She said/he said/we said: how family talk sheds light on language and gender-- Georgetown Linguist Deborah Tannen

Sponsored by SU Communication & Rhetorical Studies, iSchool, Department of Linguistics, Women in Science and Engineering, and Women's and Gender Studies.

Everyone assumes everyone else thinks like them, and that if they don't, there is something wrong with them.

Men vs. women:  Why don't men stop to ask directions?  People assume that "You mean the same as I would mean in that circumstance."  So women stop, make a connection, and haven't lost anything by asking.  Men, on the other hand, lose power by asking, and besides, the other guy won't know either, but won't admit it, and they will get lost anyway.  (None of the interviewed women worried about being intentionally misdirected.)   Women tend to face one another when they speak, and lean in.  Men sit at angles--which could be perceived as disinterest in what the partner is saying.   However, it isn't the case that men don't care about connections, and that women are disinterested in power. 

Girls vs boys.  Girls tell each other secrets to negotiate closeness and connection; they also cannot tell a secret to someone they don't like.  Hence, cliques.   A boy's best friend is the one he does everything with, the one who will be on his side in a fight.  They negotiate who is good at what, and play fighting is very common.  Boys are sensitive to being put down or pushed around as these affect status.  (Don't tell me what to do).  But one-upsmanship can be fun!  Girls, on the other hand, often dislike braggarts.

Moms vs daughters:  Can't say anything to daughter, because its perceived as criticism.  Daughters think:  she's always criticizing.  This is true, but it's out of care.

Sisters:  Sisters are always compared, and there is a hierarchy. Intentions and abilities are important.  Often think issue is with content of what is said, but it is often how it said (direct, circuitous, ritual)/

Questions:

In selecting a therapist, is gender important?  An effective therapist is aware of the differences and bias due to gender, and allows for it.

How much is nature vs nurture?  Combination of both.  Can tease some out by looking at cultural differences.  In every culture, boys fight for fun, whereas girls will fight because they are mad.  There are others who think all nature or nurture.  Men are more likely ot argue for biological, women to say cultural.

What about training salespeople?  Tell to make eye contact.  She would bet that successful salespeople. like the therapist, allows for differences, cross-cultural differences as well (e.g., Korean and American south will not look at folks with higher status in the eye)

Evolutionary Aspects of Gender and Sexuality.

Joan Roughgarden, Professor Emerita, Biological Sciences and Geophysics, Stanford University.  Evolutionary Aspects of Gender and Sexuality.  Dr. Roughgarden challenged Darwin's theory of sexual selection with a discussion of “social selection" in which gender roles and sexuality are adaptations which facilitate cooperation in complex societies.  This lecture was a joint presentation of the Women in Scientific and Environmental Professions and Adaptive Peaks lecture series and GSA’s Shifting Paradigms annual lecture.

Negotiation--advice and role-playing exercises

Roseanne Ecker, Director of Career Services at SU.    If you've been offered a job, should I ask for more salary than they offer?  Yes!  Isn't that rude?  Well, you should remember that EVERY raise and bonus that you receive will be calculated as a percentage of your salary.  If you start at less than you could, the cumulative loss over your career there--adds up mighty quick.  And if there happens to be a freeze on raises (as happened to one of the audience members), you will be stuck at that too low rate.  What if they can't provide more?  This is always a possibility, but if you don't ask, you won't ever know.  Also consider if there are other things that can help you do what it is that you are being hired to do.  Training?  Equipment?  Lab space?  Assistants?  Computers and software?  If they cannot provide you with your own, will you have adequate access to existing lab spaces, vehicles, and help to carry out experiments or teach the bazillion lab sections you are expected to offer?  It may be that you don't want more money, but for personal reasons (commuting costs a fortune, the need for eldercare is on the rise) you need flexibility in your schedule (set own hours, or the ability to work from home a few days a week...if you provide a convincing argument why this can help them meet their goals (rather than just reduce your commuting costs--although reducing gas usage is a great societal goal, it many not  be in their business plan at this point in time), you are more likely to be in a position to receive these amenities.  And when it works, they will have gained your expertise and loyalty, eliminating their need to conduct another search, train a replacement, and the time costs of bringing said person up to speed--all costly propositions (especially if they continue to botch their efforts to set up employees to succeed, and have to do it all over again).

Climate change: can forests keep pace

Dr.  Lindsey Rustad, Hubbard Brook Team Leader & Research Ecologist, Center for Research on Ecosystem Change, US Forest Service, Northern Research Station, Durham, NH and Associate Research Professor, Department of Plant, Soil and Environmental Sciences, University of Maine.  Climate Change:  Can Northern Forests Keep Pace?  Sponsored by the Department of Forest and Natural Resources Management and the Department of Environmental and Forest Biology.  Dr. Rustad reviewed climatological data associated with climate change, survey results about perceptions of climate change, and what the northern forests and the species that use it for habit might look like in the future.  A joint presentation of the Women in Scientific and Environmental Professions and the Cross-disciplinary Seminar in Hydrological and Biogeochemical Processes. 

