Keynote Speakers and Symposia
Jacquelynne S. Eccles
Distinguished Professor and Network Patron Jacquelynne S. Eccles has asked the Conference Committee to extend her regret that she will be unable to deliver her scheduled Keynote and join us for the conference due to a family bereavement. We have expressed our condolences and have cards for colleagues and friends attending the conference to express their sympathies, please check at the registration desk. Professor Helen Watt, co-Founder of the Network, is honored to accept Professor Eccles’ request to present a keynote address to begin our conference.
Helen M.G. Watt
Helen M. G. Watt is Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Sydney, and Australian Research Council Future Fellow 2017–2021. She previously served at Monash University, and the Universities of Michigan, Western Sydney, Sydney, and Macquarie. Her longitudinal programs have implications for supporting career development of beginning teachers (www.fitchoice.org), and redressing gender imbalances in STEM fields (www.stepsstudy.org). Helen is currently Associate Editor for AERA Open and on several editorial boards. She edited books including Global perspectives on teacher motivation (CUP 2017); Teacher motivation (Routledge 2014); Gender and occupational outcomes (APA 2008) and co-founded Network Gender & STEM: www.genderandSTEM.com
Kimberly A. Scott
Kimberly A. Scott is an Associate Professor in the Women and Gender Studies Department at Arizona State University (ASU) and Founder/Executive Director of ASU’s Center for Gender Equity in Science and Technology (CGEST). Founded by Scott, the center is a one-of-a-kind research unit focused on exploring, identifying, and creating innovative scholarship about under-represented girls in science, technology, education and mathematics (STEM). Center projects include the National Science Foundation-funded COMPUGIRLS; Gates-funded project on African American Families and Technology Use; and NSF-funded Culturally Responsive Co-Robotics Program. Scott is also an Affiliate Faculty in George Mason University’s Center for Digital Media Innovation and Diversity located in Fairfax, Virginia. Trained as a sociologist of education and childhoods, Scott’s interdisciplinary work examines girls’ of color (African American, Native American, Latina) social and academic development in informal spaces and their technosocial innovations. With nearly 50 publications in outlets such as the, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, International Journal of Gender, Science, and Technology, Feminism and Psychology, Huffington Post, and Slate, to name a few, Kimberly is also co-author of the Rowman and Littlefield book Kids in Context and co-editor of the IAP published book, Research in Urban Educational Settings: Lessons Learned and Implications for Future Practice. Recently, she published Women Education Scholars and Their Children’s Schooling (Routledge) and is completing COMPUGIRLS: Becoming Ourselves in This Digital Age (University of Illinois Press). Prior to becoming an academic, Scott worked as an urban educator with international and national institutions including a center for girls in Chiang Mai Thailand; the Educational Law Center in Newark, New Jersey; and the National Museum of African Art-Smithsonian. Having written and successfully won over $4 million in grant funding to support research about and programs for girls of color and digital media use, Scott was named in 2014 as a White House Champion of Change for STEM Access. The same year, the publication Diverse Issues in Higher Education identified Kimberly as one of the top 30 women in higher education. Dr. Scott earned her B.A. from Smith College in Art History and French Literature, an M.S. from Long Island University in Curriculum and Instruction/Elementary Education and her Ed.D. from Rutgers University in Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education, and completed at Harvard’s Business School the High Potentials Leadership Program.
Kathryn Scantlebury
Kathryn Scantlebury is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Delaware and Director of Secondary Education in the College of Arts and Sciences and a visiting research professor at the Center for Gender Research at Uppsala University in Sweden. She taught high school chemistry, science and mathematics in Australia before completing her doctorate at Purdue University. Her research interests focus on gender issues in various aspects of science education, including urban education, preservice teacher education, teachers’ professional development, and academic career paths in academe. Scantlebury is currently a co-editor for Gender and Education and a lead editor for Cultural Studies of Science Education. Her recent publications include two edited books, “Material practice and materiality: A re-introduction into science education” and “Turning feminist theory into practice: Enacting material change in education. She served as the Research Director for the National Science Teachers Association (2011-2014), is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is the 2017 Recipient the American Education Research Association’s Distinguished Contributions to Gender Equity in Education Research Award and Research on Women and Education SIG’s Willystine Goodsell Award.
