Category Archives: Announcements

Welcome Event – Friday August 26th 6-9pm

To welcome the incoming cohort to Penn State, AWG has reserved a fire pit at 814 Cider Works for this Friday night from 6 – 9 pm. Please join us to kick off the new academic year!

Please bring chairs if you have them (very limited seating)! Also, there is a food truck at 814 if you want to eat, and cider of course. If you need a ride, please fill out this spreadsheet and we will try our best to find you a ride!

First General Meeting of 2021-22 school year

This week we will be holding our first general meeting of the Association for Women in Geosciences of the year on Wednesday, September 8, at 5:15pm in 541 Deike.

For those who are new to our program, ours is a student chapter of the international association, and each year we’re responsible for organizing a number of fundraising events, outreach opportunities, and career development discussions in the Department of Geosciences. These include chats with visiting professors and researchers, brown-bag discussions on social issues, an undergraduate-graduate mentor-mentee program, and out-of-department social gatherings.

 

We encourage everyone who is interested – undergraduate and graduate, and regardless of gender expression – to consider attending our first general meeting to learn about our plans for the semester and consider signing up for our mailing list. We’re hoping to hold meetings in person this year, but if you are still remote and want to be kept in the loop by email, please let me know to add you to the listserv. You can also check out our website for more info, including our events calendar, or follow our handle on Twitter or on Instagram.

New officers for 2021-2022

We have just hosted our final general meeting of the semester, and elected new officers for 2021-2021. Thanks to all of the officers for 2020-2021 that helped to navigate AWG through an unusual year, and congrats to our new officer board!

Our officers for 2021-2022:

Safiya Alpheus & Katie Horisk, Presidents
Adam Benfield, Treasurer
Ben Barnes, Secretary
Hanna Leapaldt & Karen Pham, Outreach Coordinators
Charlotte Connop & Fai Chanchai, Event Coordinators
Julia Carr & Claire Webster, Mentor/Mentee Coordinators
Erica Lucas & Ben Barnes, Social Committee
Shelby Bowden & Sam Shaheen, Fundraising
Julia Carr & Sierra Melton, Webmaster & Historian

Brown Bag lunch with Dr. Jesse Reimink: Feb 10 @ noon

We’re going to have our first brown bag of the semester next Wednesday (2/10) at high noon! We’ll be hosting our very own Dr. Jesse Reimink, who does science outreach as a co-host of a podcast called Planet Geo which launched last fall. We aim to discuss science outreach and communications with Jesse, as well as what it’s like to contribute to a podcast.

Planet Geo Ep 5 (can also be found on Spotify):
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1237277/5541907

Blog Article:
https://blog.bakerinstitute.org/2020/12/15/lessons-from-2020-to-avoid-future-disasters-improve-science-communication/
If you’d like to come, you can prepare by checking out a blog article on science communication as well as a recent episode of Planet Geo, both linked above. Jesse has emphasized that these materials don’t represent expert advice, but are an opinion-based springboard for our discussion.

We hope to see you there!

AWG Trivia Fundraiser

Have you ever wanted to beat your committee members in a trivia contest? Have you ever wanted to dazzle your colleagues with your command of useless knowledge? Do you want to raise money for AWG scholarships? Well, now is your chance! AWG has organized a Geoscience Department trivia session hosted by none other than resident trivia master Mr. Ben Barnes. Everyone, undergrad, grad, post-docs, and faculty are welcome and encouraged to participate!

 

The date is Nov. 17th at 7pm. The place is Ben Barnes’ zoom room (link will follow after signing up).

 

There is a $5 per person charge to participate (payable to Adam-Benfield-3 via Venmo). All proceeds are put towards AWG field camp scholarships. To sign up, please fill out this google sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16Uf4lvAOcvaFRxTz-FgH3-Bin8bJLk3xuxLj0iAA9z8/edit?usp=sharing

You can self-organize into your own teams or throw caution to the wind and be randomly assigned a team. Your choice! Please limit team sizes to 6-7 people to make the relative brain power fair to everyone.

AWG undergraduate scholarship for academic conferences

This year, both of the major national conferences in geosciences (GSA and AGU) will be virtual and free for student members to attend. These conferences are a great opportunity to learn about active research in geosciences, make connections with potential collaborators or graduate school advisors, engage with scientists from around the world, and learn about different career paths.
The Association of Women Geoscientists will offer scholarships to cover the cost of membership (20-40$) to these societies, which will make it possible for students to attend the annual meeting for free. We will also help provide mentorship on how to approach attending an academic conference.
The Geological Society of America annual meeting will be October 26-30, and the American Geophysical Union fall meeting will take place between December 1-17th, with focused synchronous time between December 7-11th. We recommend checking out the websites and talking with your advisor or research mentor (if you have one) about what conference will suit your interests. If you have any other questions on what these conferences are about, or how to choose, feel free to send a message to awg.psu@gmail.com.

