High-quality training, on your schedule
American Chemical Society
The ACS Department of Professional Education offers two options for online training at your convenience. Online courses take place live, once a week, over several weeks. However, attendance at the live sessions is not required and session recordings are available. On-demand courses are shorter and focused on a particular topic area in depth. You have access to play the lecture at your convenience anytime during a seven-day access period. Both course options give you an opportunity to communicate with the instructor for the duration of your course or access period. For more information, please visit our website at www.ProEd.acs.org. The next online course circuits start the week of March 5 and access on-demand anytime!More

Study: Girls interested in STEM careers despite seeming lack of accessibility
NewsWorks
It's one thing to be interested in a topic. It's another to see it as a potential career, know much about it or be familiar with someone already involved in the field. That's the finding in the Girl Scout Research Institute's Generation STEM study. According to results, many girls are interested in STEM, but it's getting beyond that interest that's a little more difficult. More

Obama's budget shuffles STEM education deck
Science
President Barack Obama's 2013 budget for STEM programs at the Department of Education has a very familiar ring to science educators. That's the case because most of his proposals are recycled from unsuccessful requests in years past, although some have been redesigned. He's retained the promise of training 100,000 well-qualified science and math teachers by 2020, and added a second, complementary goal with a workforce component to it, namely, to produce 1 million additional STEM graduates. More

This is what scientists look like
Scientific American
Once upon a time, you could go into a classroom — any grade level, any age, anywhere in the U.S. — and ask children to describe what a scientist looks like. Almost invariably, most children would present an illustration of an older white male, with white hair, a mustache and/or beard wearing a lab coat and holding a steaming flask. Thanks to a great push of outreach to women, girls and young people from every walk of life, that is all changing.More

Mathematicians organize boycott of a publisher
The New York Times
More than 5,700 researchers have joined a boycott of Elsevier, a leading publisher of science journals, in a growing furor over open access to the fruits of scientific research. In a statement, 34 mathematicians denounced "a system in which commercial publishers make profits based on the free labor of mathematicians and subscription fees from their institutions' libraries, for a service that has become largely unnecessary."More

Obama's inner geek: Robots to flying marshmallows
The Associated Press via Albany Times Union
For a president who promotes technology at every opportunity, Barack Obama often strikes an awed, self-effacing pose in the presence of technicians, scientists and high tech machinery. "If I'm nodding, you should just assume that everything you said is going completely over my head," he once told winners of a New York science fair. Still, he loves the stuff. More

Could Alleyoop be the Spotify of math education?
U.S. News & World Report
Textbook manufacturing giant Pearson launched an online game service that's tailored to help high school students who are struggling in math with an emphasis in pointing them toward STEM-oriented careers. Kind of a social network for math learning, Alleyoop combines video tutoring with online practice problems to give students constant feedback on how they're performing. More

Cornell recruits female professors in STEM fields
The Cornell Daily Sun
Professor Christine Ann Shoemaker, civil and environmental engineering, said that when she first came to Cornell 30 years ago, there were hardly any other female faculty or female students in the College of Engineering. Shoemaker said that, since she arrived, efforts to reduce gender disparity in the engineering and science fields at the university have created a dramatically different atmosphere for women in the field.More

US appeals court hears challenge to California ban on affirmative action in college admissions
The Associated Press via The Washington Post
Backers of affirmative action asked a federal appeals court to overturn California's 15-year-old ban on considering race in public college admissions, citing a steep drop in black, Latino and Native American students at the state's elite campuses.More

NIH wants your ideas about how to increase diversity in science
Science
NIH announced that it wants to hear from scientists on increasing the diversity of the biomedical research workforce. A request for information invites scientists to share their opinions and ideas on how to "cultivate diversity" throughout the educational process and early stages of a career, the role of mentors and roles models, ways to encourage more scientists from underrepresented minorities to compete for NIH funding, and more. The comment period closes Feb. 24.More

Yale lags in diversity goals
Yale Daily News
Despite administrators' efforts, Yale University is still trailing the goals for faculty diversity it outlined six years ago. Yale launched a faculty diversity initiative that called for the university to hire at least 30 new professors from minority backgrounds and at least 30 female professors specifically in the sciences and economics. While Yale hired an additional 56 minority faculty and 30 women between the start of the initiative and November, the university has retained only 22 minorities and 18 women because of faculty departures.More

Diversity is the key to innovation
The Oxford Press
Juan Gilbert's computer science lab at Clemson University proclaims "Change the World." In fact, his research, creativity and innovation are already touching people by adapting technology and computer science in addressing societal issues.More

UNF joins with OneJax to enhance diversity
The Florida Times-Union
The University of North Florida has established the OneJax Institute in association with the local nonprofit organization of the same name that works to promote understanding among different religions, races and cultures. University President John Delaney said bringing OneJax onto campus will allow the university to "strengthen its community partnerships and play an even more significant role in northeast Florida's conversations on diversity and inclusion." More

Exelon Foundation contributes $500,000 to STEM partnership school at Aurora University
PRNewswire via The Sacramento Bee
The Exelon Foundation became the first major corporate foundation to support the STEM Partnership School at Aurora University with a $500,000 gift to help create a new national model for mathematics and science education. A $150,000 matching award from the Dunham Fund, which also provided seed money for the school, brings total financial support for the project to $1 million. The dual gifts build momentum for the school as AU seeks funding for its construction. More

Lee County, Fla., schools going from STEM to STEAM?
WBBH-TV
Lee County, Fla., school board members are looking at plans to add art to STEM education. Advocates argue creative arts, like music, actually help students learn math. But Fort Myers architect Jonathan Romine promotes keeping STEM, without adding arts. "It will confuse people, to play on words, we'll lose steam with where we're going," he said.More

NAFE names its Top 50 Companies for Executive Women
Working Mother
The National Association for Female Executives has named its 2012 Top 50 Companies for Executive Women. According to NAFE, these 50 companies putting advancement programs and welcoming cultures to work to fill their top management levels with strong female talent. More

Pentagon opening more posts to women short of ground-combat role
Bloomberg Businessweek
The U.S. military plans to open more support jobs for women closer to the front lines while continuing to bar them from direct ground-combat roles. The changes would let more women serve in battalions, smaller units closer to the front, in support positions such as communications or as medics, according to a Pentagon report. More than 13,000 positions would be opened by eliminating a rule barring women from support jobs alongside ground-combat units. Congress will have 30 days to block the policy before it goes into effect.More

Diversity is woven into Arizona's history
The Arizona Republic
Accounts of Arizona's history weave a tapestry of races and nationalities that overcame formidable environmental hardships, survived cruel bigotry and finally blended into the fabric of a diverse state in the last half of the 20th century. The breadth and value of Arizona's diversity are often overshadowed by misconceptions of a state created exclusively from dusty trails, Wild West gunslingers and cattle stampedes.More

Opinion: Defining diversity
The Daily Tar Heel
Brittany Johnson was recently sent a link to a YouTube video in which a white comedian in blackface interviewed students at Brigham Young University about their knowledge of black history. And though the video was likely edited to highlight the most ridiculous comments, the casual apathy these answers revealed is still problematic for JohnsonMore