Alice Pawley
Alice Pawley is an Associate Professor in the School of Engineering Education and an affiliate faculty member in the Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies Program and the Division of Environmental and Ecological Engineering at Purdue University. Prof. Pawley’s goal through her work at Purdue is to help people, including the engineering education profession, develop a vision of engineering education as more inclusive, engaged, and socially just. She runs the Feminist Research in Engineering Education (FREE, formerly RIFE, group), whose diverse projects and group members are described at feministengineering.org. She received a CAREER award in 2010 and a PECASE award in 2012 for her project researching the stories of undergraduate engineering women and men of color and white women. She has received ASEE-ERM’s best paper award for her CAREER research, and the Denice Denton Emerging Leader award from the Anita Borg Institute, both in 2013. She was co-PI of Purdue’s ADVANCE program from 2008-2014, focusing on the underrepresentation of women in STEM faculty positions. She helped found, fund, and grow the PEER Collaborative, a peer mentoring group of early career and recently tenured faculty and research staff primarily evaluated based on their engineering education research productivity. She can be contacted by email at apawley@purdue.edu.
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Invited Symposium
The social contexts of girls’ and women’s developing sense of belonging in STEM
Researchers are increasingly documenting the multiple factors contribute to women’s underrepresentation in particular STEM fields such as computer science, engineering, or physics. As highlighted in our session, scientific studies point to subtle and blatant ways that that many girls’ and women’s sense of STEM belonging is gradually undermined from childhood into adulthood. These include gendered messages that students may experience from their parents (Simpkins) as well as from teachers and peers in STEM classrooms (Riegle-Crumb). Also, girls and women may stereotype particular STEM fields as incompatible with other goals that they consider important, such as helping others (Diekman). However, interventions aimed at counteracting stereotypes may help boost girls’ and women’s STEM interest and belonging (Masters). We consider the significance and implications of this work (Leaper).
Campbell Leaper Chair and Discussant
Campbell Leaper is Professor and Department Chair of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. For over 30 years, he has been investigating gender and sexism during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Many of his studies have examined how gender biases and discrimination are related to girls’ and women’s motivation and success in STEM. Other research interests include the study of peer relations as contexts for the development of gender (and other) identities; gender ideologies and close relationships; language and social interaction; and representations of gender in the media. He has also published several meta-analyses documenting moderators of average gender differences in behavior. Professor Leaper organizes and co-chairs the biennial Gender Development Research Conference (gender.ucsc.edu), which is held in San Francisco during the fall of even years.
Sandi Simpkins
The role of parents’ beliefs and behaviors in adolescents’ motivational beliefs in math and science Professor Sandra Simpkins, Ph.D. in psychology, is a faculty member of the University of California, Irvine School of Education. Through her research, Professor Simpkins examines how youth development unfolds over time and how the contexts in which youth are embedded influence their development. Generally, her work has focused on how families, friendships, and social position factors (such as, ethnicity and culture) shape adolescents’ organized after-school activities, pursuit of STEM, and motivation.
Catherine Riegle-Crumb
Examining the social contexts of STEM classrooms: Teachers, peers and, and gendered messages Catherine Riegle-Crumb is Associate Professor of STEM Education and Sociology, Associate Director of Research, Center for STEM Education, and Faculty Research Associate at the Population Research Center, at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests center upon inequality in educational experiences and achievement, with a focus on gender and racial/ethnic inequality in STEM domains. As a sociologist of education, she is interested in the role of social contexts, including peer groups, classrooms, and communities, in shaping educational disparities. Dr. Riegle-Crumb’s has received funding from several agencies and foundations, including NSF. Her research expertise includes quantitative analyses of large datasets. She brings an interdisciplinary approach to her research, and publishes in journals in education, sociology, and psychology, including AERJ, Journal of Research in Adolescence, Science Education, and Sociology of Education.
Amanda Diekman
A cue to culture: Communal affordances can signal belonging in STEM Amanda Diekman is Professor of Psychology at Miami University. She received her B.A. from Kenyon College and her Ph.D. from Northwestern University. She is a social psychologist who investigates how stereotypes stem from and reinforce the social structure, with an emphasis on change and stability in gender roles. Her work, funded by the National Science Foundation, explores the impact of stereotypes that STEM fields do not afford opportunities to connect or help others. She is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Society of Experimental Social Psychology.
Allison Master
Counteracting stereotypes to boost girls’ interest and belonging in STEM Allison Master is a research scientist at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences at the University of Washington. She earned a B. A. from Yale University and a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Stanford University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington. She has received awards and funding from the National Science Foundation, American Psychological Foundation, Society for Research in Child Development, and Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Her research interests include social-psychological processes that affect motivation and identity from early childhood through adulthood, and how stereotypes affect students’ sense of belonging and interest in STEM.
