could be said if your parents were highly educated and/or come from an upper class economical situation. Students who aren’t fortunate to be in those situations often have much lower b values and generally have other issues to contend with once they get to college. Working a job on the side to support themselves comes to mind.

In principle, if you could test a student’s knowledge in the beginning and in the end of a course, and come up with a slope-o-meter, that would be a good to obtain an accurate picture on how someone learns. That would be very good for assessing the effectiveness of a teacher and identifying the potential of the student. This, in theory, could go a long way towards helping the educational system improve how it is educating its students.

There is one slight, 800 lb gorilla sitting in the corner of the room. Life doesn’t work like that.

Figure 2 in MacKay’s paper shows a prime example of this. Let’s assume you have some miners trapped in a coal mine and instead of it being exam-time, it’s actually people-are-going-to-die-time. Who do you want deciding where to drill the hole? A, B, or C? If it’s my life, I’m going with A because they, at this given point in time, know more than the other two. Sure, eventually B and C will surpass A. But now you’ve got a bunch of explaining to do to a family on why their loved one died.

Look, it sucks that B and C started out in a more disadvantaged position. It can certainly be argued that is a combination of social, economical, and educational factors. And yes, society as a whole should strive to correct those. But if we’re talking about university and graduate level education, you have to draw the line at some point. This brings the second theme, allowing indefinite time to finally get your A.

If you’re allowed indefinite time to get an A (or whatever you want to call the achievable mark), you’ve just given no incentive to learning how to get stuff done. This is a huge problem at OldEuropeU where the students are allowed to take a class as many times as they want to get a passing grade (6 out of 10 BTW, not even an 8 or 9). In an educational system that is nominally free for the students, that’s a huge overall tax payer drain. I have colleagues that took 10+ years (in a 5 year program) to get a BS and a MS and they spent that whole time in school. They didn’t take time off for work or family or whatever. They just spent too much time partying. If they were in the US system, they would not have been engineers after year two. They would have failed more than the allowable amount of classes, had an insanely low GPA, and would have been kicked out of any ABET engineering program. I’m sorry but not everyone should be an engineer just because they want to.

In the real world, you have to deal with meeting deadlines. It sucks. Everyone hates it. And it’s a shame that we don’t have a culture of saying “No, we can’t move on because this thing isn’t ready yet. We haven’t learned enough to make this product fully do everything we wanted.” Everything from software (security flaws), to baby strollers (safety recalls), to cars (stick accelerators and faulty air bags), to food (E. coli and salmonella poisonings) has their issues because of deadlines. But, unless you’re going to change how the world works, people cannot be afforded indefinite time to do everything. Nothing would get done then.

So no, I don’t think everyone should get an A.

Senior Engineer vs Tenured Faculty

On Tuesday, over at Engineer Blogs, I guest-posted about how universities are changing their new shiny into User Facilities. An Old Engineer posted a (loosely connected) comment on how some of the undergraduates are “in college only to learn the basics”. An Old Engineer then goes on to discuss how my generation doesn’t know anything. Kate summed up a response that I knew was coming: "The old folks always bitch about the young ones not knowing anything and wanting to move up fast. The young folks always bitch about the old ones not ever wanting to change anything."

I thought more and more about An Old Engineer’s comments, specifically on young engineers expecting to be senior engineers within 5-10 years. I didn’t want to be rash which is why I didn’t post yesterday. (I know, shocking. For those that know me, I sometimes “see by the light of my burning bridges [Terry Pratchett]”).

And you know what? If I pursued work in industry, rather than academia, I would expect to be promoted to a Senior Engineer within 5-10 years if I kept to the same standard that I hold myself to now. The main reason is because within 7 years, I’ll either be booted from SnowU or have tenure, which to my eyes is the same thing as being labeled a Senior Engineer.

