Seeing what you want in the mirror

This month’s Scientiae asks about mirrors, reflections, and perspective. One of the things that has become clear to me as I’ve persisted in physics is that one can see almost anything one wants when looking in the mirror, particularly with regards the status of women in physics.

Are things getting better? It seems so, according to the National Academies’ latest report on women in academic science.  Reflected in this mirror, the situation looks promising. As the executive summary notes: “For the most part, men and women faculty in science, engineering, and mathematics have enjoyed comparable opportunities within the university, and gender does not appear to have been a factor in a number of important career transitions and outcomes.”

Is there still significant bias? Sciencegeekgirl highlights a recent study about student bias in the evaluation of their high school science teachers, and the Backpage editorial by Anne Lincoln, Stephanie Pincus, and Vanessa Schick in this month’s APS News notes how gender influences APS awards. Both reflect a less rosy picture about equity for women in the sciences.

These larger contradictions, and the corresponding desire to see what one wants in the mirror, are a reflection of contradictory views at the personal level. If you hold a mirror to my professional path, it looks like a straight one, but when I consider how I’ve gotten here, I see much more meandering. The seredipitous events, changes of heart, simultaneous excitement and uncertainty about the possibilities–none of this is visible to an outsider, and yet this is how I characterize my journey. Now on the tenure track, the path is well-tread and clearly marked. Yet in the search for personal-professional balance, the effort to be authentically myself, and the challenges of balancing my personal goals and expectations against societal expectations about women, physics, career, and family, there is no well-worn path. And it is precisely the lack of well-worn paths and the variety of personal perspectives upon looking in the mirror that makes the larger picture so difficult to discern.

Research experiences for all physics majors?

As a member of the Physics and Astronomy Division of the Council of Undergraduate Research (CUR), over the past few months I’ve gotten several e-mails about the effort by CUR, the Society of Physics Students, the American Astronomical Society, and the American Physical Society Committee on Education to adopt a statement on undergraduate research. The CUR statement reads as follows, “We call upon this nation’s physics and astronomy departments to provide, as an element of best practice, all undergraduate physics and astronomy majors a significant research experience.” It is unclear that there is agreement about this proposal, particularly depending on what one means by “significant research experience.” Does significant research imply collaborative work with a faculty member that makes an original intellectual contribution to the discipline? Or can a significant research experience be something more independent that is original for the student, but perhaps not an original contribution to the discipline?

According to CUR, about 70% of undergraduate physics majors participate in a research experience. For those who are considering graduate school in physics, I think a research experience is a must. And I believe that every physics major who wants a research experience should be able to participate in one. Research experiences help retention, increase motivation, build confidence, and provide a sense of being part of the scientific community—all significant benefits.

From a scientific perspective, research experiences provide students opportunities that are hard to replicate in a standard curriculum. Arjendu has previously mentioned the four types of problem solving, and research experiences offer the opportunity for practicing innovative problem solving. Other objectives for research experiences include gaining exposure to project design, using advanced instrumentation, experimental techniques, and computational tools, engaging in data analysis, and learning to communicate complex ideas. However, in talking to students, research experiences vary widely from REU site to REU site and from lab to lab, and the quality of the experience is hit or miss. Although the best research experiences provide innovative problem solving experiences and intellectual ownership of a project, many aspects of the experience can be provided through careful design of the laboratory curriculum, including open-ended project work.

I’m happy to encourage students to pursue research experiences, but should we go beyond encouraging research experiences? Let’s assume for a minute that we aren’t considering issues of capacity or the costs for faculty. In an ideal world, should all physics majors be required to participate in a research experience beyond the curricular level? For those students who will continue in physics, research experiences are a critical first step in their careers. It’s important that not just the most motivated or the most enthusiastic students participate in research programs, as research experiences can be particularly valuable for those who are uncertain of their next steps. Although research experiences are beneficial for all students, I also want the physics major to be a big tent. For future medical professionals who are interested in spending the summer working at a health clinic, or future educators who want to teach as part of a summer science enrichment program, or for students who want to work for a family business, I’m uncomfortable saying that research is more important than exploring other interests and opportunities. And I don’t think most schools have the capacity to support research experiences for all majors during the academic year.

Should research be encouraged? Yes. Should it be required? That, I’m still considering.