Assertion and Dealing with Difficult People

Catherine Gerard, Sally Rock-Blake, Vadym Pyrozhenko of the Conflict Management Center described the core concepts of assertion in order to more effectively communicate with others while maintaining and defending your rights, demonstrated how reflective listening (http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/uploadedFiles/parcc/cmc/Reflective%20Listening%20NK.pdf) and assertion can be work together to better manage conflict when dealing with difficult people (http://www.scribd.com/doc/18024/Dealing-with-Difficult-Peopleprimarily by preventing you from also becoming difficult.). Participants had the opportunity to practice these techniques.  Their overview is posted at http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/uploadedFiles/parcc/cmc/Managing%20Agreement-Assertion%20Skills%20NK.pdf.  Sponsored by the Conflict Management Center, PARCC, Maxwell School, Syracuse University.

HR Brown Bag Presentation: Retirement Planning for Women

 

Women tend to live longer than men, have more gaps in employment for child or elder care, and take lower paying positions to trail a spouse.  Helen Chambers and Stephen Donella, Jr., CFP, from ING introduced questions women should consider in retirement planning, and explained the optional savings programs available to ESF employees.   Sponsored by the Office of Human Resources. 

Protecting Human Subjects, Communities, and Cultural Groups in Environmental Research

Dr. Dianne Quigley, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Research, Center for Environmental Studies, Brown University

Dr. Lister Speaks on Landscape Ecology and Urbanism

As part of the course requirements of FOR 797 Women in Environmental Careers, students share responsibility for reporting on the Women in Scientific and Environmental Professions Speaker Series.  The following was prepared by Carrie Rose Levine (MS FNRM 2011) and Susan Smith (ES 2013).
            Dr. Nina-Marie Lister, Associate Professor of Urban and Regional  Planning at Ryerson University in Toronto and Visiting Professor at the  Harvard University Graduate School of Design, presented her research and
selected design projects in  “(Re)Claiming Ground: Landscape, Ecology and Urbanism” at SUNY-ESF on February 8, 2011 as part of the Women in Scientific and Environmental Professions Speaker Series. The talk was jointly sponsored
by the ESF Women’s Caucus, the Randolph G. Pack Environmental Institute, and the Department of Landscape Architecture. The lecture was very well attended, and the audience represented students and faculty from a variety
of ESF departments as well as a good turnout from the Syracuse University School of Architecture due to the cross-disciplinary nature of Dr. Lister’s research.
            Dr. Lister has a background in formal ecology, landscape architecture, and urban planning. This multi-disciplinary training has informed her research on the development and use of reclaimed urban spaces. The lecture addressed the key principles of ecological urbanism, the role that these principles have played in recent theory and practice of urban
design, and the direction in which these principles will continue to evolve in the future.
            In Dr. Lister’s lecture, she expanded on the basic scientific definition of ecology and demonstrated how the concept of ecology can be applied to highly modified and constructed systems such as dense urban areas. Essentially, Dr. Lister argued, the human environment and its relationship to nature can be distilled to the interplay between ecology and design. The pervasiveness of human intervention in the landscape has altered our paradigm of ecology. At the same time, our understanding of ecology has informed design and planning decisions in recent years to the point where both ecology and design are essential driving forces in the way that we experience the urban environment.
            The history of this movement toward and ecological understanding of urban landscape and design was discussed, which provided a solid theoretical foundation for Dr. Lister’s own work. She then showed examples of the kind of work that her firm plandform has done in the Toronto area in conjunction with her students at Ryerson University. This work included examples of restoration design within a highly modified urban landscape. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of her talk came at the very end, when she discussed future directions for the discipline, citing a recent example of a land bridge for migrating animals across a busy highway in the western US that combines principles of ecology, modern design, and human influence on the natural landscape.
            Dr. Lister is a Registered Professional Planner (MCIP, RPP), an Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Ryerson Univeristy, and the founding principal of the firm plandform, a creative studio that which explores the relationship between ecology, landscape, and urbanism. She is the author of several papers on ecology and urban design and is co-editor of the book The Ecosystem Approach: Complexity, Uncertainty, and
Managing for Sustainability (Columbia University Press, 2008).

Workshop: Writing for Scientific Publication--Dr. Ruth Yanai

Publishing is an important part of the research process, but writing papers is not what attracted most of us to our respective fields.  Learning to write papers with minimal effort and maximum impact will help you for the rest of your career. Participants received general  advice on organizing writing efforts and specific examples of the steps to go through in preparing each section of your paper, and left the workshop with working drafts of their abstracts. Dr. Yanai has lots of useful tips http://www.esf.edu/for/yanai/publishing/default.htm  Cosponsored by WISE, GSA, and ESF Women's Caucus.