President’s note
Hello from (mostly) sunny Cloncurry!
I am in the North Queensland outback at the moment doing field work with my PhD student, Alanis Olesch-Byrne. We have been having a brilliant time working on a fascinating zone of deformation that is thought to have channeled the fluids that concentrated rare earth elements at Mary Kathleen mine. It has been interesting to see the variety of men who express surprise that two women are doing field work without a man. One even commented “but how will you collect rock samples?” On a positive note, thinking about that particular comment as I sledgehammer a rock out of a cliff face has provided the extra force required for particularly hard samples.
This month at WOMEESA we are calling for members for two new subcommittees. We are looking to supercharge our effort in the second half of the year and we need our wonderful members to help us out. More details about that below.
I hope to see lots of you at our brilliant seminar and shut up and write session later this month.
Cheers,
Melanie
WOMEESA News
Launching WOMEESA Pm
We are so thrilled to be launching our first mentoring program! It will run a little differently from conventional one-on-one mentoring - it is a peer-mentoring program in which groups of 5 to 6 women at the same career stage and with similar interests meet once a month/bimonthly. One of the advantages of peer mentoring is that you get to form close networks with several different women and you also get the experience of being both a mentor and a mentee. WOMEESA-PM will launch on the 17th of June at 12 pm (Sydney time), with a panel of three outstanding WOMEESA members that will share their experiences in other mentoring and peer-mentoring programs, the challenges they faced and the positive impacts they had on their career and personal life. Register here for the program and for the launch event.
Online Seminar Series
Each month we host a seminar via zoom from a WOMEESA member. Our seminar series aims to increase the visibility of women in science and provide inspiring role models. Attendance is open to everyone, including non-members.
Details of upcoming seminars on posted the seminar webpage here, and past seminars are posted on our YouTube channel here. We’re also compiling a list of talks by women in earth and environmental sciences in the region which you can find on the seminars webpage.
The April WOMEESA seminar was presented by Caroline Eakin from the Australian National University. You can watch it here.
Don’t miss the next WOMEESA Seminar:
Wednesday 11 May 2022, 2pm AEST (Sydney time)
Dr Juliet Sefton, Tufts University, USA
“Late Holocene sea-level changes on small ocean islands”
See our website for more information
Talk summary: Geological records are important for understanding sea-level change on small ocean islands, where there are often limited modern observation data. This talk will explore how we can use geological methods to reconstruct sea level over the last 5,000 years, and the implications geological knowledge has for improving sea-level projections into the future.
Juliet Sefton is a postdoc in the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Tufts University. She studies sea-level change in the Quaternary using coastal sediments. Currently based in Melbourne, she started her career in sea-level research at Victoria of University of Wellington in New Zealand.
WOMEESA #SUAW session
On the last Friday of the month we hold an online Shut Up and Write #SUAW session via zoom. We get together and talk briefly about what we want to achieve in the session, then write for about 50 minutes.
It’s a great opportunity to connect with other members and get some uninterrupted writing done. Even if you don’t have anything to write, you can just come along and say hi.
Next event will be Friday 27 May, 12 pm (Sydney time) the zoom link will be emailed out to members the day before.
New WOMEESA sub-committees
We are launching two new sub-committees to help us achieve our 2022-23 goals. If you are interested in being involved in either one, please get in touch womeesa.network@gmail.com
Sponsorship sub-committee: This subcommittee will be led by Jessica Walsh and will help WOMEESA obtain sponsors to fund our future initiatives. People in this subcommittee will help Jess determine who we should approach for sponsorship and help formulate our relationships with sponsors.
Awards sub-committee: This subcommittee will be led by Mardi McNeil and aims to increase the number of women in Earth and Environmental science who are nominated for awards. Women receive a disproportionately low number of awards in Australasia each year, and we would love to help turn that around by helping women nominate themselves, and putting together nominations for some of the brilliant women in our community.
(py)GPlates short course
Dr Sabin Zahirovic from the University of Sydney is hosting a free (py)GPlates short course in May. GPlates is a program for creating plate tectonic reconstructions and it is free to download. You can register for the workshop here. Sabin is a great supporter of WOMEESA and the broader geoscience community, we are so happy to be supporting this generous initiative.
WOMEESA South Australian Chapter events
The SA team have been busy planning some local events. To keep up to date with SA chapter activities follow them on LinkedIn.
Here are all the links to register for their upcoming events:
May 13th F2F: https://lnkd.in/dxj6h_9a
June 16th Virtual Trivia: https://lnkd.in/gzUAMs8S
July 15th F2F: https://lnkd.in/dCXYmBv9
August 11th Virtual Trivia: https://lnkd.in/gtUZwMxt
Member spotlights
Our member spotlights are helping increasing the visibility of women working in earth and environmental sciences in the region and share experiences. If you would like to feature on a member spotlight page or write an article for our blog page please get in touch with Jess (j.hillman@gns.cri.nz)
Our most recent member spotlight is about Neethu Madhukumar. You can read all about her here and see all our member spotlights here.