The F word in physics… Fraud

When it came out earlier this month, I immediately picked up Eugenie Samuel Reich’s book about the Hendrik Schön scientific fraud case because my graduate work began as part of the Minnesota efforts to reproduce some of Schön’s results (there are a few pages on the Minnesota collaboration in the book). Being touched by the fraud personally, I found this book provided a satisfying look at how it all happened. Although you can never get into Schön’s mind, I began to understand how fraud of such magnitude could unfold, namely Schön asked others what they would expect to see, and then created results that matched those expectations. That he aimed to meet people’s expectations, combined with his quiet and amiable personality, meant that the red flags didn’t go up immediately.

One theme that Reich kept raising was whether the self-correcting nature of science worked in this situation. Personally, I found this to be a distracting framework in which to place the Schön case. I consider the self-correcting nature of science to refer to the back and forth of different researchers, theorists and experimentalists, as they try to arrive at the correct understanding of a particular physical phenomenon. Researchers often begin by putting forth what turn out to be incorrect interpretations. As others consider the work, the interpretations are refined and refuted until consensus is reached about what is the appropriate description. To me, this is the self-correcting nature of science. I don’t think the primary purpose of this process is to catch people who are trying to dupe the system, and to ask whether the self-correcting nature of science worked in the Schön case is not an appropriate question.

I was also interested to learn about Schön’s graduate work, which showed an early tendency towards sloppy practices. The book mentions the graduate student Schön fiddling to produce a line of best fit that matched the scientific literature better than what he would have gotten without fudging, and Reich also finds an early example of data manipulation in published work related to Schön’s dissertation. Is it a slippery slope towards fraud? Do we convey forcefully enough the importance of good record keeping and honest practices, even at the undergraduate level?

I’ll admit that starting my graduate work chasing fraudulent results has indelibly shaped my view of the scientific endeavor. I think I am somewhat more cynical about science as a result. I also tend to be wary of the flashy results that show up in Science or Nature, appreciating the more in-depth technical papers appearing in Phys Rev B that actually require significant discussion of how results were obtained and what they might mean. Nevertheless, I recognize that science is ultimately about trust, and I’ve got to trust that most scientists are dedicated to the advancement of science over personal advancement.

The question of whether there is a way to prevent this type of fraud in the future is worth considering, and I generally agree with Steve at Complex Matters that for the most part the system works, although there is always the chance that someone will come along and take advantage of a trusting system. (Of course, I can say this because the Schön episode only impacted the very start of my graduate career so I didn’t get burned badly. Those whose careers were seriously damaged might feel differently.) I did walk away from Reich’s book wishing it had more discussion of the role of the journals, reviewers comments, and editors decisions in potentially helping or hindering fraudulent work.

Georg at Life on the Lattice wonders if the open science movement would have prevented Schön’s fraud. Of course, more transparency is always better, but despite the trusting nature of scientists, there is still a tendency to play things close to the chest for fear of being scooped and to maintain an advantage for continued priority of discovery. When in the trenches trying to replicate Schön’s work, missing information about experimental techniques regarding the deposition of aluminum oxide was problematic. There were e-mail exchanges in which Schön happily dished out information about what he supposedly did, but ultimately, we decided he used some experimental trick that we didn’t. I’m not sure tricks of the trade will ever be freely shared when researchers are hotly competing with each other to be the first to get results.  But then again, maybe that’s just my cynicism coming through.

I’d be interested in hearing others’ thoughts. Do we simply live and learn with each fraud case? Or can we do more to prevent fraud in the future? Is science too trusting? Or not trusting enough?

Doing diversity

As you might gather from my various posts, making sure that science, particularly at the undergraduate level, is welcoming to all who want to pursue it is important to me. As a faculty member, my interest in enhancing diversity in the sciences has lead me to think more broadly about diversity in higher education.

Ever since I was a graduate student, various people have warned me with different degrees of bluntness that my interest in diversity would be a detriment to my career and decrease the likelihood that I would ever be taken seriously as a colleague. The harshest warning came when someone told me, “Under no circumstances should you ever be engaged in diversity work with regards to women in physics until you either 1) have become a full professor or 2) want to throw your career under the bus and in the process maybe make some small change.” Despite these warnings, I haven’t given up my commitment to diversity. In small ways, I’ve been involved in discussions and efforts to address diversity both in the physics community and at Carleton, but as a junior faculty member, my primary focus must be on teaching and research.

