It’s time to vote for the AWIS Palo officers. If you are an AWIS Palo Alto member, please use the ballot on pages 5 and 6 of this newsletter. You can return it to Lalitha Subramanian either by regular post or by email. Either way, don’t delay.

The By-law Revisions

The Board is proposing that the officers’ terms be reduced from 2 years to 1 year. This change must be ratified by a majority of voting members. The advantage of the shorter term is that it is easier for candidates to commit to serving for a year. The potential downside is that the chapter must hold elections each year. It is still possible for individuals to rotate through several Board positions, up to a maximum of two consecutive years in any one office.

Our candidates

The candidate for Vice President, Michelle Boytim, has done an outstanding job of maintaining and improving our website, which gets over 100 hits a day. She is now in her third year as our webmistress.

Erin Cline and Nancy Jennerjohn are following Annette’s lead and running for their current offices, treasurer and secretary respectively. Erin is a grad student at Stanford and volunteers on the Program Committee as well as doing the Treasurer's job. Nancy works in biotech and enjoys the social contacts that AWIS provides.

Fong-Yih Bih, who has been active on the Program Committee for several years, hopes to have a new role on the AWIS-PA board, that of member-at-large.

All of these women have been active in our chapter and are strongly supported by the Board. They are young and energetic, contrary to the notion that only experienced folks can be on the AWIS Board. Annette and Fong-Yih are in their first industry jobs after their post-docs; Michelle just finished her doctorate and went straight into Clinical Research at a startup medical device company (she loves it). Erin is still in grad school at Stanford. Nancy is our veteran professional, currently working at her second company.

We’re always looking for "new blood" – so we welcome you to join us. Make new friends and contribute to the community of women scientists!

It only takes a minute to approve the by-law revisions and to show your support for the candidates who have volunteered to serve as the Executive Board of our AWIS chapter for the next year.

Please vote today!

Invitation to NCC-AWIS April Awards Banquet

Check This Out
Women in Bioscience Conference
"Taking the Lead"

Advertise Your Job Openings!

Martha Booz, past president of the East Bay AWIS chapter would like to remind AWIS members of a Jobs list-serv for people who are looking for work. You must be a member of AWIS to join (chapter affiliation doesn't matter). To join the list-serv, go to http://ebawisjobs.listbot.com, and sign up.

Note also, that if you have an opening in your organization, you are welcome to send the job description and contact information to Martha at mlbooz@calnatives.com, and she will forward it to the list-serv. If you can get your HR department to send all the job descriptions by email, she can forward them.

Speaking of Jobs . . .

A planning group associated with the UCSC Women's Center is organizing the first annual Expanding Your Horizons event for high school girls on March 31. The goals of the conference are to promote increased awareness of math and science careers; meet and talk with women working in non-traditional careers; and, to increase confidence in math and science coursework. We would love to have an array of accomplished women who are involved in science or science/technology related careers available to interact with high school girls.
If you’re able to help, please contact Donna Gerardi Riordan, Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Higher Education and Science Policy, UCSC,
Donna.Riordan@ADM.UCSC.edu, 831-459-1131

Our Palo Alto Outreach would be happy to provide you with tested workshop ideas and protocols.

"Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained."

-- Marie Curie, Polish-French chemist

This Hugo and Nebula Award-winning work of science fiction was published by Nancy Kress in the early 90’s. However, the issues illustrated in this novel are particularly timely, considering that the sequence of the human genome has just been published and the possibility of human cloning has charged the public imagination. Beggars in Spain tells the story of Leisha Camden, who is among the first humans in the not-too-distant future to be born genetically modified to never require sleep. The book follows her childhood in an economically privileged household as well as that of her nongenetically modified twin sister, Alice. As Leisha grows, so do the numbers of the so-called "Sleepless" population. When the Sleepless reach maturity, they become doctors, lawyers, business leaders, and scientists, achieving these goals, in part, because they have more effective hours in the day and because being sleepless brings additional unforeseen health benefits.

