Interesting Features at PWN for 1.13.14

News from the PWN Pipeline: 

"Get the right people together, address the challenges, and keep moving forward."

A quick-read article that summarizes 6 important management lessons from prominent women leaders of different industries. The lessons provide interesting glimpses of how these women approach members of their team and how they define their business philosophy to keep their companies successful and always moving forward. 

A healthy ego is a resourceful ego

While a leader's overly arrogant ego can lead to the downfall of a team or a business, a healthy ego can be advantageous and effective in maintaining communication and making thoughtful decisions. This article outlines several benefits that a healthy ego in the workplace can accrue, such as developing resilience to setbacks, inspiring others on the team, and taking appropriate amounts of risk in decision-making. 

Resources for PWN members: 

Check out Women in Learning, http://www.womeninlearning.com, which is a group of women researchers who offer advice and guidance to graduate students and post-docs doing research in learning, memory, behavior, and neuroscience. Membership is free, and there are many opportunities for more students and researchers to be involved in advancing women in science. 

Interesting Features at PWN for 1.6.14

Happy 2014 and best wishes for a great year from the PWN team! 

News from the PWN Pipeline: 

'Productive people take better notes.'

A quick-read article outlining 5 great ways that writing and documenting your thoughts, decisions and experiences can help to facilitate personal growth and wisdom. Some of the specific improvements that are cited as a result from frequent writing and journaling include eliminating mental 'clutter' as well as feeling more engaged and productive. 

8 red flags to watch for at a job interview

Job candidates often prepare by researching the company, outlining potential questions to ask, and thinking of ways to impress the interviewer with their qualifications. This article reminds us that the interviewer should also be attempting to impress the candidate, and lists 8 potential red flags at an interview that could suggest difficulties at the company down the line after accepting an offer. Warning signs include the hiring manager not reading your resume/CV beforehand and the interviewer checking their email during the interview. 

'She's like Gisele Bundchen mixed in with Bill Gates.'

Lyndsey Scott is a model who has walked the runways of Vera Wang, Fendi, Prada, Gucci and Victoria's Secret and, in her spare time, uses her coding prowess and programming background to design apps. This profile delves into Scott's experiences as a programmer and techie working primarily in the modeling world and offers some interesting perspectives of how she confounds common stereotypes about women in those fields. 

Advancement Opportunities

Assistant professor position in human cognitive neuroscience at Wright State University

Excellent opportunity for scientist already conducting cognition, perception and neuroscience research to join a growing Psychology department and develop new collaborative relationships with researchers at Miami Valley Hospital and the Wright-Patterson Air Force Research Laboratory. 

Details and application portal in the link

General inquiries to Search Committee Chair: Dr. Dragana Claflin | dragana.claflin@wright.edu 

Interesting Features at PWN for 12.16.13

Happy holidays to you and yours from the PWN team! 

News from the PWN Pipeline:

'Too few girls and minorities are becoming programmers and engineers.'

This impassioned editorial from the New York Times describes several factors that are actively interfering with the ability of women and minorities to succeed in engineering, computer science, and math-heavy fields. Among these obstacles are often limited options for acquiring a good education in math and science, 'entrenched stereotypes' of who typically succeeds in these fields, and lower expectations and investment from educators and employers. A particularly galling point is made by highlighting research showing that females who are told that math skills are innate are less likely to study for and score more poorly on math tests than female students who are told that math skills can be learned through hard work.

Women missing out on senior boardroom roles.

While more women are successfully climbing the corporate ladder, most are still not crossing the distance into senior executive positions. One view of this problem is that women are over-assimilating to a mid-level work culture instead of continuing to 'agitate' the system and move upwards towards senior boardroom positions.

'A lifetime of exposure to what women should be, how they should behave and who they should represent drives and reinforces unconscious and unseen biases.'

Although recent reports indicate that 9 out of 10 people want to see equal numbers of men and women performing leadership positions, the average workplace does not reflect gender equality in upper-level positions. Traditional pervasive gender stereotypes and expectations about women's ability to lead and to perform their jobs at a highly skilled level, in addition to unconscious gender biases, have the ability to undermine social and political frameworks calling for change.

Interesting Features at PWN for 12.9.13

News from the PWN Pipeline:

This week, we are featuring several commentaries on the recent controversial UPenn study reporting sex differences in brain structural connectivity.

"Biological determinism at its silly, trivial worst."

An interesting and skeptical commentary by Britain's Science Writer of the Year, Robin McKie, on the speculation of how these structural differences affect various skill sets in men and women. The criticisms of other national and international researchers regarding the study design and interpretation are cited.

"I am a girl whose mushy head is 'hardwired' for girly things."

The Guardian's Suzanne Moore turns a critical eye on the neuroscience tools and interpretations used to examine sex differences, and also describes how 'neurosexism' may be reinforcing gender stereotypes in our culture.

"We don't need this deterministic fairy-tale."

A brief editorial by Professors Rae Langton and John Dupre suggesting that the UPenn study findings simply reflect an already-known scientific truism-- that neural differences exist between men and women. They suggest, however, that these differences does not mean that the brain is designed or hard-wired for promoting inevitable strengths or weaknesses.

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Interesting Features at PWN for 12.2.13

News from the PWN Pipeline:

STEM fields are losing women

A review of a recent article in Social Forces comparing women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields with other professional women. Findings showed that women in STEM fields were more likely to leave their field of specialty for another occupation than other professional women. One possible reason given for this exodus is that women are often the minority on research teams, and traditional gender role beliefs held by other men on the team can influence the kind of scientific role played by these women.