Nevertheless, observing faculty members I know at a variety of institutions, who are engaged in diversity issues, I find myself wondering about the nature of this engagement, which seems like a calling for some and a reluctantly carried, but grudgingly accepted, burden for others. These efforts are often unrewarded, and the work is almost always shared inequitably, but it can lead to significant changes. My growing awareness of the challenges I’ve observed led me to pick up the book, Doing Diversity in Higher Education: Faculty Leaders Share Strategies and Challenges.

The first thing that struck me when reading this book is that diversity challenges in higher education are unique to each institution and, at the same time, universal. Doing Diversity makes it clear that diversity work is challenging, and it provides glimpses into what diversity is and what diversity work means at a variety of institutions. Faculty at Spelman College, a historically black college for women, face different challenges than faculty in the University of California system, who have had to find new ways to promote diversity after the passage of Proposition 209. Nevertheless, I found it illuminating to see the common threads.

The weariness, frustration, and ever-present setbacks associated with tiny victories were palpable in many of the essays. I thought the chapter by Castro, Fenstermaker, Mohr, and Guckenheimer at the University of California Santa Barbara described well some of the reasons for discouragement faced by those who engage in diversity work:

“Rarely does an action lead to an immediately successful outcome. Far more often, the work of faculty leaders involves endless meetings that may not yield discernible results; writing applications for grants that may never be funded; arguing with colleagues over the meaning of ‘academic merit’ while hiring and admissions committees continue to implement default selection principles; mentoring individual students whose sense of academic satisfaction may eventually translate into a more welcoming campus climate for students of color even as they recount ways in which the institution has failed them. Mixed in with a few programmatic successes are many individual failure and frustrations; indeed, it appears that the former are in some way fundamentally dependent on the latter.”

Although diversity work is often viewed as “service” work, the level of intellectual and emotional engagement is different from other kinds of faculty service. Institutional structures don’t reward service work in general, and the price of professional activism with regards to diversity can be particularly high both personally and professionally. The chapter by Hart, Brigham, Good, Mills, and Monk at the University of Arizona summarizes the challenge effectively. “In institutional terms, the definition of success is based exclusively on quantitative measures such as resources and research. Less tangible qualitative measures, such as diversity or respect, are not rewarded or seen as successes.”

If diversity work requires significant sustained effort without immediate payoffs, what prompts faculty to get involved? The reasons are varied, but several writers describe the engagement with diversity work as having an ethical or moral dimension for some faculty. The chapter by Ackelsberg, Hart, Miller, Queeney, and VanDyne exploring departmental microclimates at Smith College and examining how to enable all faculty to take ownership of and feel like valued contributors to the college highlighted one of the reasons why I find diversity work compelling.  The authors found that “a sense of shared purpose in faculty work” was important in creating a positive climate for faculty, and many faculty found that shared sense of purpose in college-level service. As a woman in physics, I often feel out of place, and being involved with diversity issues provides me an opportunity to find like-minded individuals, connect to a wider community, and contribute to changing the situation. These personal benefits of diversity work have made me reluctant to give it up despite warnings of the potential negative impact on my career.

The take home message I got from Doing Diversity? Supporting those faculty who choose to engage in diversity work by acknowledging that these efforts can be a meaningful extension of the faculty role, and not a distraction from it, would be a valuable change in the discourse around diversity work.

Coaching group communication

Small group work is an inevitable part of a college science student’s academic experience–study groups, lab groups, project groups. Faculty often promote the importance of learning how to work with a variety of different people as a team. In addition, I like to think that working in small groups encourages students to connect with each other and helps to create a comfortable peer learning environment. Nevertheless, group dynamics are unpredictable (and often unseen by faculty members), and I know of several instances where students have negative small group experiences that cause them to reconsider persisting in the sciences. Sometimes the negative experiences are blatant, but I was interested to read a Tomorrow’s Professor post last month, “He Said, She Said: Gender-Typical Speech Can Sour Teamwork,” which addressed one of the subtle elements that impacts the quality of small group interactions.

The post by Joanna Wolfe and Elizabeth Powell considers student teamwork in engineering disciplines. Wolfe and Powell studied how students reacted to speakers’ gender-specific communication styles. They found that male students, particularly those in the most male-dominated fields of engineering such as mechanical and computer engineering, drew negative conclusions about speakers (male or female) who used female-typical communication styles. These female speech patterns included “self-belittlement by admitting to difficulties or mistakes” or making indirect criticisms (as compared to direct criticism, which is a male-typical communication style).