It is not long before the "Sleepers" take notice and the hatred and discrimination begins. However, unlike other minority groups facing discrimination in the United States, the Sleepless have power stemming from economic privilege. Some Sleepless retreat into a private enclave, while others like Leisha remain on the outside trying to assimilate seamlessly into American society. By taking the premise out to its logical conclusion, Kress has a foil with which to probe the political and personal consequences of genetically engineering humans. Kress describes a society that first embraces the genetic modifications, but then recoils when the people produced achieve too much and seem to have an unfair advantage. Kress describes a society uncomfortably like our own where the advances in biotechnology far outpace the ability of our governmental leaders to judiciously decide what should and should not be allowed. The current race to patent human genes is just one example of this.

What I appreciate about Beggars in Spain is that it highlights the issues without becoming preachy. The characters are drawn vividly against a believable backdrop of American politics. I sympathize with the many strong women featured in the book, scientists among them. The personal issues and hard choices they face sometimes mirror my own life. Beggars in Spain is the masterful first installment of a trilogy that includes Beggars and Choosers and Beggars Ride. I highly recommend this thought-provoking book, especially to those who have been turned off by the traditional science fiction fare of battles with aliens in outer space. Kress has effectively examined what it means to be human without falling into a utopian or dystopian trap. And really, haven’t we all wondered how much more we could accomplish if we only didn’t have to sleep?

(Deadline: March 15, please note that you may phone your nominations in.)

Each year NCC-AWIS presents awards to women who have combined professional achievement with support of other women in science. Training and education in science is not enough. We each need to find our individual ways of using our science and developing a professional life and career. In honoring individual women, AWIS recognizes the importance of mentoring and of teaching and sharing with others more than just the content and techniques or our science.

We give awards in three professional categories. Two awards go to women working in research or technological advancements in academia or industry: one, the Judith Pool award, to a woman established in her field, one, the Ellen Weaver award, to a woman early in her career. A third award, the Distinguished Professional award, goes to a woman using her science away from the bench.

Criteria for selection are accomplishment in science or a science-related career and commitment to advancing the professional development of other women. Scientific work may be in basic research or technological advancements in academia or industry. Service to other women in science could be to the scientific community through professional societies or schools or to individual women directly through mentoring and facilitating career development. The nominees need not be AWIS members.

What do all the previous recipients of these awards have in common? Someone nominated them. Most mentoring and professional assistance is done privately, one-on-one. AWIS cannot honor these women and recognize the importance and value of what they do if we don't know who they are.

To nominate a woman send a letter of nomination explaining how the nominee has helped other women develop professionally and a brief resume or CV giving the nominee's educational background and professional history, by March 15, to Mary Alice Yund, 723 Woodhaven Road, Berkeley, CA 94708. Questions? Contact Mary Alice at (510) 525-1715 or yund@worldnet.att.net.

Board Meeting Summary
Written by Nancy Jennerjohn, PA AWIS Secretary

The Board met at Annette’s home in Menlo Park on Jan 30^th where we feasted on pasta and salad before starting our meeting. The Treasurer’s report from Erin Cline, stated that we are up-to-date in membership dues payments from National AWIS. Our bank account balance is just under $4000, and our cash flow for Q4 2000 was about $2500. The Board heard a special report from Jennifer Hertz, our new NCC chapter rep. Committee updates were presented by the co-chairs of Programs (Fong-Yih Bih), Outreach (Ann Reisenauer), Membership (Lalitha Subramanian and Anna Chinn), Newsletter (Vicki Basham), Mentoring (Susan Bernhard) and the Website (Michelle Boytim). Michelle reported that our website is now getting more than one hundred hits per day.

Second Mentoring Program
Written by Kirsten White and Susan Bernhard

The PA-AWIS Chapter Mentoring Program, which pairs 30-40 Stanford graduate students with mentors each year, held its second dinner meeting on campus in mid-January. About 40 women attended the meeting on M.L. King’s birthday. Our speaker that evening was Dr Martha McKee, Ombudsperson for the Stanford Medical School, who spoke to us about ‘Tips for Conflict Resolution’ and ