from the 13-Feb-2006 cover story in Time magazine on : www.time.com/time/

Perhaps even more important than the struggle of U.S. students to keep pace with their international peers is their failure to keep up in enthusiasm for the subject.

At 2004's Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Portland, Ore., the world's pre-eminent precollege science event, Intel chairman Craig Barrett asked China's Education Minister how many students there take part in regional science fairs. “When he said 6 million kids, it was a moment of reflection,” says Barrett.

In the U.S., about 50,000 take part in the fairs.

Stanford University president John Hennessy is worried about a lack of role models, among other things. “We have [TV] shows about doctors, lawyers, politicians. Where are our role models of scientific innovation?” asks Hennessy. “We need Eddie the Engineer or Sam the Scientist.”
---------------

... presumably "Sam" is short for "Samantha"...

Even with President Hennessy on record with respect to the importance of attracting/retaining women in STEM (e.g., his 12-Feb-2006 op-ed piece in The Boston Globe co-written with President Hockfield [MIT] and President Tilghman [Princeton]), it's not too helpful to then discuss in such a little-read backwater forum as Time magazine the importance of Eddie and Sam as scientific "role models".

One has to laugh at the embedded view of the world we all carry and all too often display by our verbal and nonverbal slips when we least would want to do so.

It's why I still think Rep. Ehlers made such an important point when he introduced himself at a 11-Oct-2001 Congressional breakfast as "Hi, my name is Vern--and I'm a recovering racist and a recovering sexist.

...

my best,

'bosslady'


PS: we'll assume the tenured, endowed chair, XY full professor who wrote the following in response to the November mailing was just having a *really* bad day:
_______________________

I know why women are underrepresented in STEM Institutions.

They are all unbearable hell holes. Women--as judged by my wife and daughter--are smarter than men. They know instinctively to avoid places like this.

A race for the bottom phenotypically speaking.