Powell and Wolfe write, “Women have some control over perceptions: Something as simple as curbing tendencies to admit weaknesses can benefit them.” While this may improve how female students are perceived by their peers, the suggestion seems counterproductive if one wants group work to be an opportunity for peer learning and teaching. After all, how can students learn from each other if it isn’t acceptable to say “I’m having trouble with this”? I also worry that promoting such an external front of invulnerability might contribute to an internal crumbling of self-confidence.

That negative impressions of speakers using female-typical speech were most pronounced in engineering fields that were the most male-dominated indicates to me those fields need to change the environment so that it is acceptable to admit uncertainty or ask for help. Let’s not coach women to fit into the male-dominated environment, rather let’s coach all students to create an environment where it is expected that people will ask each other for help, acknowledge mistakes, and treat everyone with respect.

Wonder and the humanity of science

It’s been quiet around here lately, in part because the lab has been busy. Although various projects are moving forward, there have been more challenges and frustrations than usual in the past few weeks. I’ll be the first to admit that all those bumps in the experimental road are par for the course, but sometimes they wear me down more than they should.

However, I’ve recently finished a fabulous book that reminded me exactly why I love doing science. The book is Richard Holmes’ The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. It’s not yet available in the US, but I highly recommend it. (Check out the Guardian review by Jenny Uglow, which provides a much more eloquent description than I can.) This book is perhaps my favorite history of science book yet. Why? Because it focuses broadly on the scientific endeavor… the people who participate in science and their varied personalities, the role of collaboration and professional societies, the interaction between science and the public, the long and twisted process of doing science, including the wrong-turns and the lucky breaks. Most of all, the book does an incredible job of exploring the emotions that accompany the practice of science.

Holmes captures the sense of wonder of the Romantic generation, both the scientists and the public. He explores the interaction of the Romantic poets with the men and women of science. I was interested to learn that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a staunch defender of science. “[Colderidge] thought that science, as a human activity, ‘being necessarily performed with the passion of Hope, it was poetical.’ Science, like poetry, was not merely ‘progressive.’ It directed a particular kind of moral energy and imaginative longing into the future. It enshrined the implicit belief that mankind could achieve a better, happier world.” The role of wonder, longing, imagination, and humanity are probed throughout the book.

I found Holmes’ epilogue to be particularly thoughtful. He considers where he started the book, and what he discovered through the process of writing it: “We need to understand how science is actually made; how scientists themselves think and feel and speculate. We need to explore what makes scientists creative, as well as poets or painters, or musicians. That is how this book began.”

I’ve been thinking about the humanity of science this week, in part because of a question that my Adopt-a-Physicist students have asked me. These students have been told by their high school physics teacher that science is about people, and yet in high school physics, what students see is facts and equations. The people, the emotions, the struggles, the triumphs, the adventure, they go unseen. Although physics is the accumulation of many people’s knowledge over the course of hundreds of years, the human minds, interactions, creativity, and mistakes all get lost in the physics facts. Would people be more attracted to science if they saw this? I know many scientists don’t like to acknowledge this messy, political, human part of the endeavor, but to ignore it is to pretend that doing science is something it’s not.

I think it is awe and wonder that often entice us into physics, and keep us going despite the sometimes difficult journey.  We don’t always convey the wonder to a broader audience, focusing instead on sharing concepts and facts. Are astrophysics and particle physics popular in the general media because they capture the wonder better than the more practically-minded condensed matter physics?

Holmes concludes his book by reflecting on the role of science today: “Above all, perhaps, we need three things that a scientific culture can sustain: the sense of individual wonder, the power of hope, and the vivid but questing belief in a future for the globe.” Too often I let the day-to-day frustrations and setbacks in lab get in the way of the wonder and the hope. I need to remember to be filled with wonder, and to share that wonder with others, particularly those who are not scientists.

Exploring the laboratory landscape: Computer simulations

Continuing my exploration of curricular labs, I’m interested in considering the inclusion of computer simulations and computer modeling activities in lab. For improving conceptual understanding or exploring new concepts not covered in class, having students explore computer simulations or build computer models can be valuable. In particular, computers can help students visualize and control things at the scale of the very small, the very large, or the very fast. Matter and Interactions VPython programs or the PhET simulations can enhance student understanding and be integrated effectively into labs.

