Scientists and Human Rights

An editorial in Science by Leonard Rubenstein and Mona Younis.

The “On-call” Scientists AAAS program.

White Victim Mentality

The new study by Michael Norton (Harvard) and Samuel Sommers (Tufts) is filling up pages and pages of news”papers” and bringing up many ideas around affirmative action.

• Is Anti-White Bias a Problem? room for debate on The New York Times

• I’m afraid the best I have found is in Spanish: “Aún hacen falta cuotas raciales” at elpais.com

• Some things mentioned in the more extensive analysis (note: yes, some of them are scary):

• Grutter v. Bollinger (wiki summary)

• Ricci v. DeStefano (wiki summary)

• The Negro Family by Mr. Moynihan (a comment on it)

Biopolitics of Race

Dorothy E. Roberts talks about the biopolitics of race in her new book Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the 21st Century (a short article about it here) and her article What’s Wrong with Race-Based Medicine?: Genes, Drugs and Health Disparities

Stages of Change model for attitude and behavior change

Something to think about when we try to implement any changes, at institutional level or with the students' learning habits:

Precontemplation> Contemplation> Preparation (planning)>  Action> Maintenance>Termination

The development of the model

• The initial paper, around self-change of smoking: Prochaska and DiClemente, 1983.
• In search of how people change: Applications to addictive behavior; Prochaska, DiClemente and Norcross 1992.
• The transtheoretical model of health behavior change; Prochaska and Velicer, 1997.

And some related references and examples, quite far from our scope, I am afraid, but useful anyway:

• An analysis of the model by a graduate student of Applied Psychology; Lenio 2006.
• A nice collection of references at the Motivation at a Glance site.
• Changing people's traveling behaviours (TravelSmart) and Reducing Alcohol harm (HAMS) have some cartoons that helped me understanding the concept. I add them in case there are more visual learners out there.
• Trying to forget that the World Bank is behind this analysis of the Theories of Behavior Change, I have to admit that this brief report on Communication for Governance and the references therein were useful to me.

Support

The Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education has:

• some grants
• plenty of publications including a series of Essays on Teaching Excellence and A Guide to Faculty Development (book reference)
• and many more things I suggest you to check at some point

Designing learning experiences

Ernest Becker's Beyond Alienation: A Philosophy of Education for the Crisis of Democracy

Dee Fink's Creating Significant Learning Experiences (2003) and his full-of-resources website

Why we have too few women leaders

Gender Wage Gap

The Gender Wage Gap by Occupation published some time ago by the Institute for Womens' Policy Research. In summary, no matter what, in the most common occupations for women, the most common occupations for men, the occupations with the highest earnings, the occupations with the lowest earnings: men earn more than women except in the "Combined food preparation and serving workers, including fast food" category. But bias only exists in your imagination...

Measuring Diversity

AAAS & NSF guide “Measuring Diversity: An Evaluation Guide for STEM Graduate Program Leaders" 2011

Research Deconstruction

Research-Based Science Instruction for Early-Stage Undergraduates and High School Students by HHMI Professor Utpal Banerjee at UCLA, the same professor who published a high impact factor paper on Drosphila eye development with 138 undergrads.

Ethics and Patents

Last week's news about gene patents brought to my mind a paper I re-read no long ago:

• Reasons Scientists Avoid Thinking about Ethics. Wolpe 2006. Cell

The news about the patents:

• Rulling Upholds Gene Patent in Cancer Test, on the New York Times.
• Pigs return to Earth: Federal Circuit Reinstates Most - but not all - of Myriad's Patents, a Genomics Law Report

Preparing Those Who will Become Faculty

Andrea Widener wonders on the HHMI bulletin Is there Room for Teaching and Research in a Postdoc Experience.

The Johns Hopkins Institute for Basic Medical Sciences launches a pilot program for postdocs who want to learn to teach.

Extensive information at the Preparing Future Faculty  Program including:

• Preparing Future Faculty in the Sciences and Mathematics: A Guide for Change
• Resources
• Research on Doctoral Education
• Emerging and Future Roles of Faculty
• Preparation to Assess Learning
• Infusing PFF Ideas into the Disciplines
• Organizing and Supporting Effective Mentoring
• Establishing and Maintaining Effective Partnerships
• Utilizing Case Studies in Discussion of Faculty Roles and Responsibilities
• Teaching Resource Links
• Research Resource Links
• Career and Job Search Information Links
• Miscellaneous "Graduate Student Life" Resource Links

Some teaching training programs I have heard of:

• FIRST IV
• The Teaching Fellow Postdocs at University of Colorado Boulder (I can't find the link but I know they exist!)
• SABER: Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research
• Teaching Postdoc Program at the University of Arizona
• SEPAL (Science Education Partnership and Assessment Laboratory) at SFSU

(if you know more, do not hesistate to leave a link on the comments)