News

Speakers from Harvard, Princeton, Rutgers Newark and New Brunswick, and U Mass.

Women’s role in the sciences dates back to ancient times, to Babylonian astronomer En Hedu’Anna.  Yet some 4,400 years later, fewer than 25 percent of those working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are women.  The role of women in the sciences will be explored March 6 at “Women and Science,” a free daylong public symposium at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J.

WHO: Female researchers and professors from various science disciplines, brought together by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Rutgers-Newark and the RU-FAIR (Rutgers University Faculty Advancement and Institutional Re-imagination), a program designed to increase the participation and advancement of women in academic science and engineering careers by changing institutional culture and practices.

WHAT:  A public daylong symposium (breakfast and lunch will be provided) including:

• A morning roundtable on “Women in Science,” featuring Rutgers female science professors, examining ways to attract and retain women in the sciences
• An afternoon panel on “Gender, Race and Scientific Discourse,” which will address topics such as the history of science and women’s roles in it, the language of science, and how the study of science is shaped by gender and culture

Preliminary agenda follows.

WHEN:  Wednesday, March 6, 2013, 9 a.m. – 3 p.m.

WHERE: Paul Robeson Campus Center, the Essex Room, 350 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., at Rutgers University, Newark

For more information: Julian Gill-Peterson, jgillp@pegasus.rutgers.edu.  

MEDIA CONTACT:  Carla Capizzi, 973-353-5263; capizzi@rutgers.edu

WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM:  WOMEN AND SCIENCE
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6 2012, 9:30 AM – 3 PM
ROBESON CAMPUS CENTER, ESSEX ROOM

9:30 am: Breakfast; 9:45 am: Welcome

Panel I, 10:15 am – 11:45 am: Women in Science at Rutgers

• Judith Weis, professor, biology, Rutgers-Newark
• Jessica Ware, assistant professor, biology, Rutgers-Newark
• April Benasich, professor, neuroscience, Rutgers-Newark
• Joan Bennett, Office for the Promotion of Women in Science, Rutgers-New Brunswick 

Panel II, 1 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.: Gender, Race and Scientific Discourse 

• Sarah Richardson, assistant professor, history of science, Harvard 
• Erika Lorraine Milam, associate professor, history of science, Princeton 
• Banu Subramaniam, associate professor, women’s and gender studies, University of Massachusetts-Amherst 
• Kyla Schuller, assistant professor, women’s and gender studies, Rutgers-New Brunswick