Perils of the Ice Queen

This year I have the privilege to be Dr. Fred Cheng (National Academy of Engineering) protege  at the The Academy of Medicine Engineering Science and Technology of Texas (TAMEST) conference. To be an inducted member of TAMEST, one must be a Nobel Prize member, member of the National Academy, or a member of the Royal Society and resident of Texas.  All members of TAMEST can designate a protege as a guest at their annual meetings.  Coincidently this year my husband, Steve, was the protege of David Meltzer (National Academy of Sciences).   The opening reception was held at the Houston Space Flight Visitor Center.  Together we got to explore the center’s various exhibits.

The event brought back memories of high school when I had grand plans of joining either the Air Force or Navy’s ROTC program and becoming a space flight control officer — as stepping stone to becoming an astronaut.  When career day came at my school, and we had to pair up with a professional in the field for a day to see what our dream jobs were really like, my school guidance counselor decided that the best match would not be an engineer or scientist — but the Navy recruiter who regularly visited our school.  Boy, I can tell you that had little to do with the job I had envisioned — because I really wasn’t interested in sales (the real job of a military recruiter) and this guy really didn’t get me.

The day I spent with the Navy recruiter we visited numerous high schools and talked to a bunch of kids and occasionally their parents.  Some of the students were already signed up and ready to go to boot camp, others were just thinking about signing up or just trying to get out of class for an hour.  However, the one vivid memory I have of that day that still haunts me happened at this one school where we didn’t have any visitors. The recruiter handed me this article to which he thought I would really relate. It was written by a navy wife.  She wrote about how she learned to “live with” the toilet paper having to be placed on the roll a certain way so she could no longer fold the edges under and other “regulations” that she had learned to live with it.

This seemed so ridiculous to me.  I felt absolutely insulted.  Did this guy really think I wanted to sit home all day and worry about cleaning bathrooms and folding the corners of toilet paper?  I had taken a day away from classes, extracurriculars (gymnastics practice) and my social life to learn about a future career in science and technology and this guy thought my concerns were domestic life — which I had pretty much mastered being the oldest of four kids with working parent living in rural America!

That day I learned nothing about a career in science.  It seemed to me like a complete waste of time.  But in retrospect — although I didn’t have the vocabulary or understanding of the concept at the time, I probably had my first glimpse of gender bias.  The recruiter thought that because I was a women, the “regulations” that a military life required would somehow upset and bother me in a way that it didn’t upset or bother men.  However, all the article really did was insult me.

In the end, I decided to not join  any ROTC program — I was afraid to commit that many years of my life without any guarantees I would end up with a choice of a career path.  So, I just went to college with no clue of what to even major in.   When I came out of college over a decade later,  I had a BS in Applied Math and Physics, an MA in Physics, and a Ph.D. in Physics and I now work as an Associate Professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.  I never did become an astronaut, but I have done a lot of very cool science.

Last night I went to dinner with a few women faculty and one of my young male graduate students who were attending the TAUP2017 conference with me in Sudbury, Canada. I made the comment to my student that he is sort of getting a glimpse of my professional life as a women physicist. However, instead of me being the only women at a table of old white men, he was the only young man at a table of old white women. To which one of my colleagues pointed out she was not old — I pointed out that compared to my graduate student she was.

This morning, the third day of the conference I was listening to one of my colleagues talk about the current status of long baseline neutrino experiments and I found my mind wondering to the dinner conversation the night before. I then realized that up to this point, I had seen only ONE female plenary physics speaker and we were on day 3 of the conference! I quickly thumbed through my program and did a quick calculation. By my count only 16% of plenary speakers at the major conference in my field would be women.

At the coffee break I pointed this out to a few colleagues. It didn’t seem to really phase them and they seemed to brush it off. I’m not naive, I know finding qualified women can be hard. There are only so many and they can bee oversubscribed, but lets look at some numbers in my field.

If I looked at the numbers, the most recent survey of women faculty I can find comes from AIP in 2010 where 14% of physics department faculty are reported as being women <https://www.aip.org/statistics/reports/women-among-physics-astronomy-faculty>. However, I hope that by 2017 we are doing better than that.