Nevertheless, I’m hesitant to make computer simulations the primary focus of lab. Where possible, I prefer combining simulations and/or modeling with hands-on activities. Integrating hands-on work with computer simulations gives students a better perspective on the interplay between theory and experiment. Students can build a model for a system, and then compare their model with an actual physical system that they measure. One of my concerns with favoring computer simulations at the expense of hands-on experiments is that much of the skill building aspect of lab (trouble shooting, data collection and analysis techniques, dealing with uncertainty and error analysis, designing and evaluating experimental set-ups) can be lost if the lab is entirely computer based.

While some lab skills can only be learned from experience, the PER group at Colorado found interesting results when they studied student performance in labs that focused on circuits. They compared performance, both in terms of conceptual understanding and hands-on effectiveness, of students in a traditional labs and students who first explored a computer simulation and then turned to hands-on activities. The students who used simulations first had a better conceptual understanding, and they were faster at building a real circuit, than the students who had been doing hands-on circuit activities for the entire time. Clearly, in certain settings, simulations can be powerful pedagogical tools.

Two other aspects of computer simulations/modeling are worth mentioning. On the up side, the equipment budget is small for labs that are primarily computer-based, which is a benefit when resources are tight. On the down side, if students are working in groups, it is much easier for one person to dominate if all of the work takes place in front of the computer screen, either coding or running simulations.

Is there an ideal mix of hands-on and computer-based lab activities?

Exploring the laboratory landscape: Classic experiments

As an experimentalist, I naturally think labs are a critically important part of the physics major. I still remember it was the lab for my electronics class that sealed the deal on my becoming a physics major. I enjoy teaching labs, and I appreciate that labs can be particularly beneficial for students who are hands-on learners. Despite all this, I rarely think as deeply about teaching and designing labs as I do about my classroom teaching and activities. I think this is partly because of the limits of equipment budgets and the time involved in developing new labs. Both of these factors make it difficult to completely revamp the laboratory portion of a course, and thus when I inherit a course, I often adopt the labs that have already been used, making modifications where needed. Recently I’ve spent more time reflecting on various aspects of curricular labs, and over the coming days I’m going to use this forum to think aloud on this topic.

In my mind, there are a number of issues that must be considered… the function of “classic” experiments, the place of computer simulations, the balance between canned labs and build-an-experiment labs, the appropriate level of guidance, the importance of lab notebooks, write-ups, and oral presentations, the role of curricular labs as preparation for undergraduate research experiences.

Of course, before addressing any of these questions, one must begin by asking what are the goals for any particular lab? I don’t consider the main purpose of labs to be simply verifying ideas presented in the classroom. Rather, I consider labs to be an opportunity for skill building (from experimental techniques to visual presentation of data), introducing or clarifying concepts, and giving students an appreciation of various aspects of the experimental process. Andrew Morrison, in his article in The Physics Teacher in December 2008, noted a disconnect between students and faculty about the purpose of labs. When he asked his introductory physics students whether they agreed or disagreed with the following statement, “The main purpose of the lab is to reinforce concepts covered in the lecture,” nearly all students agreed. Morrison advocates discussing goals for labs with students early on in a course so as to address the discrepancy.

Eric Ayers, of CSU Chico, gave a great talk at a session on advanced labs at the AAPT Winter Meeting this year. In his talk, he emphasized that when planning labs it’s much more important to ask “What skills do I wants students to learn?” than “What experiments do I want students to do?” I think this is true of labs at many levels, not just the advanced lab. This brings me to one of the topics I’ve been thinking about…

The function of “classic” experiments

In modern physics and advanced lab courses, the “classic” experiments often play a large role–the Millikan oil drop experiment, the Frank-Hertz experiment, the Rutherford scattering experiment, etc. In my mind, the historical role of an experiment or the notion that “all physics majors do this experiment” is never a sufficient reason for including a particular experiment in the curriculum, but many of these classic experiments do give students skills and experience with particular types of data collection and analysis that are useful. In addition, it is possible to combine the experimental skills with an appreciation for the historical perspective. For example, in our sophomore level modern physics course, we have students do the Millikan oil drop experiment. The most important factor in having students do this experiment is NOT to have students prove that the fundamental unit of charge is 1.6 x 10^-19 C. Rather it’s a good introduction to some ideas in analysis and interpretation of data. In particular, I like to link this lab with an assigned paper on the Millikan/Ehrenhaft controversy, and the questions surrounding Millikan’s contention that his published results represent all data collected for a 60 day period when his lab notebooks indicate there is data that he did not include. Having done the experiment and seeing the difficulty of tracking the oil drops, students must begin to consider critically questions about the quality of data collected, the role of record-keeping, the obligations in reporting results, etc. In this case, the historical nature of the experiment and the associated controversy serve to get students to think about the ethical implications of data collection and analysis.