I can do “bolt torque calculations” and I don’t need any help setting up proof-of-concept experiments. Oh, and that is after I’ve built my system by using my skills on a mill and lathe. And once I’m done with the experiment, I can write it into an effective report (or in my case, journal paper). I have numerous instances of that. And lastly, once I have the results, I have no problem standing in front of a crowd and saying “these are our results, look at how cool our research is.” That’s the sales aspect that you need in academia and in industry.

I’ve spent extra 6 years in school, wrote effectively 2 books (MS Thesis and PhD Thesis) on two entirely different topics. I’ve learned how to juggle class work, several research projects (even self initiated ones), publishing, academic politics, mentoring students, occasionally teach, and serve on committees in the university and the community at large. And the few universities that did manage to look past my lack of a postdoc on my CV and application package thought I was good enough to bring in for an interview and ultimately offered me a tenure track position.

So yes, if I keep on the same track, I would expect to be a “Senior Engineer” in 5-10 years. I’ll have to prove that I can bring in research money, successfully mentor my graduate students, and effectively reach undergraduates, some of whom might only “be in college for the basics”.

How is that any different, in principle, to what would be expected of a Senior Engineer? What do you expect Senior Engineers to do? How would that be different from Tenure Faculty? What are the correlations between the two? Thoughts? Comments?

The Dreaded User Facility

Today, over at Engineer Blogs, I discuss how User Facilities at universities are stifling academia.

Where’s the column for Knowledge Learned on the balance sheet?

My PhD research was part of a project jointly between OldEuropeU and two nearby Institutes. Like most projects, towards the end the money became scarcer and equipment was harder to obtain. One of the things my colleagues at their Institutes had to deal with that I didn’t was charging hours and making sure they had sufficient budget to charge those hours to the project. This was a completely foreign issue for me and caused a “point of contention” at certain instances when the equipment budget was sacked for more working hours.

This was very frustrating at the time and still perplexes me to this day. There are two reasons for this. The first is you have the dichotomy of finishing the project because you need the “deliverable” and you can’t finish the project because you cannot find more money to make up for the time needed. This dichotomy is why every public works project ALWAYS runs waaay over budget. The argument is simple. You need to deliverable and you’ve already spent X. Either you waste X and don’t have your deliverable or you spend (hopefully only) delta X and then the problem is solved.

While this is distasteful, especially when used to the general contractor’s advantage (I’m referring to those massive, multi-million dollar public works projects), I can understand the logic. It’s the perfect sort of argument for always asking for 15% more than you need to complete the job, because you’re never going to budget perfectly.

The second reason is the more perplexing issue. Maybe this has something to do with some management theory. I already mentioned that the equipment budget was swapped with more hours for the project. But at the same time, most institutes have the same mantra about building versus buying. It goes something like this: “It’s too costly for me to figure something out based on my time (say $200/hr). Even though it will only take a few days of my time ($200/hr x 3 days x 8 hr = $4800), our workshop is too expensive because it’s a User Facility (more on that later), so we should just buy the equipment we need for $5000 and wait 6 weeks for it to be delivered”. But we just sacked the equipment budget for more hours so we can’t buy what we needed. Plus, we lose the 5 weeks (or whatever time) due to delivery times.

What I’ve come to realize is that managers and other idiots who think this is the way to run a research group in an institute/company treat their employees as pawns with no ability to learn, adapt, and grow. How much knowledge do researchers gain by doing something by themselves versus just buying the solution? Probably, that knowledge would be very useful on future projects. Who knows, maybe during the course of tackling this mini-project, the researchers come up with some new greatness that the company can profit from.

It seems that we’re so focused on the quantifiable results that we’ve lost the ability to think in terms of qualifiable, abstract, intangible results. I know there is no place on the balance sheet for Knowledge Learned but maybe there should be. Now, some of you who are reading this have transitioned from a university setting to a corporate setting where you have to deal with this on regular basis. Does your company operate with this philosophy? Was it difficult to grasp? How does your company quantify knowledge?