So, maybe it is better to do take a look of the breakdown at this conference. Doing a rough analysis of the percent of women at the conference based on the names of the first authors on submissions for posters and presentations, it appears the attendees at the conference are composed of 25% women. So, it seems to me, aiming to have 25% women represented in the plenary session as presenters and as session chairs would be a good goal to set.

When these goals can not be met, I think a good strategy is to arrange the agenda in such a way that early on in the conference the under represented group doesn’t appear to be quite so under represented.

Tomorrow begins an epic day of cooking. Each year I take up the challenge to cook an entire meal from scratch. This might not sound like much – but consider that I bake all the desserts and the dinner rolls while simultaneously smoking a turkey on our charcoal grill. I do use canned pumpkin, but the pie crusts, apples, cranberries, veggies, etc. are fresh. Below I outline my game plan for tomorow (Thanksgiving Day, or as we call it at the Cooley-Sekula house, Turkenfunken),

Soak the hickory chips for the smoker.

First thing started will be the pumpkin cheesecake with praline topping. It needs to set for 8 hours before serving. I opted for cheesecake this year rather than pie. I am not a of pumpkin pie and every other year I opt for an alternate pumpkin .

Start the charcoal.

Next I will start the dinner rolls, bringing them to the point of their first rise.. This year I am trying a variation on my potato roll recipe. It will contain both whole wheat flour and sweet potato. We’ll see how that goes.

While the dough is rising I will work on the pies. I haven’t decided which will go first — pecan or apple. The apple will talent more work – I need to reduce the cider glaze, peel the apples and make a double crust. Maybe I will start there.

At this point the dough for the rolls will likely be ready. If that is the case I will finish the rolls, else I will make the bread crumbs for the dressing.

Lunch break and time to break out the chef’s wine glass (and of course fill it).

Next up – the awesome cranberry sauce. It will be made on the stovetop and then moved to the fridge.

While everything is baking there will be time to peel the carrots and trim the Brussel sprouts. This year I got new potatoes – so, they will not need peeling.

Once the turkey finishes, the mashed potato casserole and Brussel sprouts will go into the oven. I will finish the glazed carrots on the stove and also make the gravy.

Finally, I will stir the pecans into the cranberry sauce.

Hopefully my helpers have pressed the linen and set the table by this point, because I will start bringing out the food. God willing it will be dinner time and all crises will have been averted.

Most importantly, I will have conquered that once a year fest known as Turkenfunken once again. Next crisis – Christmas cookies ( I will crush you!)

Yesterday on our way home from the airport, Steve pointed out to me that we were at a milestone, the end of a decade.  I found myself reflecting upon the thing that happened in my life this past decade that were important to me in some way.

In the past 10 years, I have traveled to five of the seven continents on the earth.  I have earned a Ph.D. in physics,  did postdoc studies at MIT and Stanford University, and finally became a Professor of Physics at SMU this past year.  I have lived in four different cities spanning each coast of these United States.

I became married.  I have watched my family expand as my siblings married and had children.  I became a godmother to three of my four nieces and nephews.

I completed the Lakefront Marathon in Milwaukee, WI.

Not all things that have happened this past decade were cause for celebration.  I have seen friends and loved ones struggle with relationships.  Some loved ones have passed away.

As I think ahead to the next decade, I find myself wondering where I will be in the next 10 years.  Will I get tenure (think job security for Professors) or will I need to start an entirely new chapter in my career?  Will I have children?  Will I have visited every continent on the earth?  Will I ever make it to a high school class reunion?  Will I ever be a home owner? 

During my commute last week I listened to an episode of the Diane Rehm show (NPR) “11:00 Nobel Prize Winners:  Women in Science” (episode linked here:  http://wamu.org/programs/dr/09/12/02.php#28913).  I am pleased that this topic is being discussed on a national show.

The enevitable topic that is always brought up in discussions of women and minorities in the sciences is the concept of a leaky pipeline.  For those unfamilar, the analogy is that there is one path to success in the sciences, this is the pipeline.  Although we get women and minorities into the pipe early on (high school and undergrad), we loose them at various stages (graduation from undergrad, graduate school, postdoctoral, etc), this is the leak. 

Everyone focuses on fixing “the leak”.  I think we need to get rid of the pipe and replace it with a highway with “on ramps”.  We need to realize, as one of Diane’s guest points out, that a “one size fits all” approach to success does not and can not work if we want to diversify the scientific community.