Coming soon… computer simulations in the lab

March Meeting miscellany

I’m back from the APS March Meeting, the big annual meeting for folks in condensed matter and materials physics. For the second year in a row, graphene was the focus of many sessions, joined by a plethora of sessions on this year’s hot topic, the iron pnictide superconductors.

A number of presentations about new developments in complex oxide interfaces and superlattices interested me. There is exciting work going on to better understand and manipulate the 2d metallic layer that is formed at the interface between LaAlO3 and SrTiO3, two materials that are insulating oxides.  Christian Bernhard gave an invited talk with some interesting results showing that, in multilayers of high-Tc cuprate superconductors and ferromagnetic manganites, the superconducting layers can modulate the magnetization profile in the superlattices.

As with any conference, there’s a lot more than just presenting and discussing physics research and results. Catching up with colleagues, collaborators, and other acquaintances is also important. The majority of these folks are researchers at large research universities or at national labs, and many of them don’t have a sense of what it is like to be a condensed matter experimentalist at a small liberal arts college like Carleton. At the conference, I answered the same questions over and over about my experience, leading me to summarize below what I see as the pluses and minuses of being an experimentalist at a small liberal arts college.

The benefits…

• One of my favorite aspects of being a condensed matter experimentalist at a small college is that I get to be in the lab getting my hands dirty, doing the experiments, because we don’t have grad students, post-docs, or lab techs. Although my undergraduate research assistants are in the lab, students have a limited number of hours to spend on research so I am working alongside them to keep things moving, and I like staying close to the experiments.

• I enjoy introducing undergraduates to research, and working with students who are curious and enthusiastic about research is lots of fun. The teaching/research interaction that happens when I have students working as partners on my research projects captures for me the essence of the teacher-scholar faculty model that liberal arts colleges tout.

The challenges…

• With teaching commitments, there’s not much time to focus on research during the academic year, and I often spend my limited research time managing numerous non-science aspects of the research endeavor, including purchasing, bookkeeping, grant writing, training students, carrying out maintenance, and working with facilities.

• The undergraduate life cycle in lab is short. Sometimes I get a student who starts working in the lab early and sticks with it for 2-3 years, which is wonderful, but many undergraduates can only devote 1 or 2 terms to doing research in my lab. This constant turn-over is not ideal for long term projects.

Clearly, the research expectations are different at a small liberal arts college than at a research university as is the amount of financial and physical plant support available, but that goes without saying.  The liberal arts environment is not for everybody, but it can be incredibly rewarding.

Understanding Science, on the web

I recently discovered the website Understanding Science, which is targeted at teachers and the general public and is one of the best presentations I’ve seen about what science is and how it gets done. Two aspects of the website stood out for me: its emphasis that there is more to doing science than following the cookie-cutter scientific method used in grade school science fairs and its discussion of the role of community in doing science.

The website has a wonderful visual representation of the scientific process that highlights the varied approaches and constituencies that contribute to the construction of scientific understanding and helps visitors recognize that science does not happen in a linear manner. I think the public’s view of an imagined rigidity to the scientific process often hinders the ability of scientists to effectively interact with the public, both in describing research results and in explaining how science can and cannot inform policy and impact society.

Although most scientists recognize the importance of community and interpersonal relations in doing science, they don’t always talk about the social side of the scientific endeavor, either amongst themselves or with the public, but this website does. The social side of science is one of the reasons why I think consideration of climate issues for underrepresented groups in the sciences is particularly important.  Because of the integrative and interactive way that science is done, a scientist who doesn’t feel comfortable in the science community simply can’t contribute as effectively as someone who is an insider, regardless of the level of personal talent.

Resources like this website often fly under the radar screen, which is why I’m sharing.