If you are interested, please complete the attached form, and send it to awg.psu@gmail.com by THURSDAY, October 8th, with the subject line ‘AWG conference scholarship’. We will notify you by Monday, October 12 about the funding and how to use it.

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Welcome back ~ Fall 2020

Welcome back! AWG is still going strong, even while virtual. Our new 2020/2021 officers just met to make plans for the fall, and we’ve got a lot of events coming up, so stay tuned.

First general meeting for the semester will be September 1 at 6pm— details and zoom link coming soon!

Our Officers for 2020/2021

Erica Lucas & Julia Carr, Co-Presidents

Kalle Jahn, Treasurer

Ben Barnes, Secretary

Gabi Rossetto Harris & Kaelie Contreras, Outreach Coordinator

Katie Horisk & Kayla Irizarry, Mentor/mentee program coordinators

Charlotte Connop & Safiya Alpheus, Event Coordinators

Mary Reinthal & Troy Ferland, Social Committee

Nancy Weinheimer & Lucy Lu, Undergraduate Liason

Adam Benfield, Shelby Bowden & Kirsty McKenzie, Fundraising

Julia Carr, Webmaster

Roman DiBiase Faculty Adviser

Brown Bag Lunch, Wednesday October 16th at 12 PM

We would like to invite you to another AWG-hosted brown bag lunch discussion on Wednesday (10/16) at 12pm in Deike 541. Julia Carr will lead a discussion on accessibility in the geosciences, particularly with regards to issues surrounding invisible illnesses.

To focus the discussion, we have selected a few articles that show lived experiences in the geosciences with suggestions for improvement. First, two blog posts written by Gabi Seratto Marks, a Ph.D. student in geoscience at MIT, which relate her experiences attending conferences while chronically ill and her advice for future conference organizers. In addition, we will discuss a blog post by Dr. Anita Marshall about her experience navigating field science after a near-fatal injury.

We hope to use these posts to launch our discussion around accessibility in our daily lives as geoscientists from the classroom to traveling for field trips, conferences, and more, and thinking about different ways we can incorporate accessibility best practices into our teaching and work.

Hope to see you there!

Conferencing while chronically ill: https://medium.com/@gsm/conferencing-while-chronically-ill-190664c9a4cd

How to make professional conferences more accessible for disabled people, by Gabi Seratto Marks: https://medium.com/@gsm/how-to-make-professional-conferences-more-accessible-for-disabled-people-6a15ea2e0b5a

 

Moving forward: Overcoming our ideas about disability in the Geosciences, by Dr. Anita Marshall: https://speakingofgeoscience.org/2018/10/08/moving-forward-overcoming-our-ideas-about-disability-in-the-geosciences/

Mentor Program

Sign up for the AWG mentor program!  The program pairs undergraduate and graduate students in order to build relationships and provide a resource for advice on internships, finding research opportunities, applying to graduate school, career options, etc.
AWG will subsidize the cost for each mentor/mentee pair to go out for a coffee break or lunch once a month (that means free food every month!).
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Welcome back for the 2019-2020 school year!

We hope that everyone has had an excellent summer and is ready to start off the school year. We will be hosting our first General Meeting on September 16th, 2019 at 5:15 PM, and welcome anyone that is interested to join!

Add our calendar to your google calendar to stay up to date and to join in on AWG events throughout the semester. We will be hosting a number of events, including breakfasts with colloquium speakers, social events (like trips to the cidery and hiking!), write nites, brown bag lunches, community outreach, and more!

If you have any questions, reach out to us here, on social media (facebook, instagram, twitter), or get in contact with any of our 2019/2020 officers.

 

Our Officers for 2019/2020

Gabi Rossetto Harris & Chloe Stanton, Co-Presidents

Shelby Lyons, Treasurer

Ben Barnes, Secretary

Clarissa Crist and Sierra Melton, Outreach Coordinator

Perri Silverhart, Claire Webster, Nancy Weinheimer, & Allison Karp, Mentor/mentee program coordinators

Mary Reinthal & Erica Lucas, Event Coordinators

Joanmarie Del Vecchio & Troy Ferland, Social Committee

Lucy Lu, Undergraduate Liason

Emily Schwans & Collin Oborn, Fundraising

Julia Carr, Webmaster & Historian

Liz HajekFaculty Adviser