This blog has moved

I've moved to ScienceBlogs. Please update your links:

http://scienceblogs.com/stressrelated/

The rss feed is working now, too.

I'll be leaving all my old posts here, so if you've got links to them, they won't be broken.

Lately I've been talking about the Italy earthquake, a course I'm redesigning, and a family trip to Arizona. I was going to talk about the recent dust storms (including their effect on the snowmelt), but it's snowing again today, so maybe I'll wait for the next one, so I can take pictures of the effects.

Blog on the move

This blog is moving!

I'm going to be joining Chris Rowan and Maria and ScienceWoman over at ScienceBlogs.

My new url is: http://scienceblogs.com/stressrelated/

I'll be adding other blogs to my blogroll, so feel free to remind me that you exist. (Otherwise, I'll add blogs while I'm reading the geoblogosphere feed... but I usually skim it before I've had my coffee, so my forgetting-stuff rate is going to be pretty high.)

I have no idea how rss works from ScienceBlogs. I'll get it figured out and post another message here, I guess.

Come visit, and guess where the rock in my new banner is from.

Blogrolling

I'm looking at my blogrolls in preparation for some changes, and I realized that I haven't listed a lot of blogs I read. (Chris Rowan's geoblogosphere feed is great for me, but not so great for people who are chasing links from blog to blog.)

Anyway, if you want me to link to you, and you don't see your blog name on my sidebar, please leave a comment. Especially if I've been linking to your posts and commenting on your blog, and somehow I've managed to forget to add you to my public list.

Networking opportunity for women in atmospheric science and meteorology

Via the Association for Women Geoscientists e-mail newsletter:

Are you a woman interested in atmospheric science or meteorology? The Desert Research Institute and the National Science Foundation are sponsoring a program called ASCENT (Atmospheric Science Collaborations and Enriching NeTworks), designed to connect women faculty and post-docs with one another. It's an opportunity for networking and making professional connections, during a three-day workshop in Steamboat Springs, Colorado this June.

From their website:

Atmospheric Science Collaborations and Enriching NeTworks (ASCENT) is a program focusing on women in atmospheric science/meteorology and is designed to initiate positive professional relationships among female faculty of different ranks and postdoctoral researchers. The program consists of a three-day summer workshop with follow-up reunion events at major national meetings. While networking with like-minded women scientists, participants will have the opportunity to be involved in frank discussions to explore specific promising practices toward eliminating the "leaky pipeline", defined by the attrition of women at different stages in their academic careers. By fostering relationships among women faculty and researchers, ASCENT will develop research opportunities and improve the quality of collaborative atmospheric research conducted at multiple universities and colleges.

The workshop will also accept two female high school teachers and two female high school students. The application deadline is March 15.

Panel discussion on women in science - ideas?

I've got a great new dean who's an active supporter of women in science (and a woman scientist, as well). When the call went out for ideas for Women's History Month, she suggested that the scientists do something. So... we're bringing in Dr. Marjorie Chan of the University of Utah, who has a women-in-geology talk she's given as an Association for Women Geoscientists lecturer, and besides her talk, we're going to do a panel discussion on issues facing women scientists. I'm organizing it, and I think I may be moderating it.

I've never organized any sort of panel discussion before, and I've never been in the audience for anything like this. So I'm looking for ideas.

We're a small public liberal arts college, so the audience will be a mixture of faculty members and undergraduates - no grad students, no post-docs. The panel members so far include Margie and the senior woman in the biology department - we're working on finding someone else. The other someones won't be from physics/engineering or chemistry - each department has one woman professor, but they're both assistant profs, and we don't want to put them on the spot.

So what should we talk about?

Margie knows the current statistics for women in the geosciences, and the biologist knows the history of her department, so at the very least, we can talk about the history in those two fields. Some of my other ideas are:

- Debunking persistent myths about women's abilities as scientists. (Maybe more important for students in intro classes, though.)

- Discussing Virginia Valian's ideas about the ways that tiny differences in perception can lead to big differences in women's success.

- Discussing the problem of balance.

- Doing some kind of exercise like Sciencewoman recently did, thinking about our strengths and how to promote them.

- Discussing the success of our biology program in hiring and educating women.

- Brainstorming things that we can do to help women in science (both students and faculty).

Anyone led a panel like this, or been in the audience for one? Any advice for what works and what doesn't?

There's No Place Like Home

I'm a day late for this month's Accretionary Wedge - somehow I got it in my head that we had until the last day of the month. I should have known that the due date was approaching when everyone else started posting!

I got into geology because I wanted to go places. I remember sitting on the grass near the end of Freshman Orientation, talking to a guy in my freshman seminar about traveling. He told me that I should major in geology and then specialize in some obscure type of rocks, so I would have to go to exotic places to study them. I took his advice: I majored in geology, and then I went to grad school on a plate boundary to study high-pressure metamorphic rocks. (He also majored in geology, but went on to get a Ph.D. in Tibetan Buddhism.) I know the lure of geologically spectacular places.

So my suggestion for the "100 great geologic places" list might surprise you:

Your own backyard.

"You should talk," you might be thinking. "My FIELD CAMP goes to your backyard. But I live in the most geologically boring place in the world. I want an excuse to get out of here!"

But I'm serious. Every place has geology. Even if it's flat and buried beneath black soil. Even if it's under pavement. Even if it's covered by trees. Somewhere below you are rocks, and below that are more rocks, and eventually there are metamorphic rocks and mantle rock and on and on and on. Those rocks contain water, maybe near enough to the surface that it seeps into your basement, and maybe deep enough down that your community should worry about running out of it. Those rocks affect the types of soil that develop or the stability of very tall buildings. Your home's tectonic and climatic history created the landscape you look at, whether it's rolling hills or flat fields or mountains hidden in the smog.

Maybe you don't have a point of geologic interest along your local highway. But wherever you are, there's something. Maybe it's a roadcut. Maybe it's the boulders piled up in old fences, collected from glacial debris. Maybe it's the river the made your city great, or an old quarry, or gullies that form after it rains. Maybe it's the stone used in your buildings. (There's human history there, too. Where did the rocks come from? Are they quarried locally? Were they imported from halfway around the world?) Even concrete has a geologic source.

The best assignment I was ever given as a student was to figure out how geology had affected my hometown. There's a world of spectacular geology out there, but geology is also part of the mundane and ordinary space that we live in every day. So yeah, go over that rainbow and check out the erupting volcanoes and glaciers and shear zones and waterfalls and canyons. But then click your heels together and bring it all back with you.

There's no place like home.

Friends of volcano monitoring on Facebook

I forgot my Facebook password the day after I signed up, so I can't join this. But the rest of you technologically hip people can!

Facebook friends of Volcano Monitoring

I think Maria is responsible for the creation of this group.

Edit: Maria says she wasn't responsible for setting it up - they just referred to her post to explain the group.