Sciencewomen Reader Challenge 2008 begins! Fund proposals for DonorsChoose, help kids.

Six things departments can do to make interviews more comfortable

Negotiating the "illegal questions" on an academic job interview

SciWo's Storytime: Little Squirt the Fire Truck
I am not in charge of SciWo's Storytime. Sure, it might look like I'm the one reading the books and operating the video camera, but Minnow exerts the ultimate executive authority as editor-in-chief. Some weeks no videos whatsoever are allowed to be made, some weeks she's content to let me pick the book, and some weeks she is quite happy to make a whole string of videos, so long as she chooses the content. With that proviso, Minnow presents this week's edition of SciWo's Storytime featuring the book

Tips from the top: Mentoring is really, super important to help people succeed.
Recently I had the opportunity to attend a talk by Gail Cassell, a member of the National Academies' Institute of Medicine, and one of the authors of the NAS report Rising Above the Gathering Storm. Dr. Cassell is currently Vice Presi

Hi. I'm boring. (But there's a beautiful necklace at the end.)
I even stole the title from Lady Scientist, because I am just that original these days. I spent the week teaching, advising, mothering, and making some progress on my InaDWriMo goals for the month. As of last week the goals stood like this: Done! Finish revisions on the paper-that-won't-die (goal: November 13) Done! Internal relea

SciWo's Storytime: Knuffle Bunny!
Three weeks ago, I had no idea who Knuffle Bunny was. Then one of our loyal readers and DonorsChoose philanthropists, requested the Mo Willems' book "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus." Minnow seemed enthusiastic about the pigeon boo

Ask sciencewomen: If I'm happy with an MS, should I get a PhD?
From the mailbag: I have a Masters in Biology (from a 5 year BS/MS program) and for the past 4 years I've been working as a lab manager/technician. I have my own research project(s) in addition to keeping track of ordering/equipment maintenance/mouse breeding/etc. All-in-all it's a sweet gig and I could see myself doing this or something similar for most of my career. The problem is that there seems to be this culture in biology that one has to get a PhD, and my competitive side kind of feels the need to get one mostly just to show that I