Tag Archives: events

Brown Bag Lunch Discussion: November 11 @ noon

    We are hosting a virtual brown bag lunch discussion this Wednesday (11/18) at 12pm, accessible through this Zoom link. Our brown bag series has typically been an opportunity for members of the department to lead informal discussions on various societal or institutional issues in the geosciences or broader academia, and is open for all students, staff, researchers, and faculty to participate.

 

    This week, Julia Carr and Ben Barnes will be revisiting the topic of accessibility in conferences, and framing the discussion around how virtual conferences this year have handled the new format, and what aspects of virtual conferences could be repeated following the quarantine to boost accessibility. We will anchor this discussion primarily in two recent articles: Sohn’s interviews in Nature which highlight the aspects of in-person scientific conferences that limit accessibility to many attendees, and Bailey’s recent GSA Today article enumerating the positive aspects of virtual conference formats during lockdown.

 

    In addition to these articles, you may be interested to hear more perspectives on conference accessibility: we have attached links to many resources below which give excellent advice for presenting talks and posters effectively and conscientiously.

 

All are welcome to join in our discussion this Wednesday! We look forward to seeing you there,

 

Thanks!
Julia and Ben

 

Talks:
Posters:
Both:
  • Stay color-blind friendly! Why should we care? Resources for figuring it out:
  • Viz Palette — want to see what your color scheme looks like in line, area, scatter plots, words, on different backgrounds, and check for color blindness all at once? Integrates with Chroma.js and other great color resources, and auto-generates hex color codes for your scripts. I think this is the best tool out there, and I use it all the time.
  • Paletton –have no idea where to start? Find logical combos based on color theory & export all the color tables. Good for categorical data.
  • Chroma.js Color Palette Helper — need to create perceptually uniform color gradients (sequential or diverging)?  Also auto-generates hex color codes to put into your scripts

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 Fall Festival!

Fall Festival flyer. Says: AWG Fall Festival, Holmes-Foster Park, Sunday October 25th, 2 PM. All proceeds to support undergraduate scholarships. 10$ entry fee for a pumpkin and pizza.

What: a (socially-distanced and safe) pumpkin-spice filled afternoon that includes a pumpkin carving competition, FREE pizza, and baked goods/apple cider (for purchase for fund raising). $10 gets you a pumpkin, entry to this exclusive event, and free pizza (did we mention there will be pizza?). We will have trash disposal and *very few* pumpkin carving implements, so please bring your own if you have them (knife, spoon, etc)! Winner of the carving competitions will get a free piece of swag of their choosing!

Where: Holmes-Foster Park

When: October 25th, 2pm

How: sign up on this list and Venmo (or deliver) $10 to Shelby Bowden (Venmo username: @Shelby-Bowden) BY OCTOBER 20th!! (I have to go buy the pumpkins beforehand).

Competition categories:

-geology

-culture

-spooky

-artsy fartsy

-nature (non geology)

*COVID-safety measures: We will enforce mask wearing, social distancing, and maintaining a safe and comfortable environment for all who want to attend. We will also be sanitizing the provided pumpkins before giving them out. If you would like to support AWG and participate but don’t feel comfortable hanging out, you are welcome to still come and grab a pumpkin, carve it at home, and share photos of your creation with us!*

Brown Bag lunch discussion on being a grad student during COVID19

Brown bag lunch discussion o’clock. COVID can’t stop us from having engaging conversations about the world around us, so we will continue the tradition but virtually.  For those not familiar: Brown Bag lunch discussions are a time to talk with fellow grad students, undergraduates, faculty, staff, post-docs (whoever shows up, honestly) about all the life things that shape us as grad students, as a community, humans, etc. On the docket for discussion: I’d like to talk about “being a grad-student during COVID-19.” Beloware two links to make you think: 1) a science article about some COVID workarounds, and 2) a CE&N (chemical and engineering news) interviewing a bunch of graduate students and their experiences with COVID and grad school.
Example questions you may have after reading these articles, or just in general 1) How are grad students holding up? 2) What’s it like being a first year student during the pandemic? 3) What are you strategies for stress relief? 4) How are you able to focus on your work when you have a cat sitting beside you? 5) What can the grad school do to help?
To note: I personally don’t have any answers, but talking it out is the best way to get answers!
Above are merely some example questions, so feel free to bring your own thoughts, feelings, questions, comments, concerns, or even other literature! I’d love to talk with you, and have a great discussion. And if anyone has an immediate answer to question 4, please email me.
this FRIDAY 09/25/2020 a 12:00PM on ZOOM
Brown bags not required.
See you there!