Other WOMEESA news
First Knowledges Book Series
The First Knowledges series of books describes Indigenous knowledges in a range of areas and their modern applications. The series will include six books in total and we were particularly excited to see the most recent volume launched. It focuses on Indigenous astronomy, authored by Astronomer Karlie Noon and Astrophysicist Krystal De Napoli. They describe how astronomy is linked to Indigenous environmental and cultural practices, and what needs to be done to preserve the night skies into the future. You can hear an interview with Karlie and Krystal on Radio National, here. The next addition to the series is out in October and focuses on Indigenous knowledge about plants.
Article on gender equality mistakes
Michelle Ryan penned an article (linked here) in Nature this month on the three mistakes that universities typically make when it comes to action on gender equality. It is definitely worth reading if you are in any organisation that is trying to improve gender equality.
Online seminar: Mis-adventures of a mathematician in industry
Audrey Addison will be presenting a talk on Thursday May 5 at 12pm (AEST) titled Mis-adventures of a Mathematician in Industry. You can find out more here and register to attend at this link. This is Audrey’s summary of her talk: What does a scientist do? That question was at the top of my mind as I was finishing up my PhD in Mathematics in 2014. My plans of teaching at the college level were thwarted by the two body problem, so I turned my focus to industry instead. What followed was a series of positions in three disparate industries: Oil and Gas, Industrial Engineering and Tech where I found that the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. In this talk, I’ll share my personal experiences in industry and as a military officer, demonstrate how a mathematician or scientist might find a niche in industry and summarize some lessons learned.
#MyScienceMay
Avid research and Let’s talk scicomm are teaming up for #MyScienceMay. The idea is that there is a different prompt on every second weekday of May for people to respond to on social media. You can make your response via text, video, emojis, gifs - whatever you like. There is no pressure to post for every prompt, just engage however you like. For updates and more information, follow @Avid_podcast or @LetsTalkSciComm on twitter.
Volcaknowledge podcast
This excellent podcast features interviews with some of the best minds in volcanology, including Rebecca Starkey, Natasha Dowey, Cansu Culha, Jazmin Scarlett, and Janine Krippner. Season one has just wrapped, and you can listen in here.
AGU Distinguished Lecturer Series
Dr Cathryn Manduca is the Director of the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) at Carleton College. She will present the next lecture in the AGU Distinguished Lecturer Series on May 4 at 10am (Sydney time). The topic is “Toward a Successful, Sustainable and Just Future: The Role of Geoscience Education and Geoscience Education Research”. You can find out more and register to attend (free) here.
100 women in polar science
Women in polar science (WIPS) is featuring 100 women working in polar science. The website is updated weekly and each woman is featured on their twitter feed @womeninpolarsci. What surprised me was the huge diversity in polar science careers, from linguistics, to krill science, to climate change and glaciers.
Opportunities
PhD opportunities:
Fully funded PhD projects in geoscience at JCU, Townsville with a range of topics available, from geochemistry through to structural geology. Some of these projects are supervised by WOMEESA members, Helen McCoy-West (helen.mccoywest@jcu.edu.au) and Melanie Finch (melanie.finch@jcu.edu.au), who you can contact to find out more about the department, the projects and living in a tropical paradise.
Fully funded PhD position at JCU using experimental games and social norms to influence poaching in marine protected areas. Applications close May 9, 2022 5pm AEST. Contact me on brock.bergseth@jcu.edu.au, full details here: https://dropbox.com/s/d2n13o5x6lxe
Earthquakes and regional tectonics of New Zealand at the University of Canterbury (May 15)
The Indigenous Knowledge Institute at the University of Melbourne is seeking applications from Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars who wish to undertake a PhD on a topic related to Indigenous knowledges. Applications close May 27 unless allocated earlier.
Have an opportunity you’d like to share? Let us know: womeesa.network@gmail.com.
Newsletter Editor-in-Chief
Melanie Finch
Melanie is President of WOMEESA and a geoscience lecturer at JCU. Email her at womeesa.network@gmail.com if you have news or opportunities to include in the next newsletter.
Newsletter Contributors
Alanis Olesch-Byrne
Alanis is part of the WOMEESA committee and the postgraduate representative. She is a PhD student in structural and metamorphic geology at James Cook University and she writes the postgraduate student news section in each newsletter. You can email her with your news: alanis.oleschbyrne@my.jcu.edu.au