Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 16:11:17 -0500 (EST)
Subject: CSWA Newsletter of 6/28/2000
To: AASMAIL: ;
AAS Committee on the Status of Women
weekly issues of 6/28/2000, ed. by Priscilla Benson
*** send email and addresses to aaswomen
wellesley.edu ***
This week's issues:
1. SUMMARY OF THE CSWA SESSION AT THE JUNE AAS MEETING
2. Virtual Observatories Opportunities
Editor's Note: During the summer the newsletter will
probably be out only every other week unless there is a lot
of material to get out.
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1. SUMMARY OF THE CSWA SESSION AT THE JUNE AAS MEETING
From: cmustsci.edu
The CSWA session at the AAS meeting in Rochester was an
open discussion of current issues facing women in astronomy.
As the new CSWA Chair, I opened the meeting expressing
concerns about recent evidence that women are not
progressing equally in our professions (see June 2000
STATUS).
AAS representatives Bob Milkey (Executive Officer), Kevin
Marvel (Associate Executive Officer), and Arlo Landolt (AAS
Secretary) made several points, including:
o The AAS Demographic Survey, for which results on
women were reported in the June STATUS, will be
repeated every 2 years.
o Greater coordination between the CSWA and other
AAS committees (on employment, education, minorities,
public policy) would be very valuable because of our
common interests.
o Interested AAS members can volunteer to serve on
AAS committees or to be session chairs at AAS meeting,
and women are encouraged to do so (send email to Arlo
Landolt at aassecrouge.phys.lsu.edu).
During subsequent discussion with the audience, several
specific issues arose.
Congress has funded efforts (e.g., $10 M to NSF) to improve
the situation of women in astronomy. This would be a good
issue for coordination with the public policy committee.
One key issue concerns dual career couples. The problem of
getting two jobs in one geographical location affects both
men and women, of course, but since women
astronomers/physicists are far more likely to be married
to other scientists than men, it has a disproportionate
effect on women.
In some cases, job sharing (two people sharing one position)
has been an effective solution. We will try to describe this
--- how it works, how often it has been done, and how it is
perceived on both sides of the employment equation --- in a
future issue of STATUS.
Kevin Marvel commented that this same issue --- dual careers
--- was being discussed by the employment committee, and
there is a tentative plan to hold a session at the January
2001 AAS meeting in San Diego. Laura Kay volunteered to work
on this with Kevin, on behalf of the CSWA.
There are several useful Web sites addressing dual careers,
including:
o A report by physicists Laurie McNeil and Marc Sher
(www.physics.wm.edu/dualcareer.html)
o A discussion on the AWIS (American Women in
Science) site
(www.awis.org/html/dual_careers.html)
Several people expressed an interest in mentoring,
especially for postdocs and junior faculty. Postdocs in
particular can be isolated. This issue will be discussed
with the AAS Committee on Employment.
There were suggestions that we could consider mentor
matching at a future AAS meeting, and/or we could explore
internet-based matching. Kevin Marvel has posted a link to
http://www.mentornet.net/, a national mentoring network for
women in science and engineering.
GENERAL CSWA NEWS
Every June, new CSWA members are appointed. The current
membership and terms are:
Meg Urry (2000-2003), Chair
Beatrice Mueller (1998-2001)
Wal Sargent (1998-2001)
Regina Schulte-Ladbeck (1998-2001)
Lisa Frattare (1999-2002)
plus 4 members recently appointed (and still to be
confirmed).
Many thanks are due Priscilla Benson for her leadership of
the CSWA over the past three years, and for continuing to
administer AASWOMEN for a few months until we can transition
it to STScI. (Until further notice, please continue to
correspond with aaswomenwellesley.edu.)
Over the next few months, the CSWA will be developing goals
and plans for the coming year. We welcome suggestions (send
to cmustsci.edu) and will try to keep the community
apprised of ongoing activities through the AASWOMEN server.
Please encourage interested colleagues who have not already
done so, to subscribe to AASWOMEN (send email to
aaswomenwellesley.edu) and to the semi-annual newsletter
STATUS (send email to ssavoyaas.org).
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2. Virtual Observatories opportunities
jwrightnsf.gov
Forwarded from:
From: Robert J. Brunner [SMTP:rbastro.caltech.edu]
Sent: Friday, June 23, 2000 5:40 PM
To: efrielnsf.gov
Subject: NVO Funding Opportunites
At the suggestion of Joe Bredekamp, I am passing along the
following information regarding NASA funding opportunities
for NVO related activities.
Cheers,
Robert
_________________________________________________
To: Parties interested in the Virtual Observatory
Several NASA information technology programs are
potential sources of funding for VO related research.
The NASA Research Announcements listed below have
relatively near due dates.
1. NRA 2-37143
--------------
Research in Intelligent Systems
http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/ic/nra/
Step 1 Proposals are due July 11, 2000
(this is NOT just a letter of intent)
Of the four technology areas covered, two
(Intelligent Data Understanding and Automated
Reasoning) may be relevant.
2: NRA 00-OSS-01 (A.9)
----------------------
Applied Information Systems Research
(part of Research Opportunities in Space Science)
Notice of Intent due July 14, 2000
Proposals due September 15, 2000
http://spacescience.nasa.gov/nra/00-oss-01/
http://spacescience.nasa.gov/nra/00-oss-01/A.9.1.html
The Applied Information Systems Research solicitation seeks
innovative applications of computer science and information
technology to improve the effectiveness of space science
research endeavors. Priority consideration
will be given to proposals that foster and facilitate
interdisciplinary research or that contribute to high
performance information technology frameworks for conducting
space science research.
3: NASA COOPERATIVE AGREEMENT NOTICE FOR INCREASING
INTEROPERABILITY AND PERFORMANCE OF GRAND CHALLENGE
APPLICATIONS IN THE EARTH AND SPACE SCIENCES
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To be released within weeks, with a 60 day response period.
The draft version of the CAN located at the following web
site address:
http://esdcd.gsfc.nasa.gov/ESS/CAN2000/CAN.html
This Cooperative Agreement Notice (CAN) is a joint
solicitation from the Earth Science and Space Science
Enterprises and is part of the HPCC Earth and Space Sciences
(ESS) Project. ESS is a cross-cutting information technology
activity striving to enable the NASA sciences Enterprises
and their field centers to meet increasing mission
requirements more effectively and efficiently using high
performance computing and communications.
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End of CSWA Newsletter of 6/28/2000