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/

Women in STEM Careers Event

Spend a day on campus to learn more about women working in the geosciences! On May 7th, 2019 from 10:30 AM – 1:30 PM, we will host an an event with scientists, graduate, and undergraduate students from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.

 

The event is free, and open to middle and high school females interested in STEM! For more information, check out the event website here. Or check out the flyer attached below!

 

 

Women-in-Geosciences-Flyer-Spring-2019-FINAL-114qede

Three events!

Hope everyone had a good spring break! Kick off the second half of the semester with 3 AWG events this week!

Monday, 3/11 at 5 PM: AWG write night. Bring something that you’re working on and join us in Deike 541

 

Tuesday 3/12 at 8 AM: Breakfast with colloquium speaker Sarah Stamps. Join for bagels, coffee, and discussion in Deike 541

 

Thursday 3/14 at 6-8 PM: Soil Painting! Create your own work of art using natural pigments. Sign up for the class here

 

 

Welcome back to 2019

We will be hosting our first two events of 2019 on Tuesday, January 15th. Both events will be in Deike 541:

 

Breakfast with colloquium speaker Christine McCarthy 8-9 AM

All breakfasts include free bagels and coffee, and are a great way to learn about career trajectories, science, and life in the geosciences

 

General meeting at 5:15 PM

Hear about our plans for the semester, including panels, outreach, and some new SWAG!

The Bearded Lady Project screening

The Bearded Lady Project documentary screening poster

Join us on Sunday, September 23, 2018 for a screening of The Bearded Lady Project in 22 Deike Building from 1:30-3:30 pm.

This screening will include a presentation by Dr. Ellen Currano, co-creator of the film, which will be followed by a panel Q&A with Dr. Currano and five female PSU STEM faculty.

Faculty panelists (with their research interests indicated) include:

  • Liz Hajek– PSU Geosciences
    Uses the stratigraphic record to reconstruct past landscape conditions on Earth. Focuses on learning about internal (autogenic*) variability that occurs in different sedimentary environments and understanding how Earth’s surface responds to change.
  • Kate Freeman– PSU Geosciences
    studies fossil molecules and their stable isotopes. Interested in ancient climate, the carbon cycle, microbial biogeochemistry and the signatures of life on Earth and beyond.
  • Jenn Baka– PSU Geography
    Energy geographer interested in understanding the interconnected political and biophysical processes shaping and shaped by systems of energy provision
  • Kristina Douglass– PSU Anthropology
    An archaeologist, whose current work investigates human-environment interaction in Madagascar.
  • Parisa Shokouhi– PSU Civil engineering
    Infrastructure sustainability, non-destructive evaluation of civil infrastructure, multi-scale non-destructive testing (NDT) of construction materials

 

And be sure to see our previous post for ways to get involved with the project!

2018/2019 Mentor-Mentee Program

The AWG mentor-mentee 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, and more. AWG will subsidize the cost for each mentor/mentee pair to go out for a coffee break or lunch once a month.  Undergraduate and graduate students, females and males are all encouraged to participate.

 

AWG will be hosting its annual match-up dinner this Thursday, September 13th from 5:30 – 7:00pm, in the EMS museum (ground floor of Deike Building).  Chipotle will be provided, come hang out and meet potential mentors or mentees!

 

If you are unable to attend the dinner, you may sign up to be paired with a mentor or mentee below, by SEPTEMBER 20th.

For undergrads looking for a graduate mentor, click here!

For graduate students looking to be a mentor, click here!

 

Thanks!

AWG Officers

 

AWG_mentor_program_dinner_flyer-104giz1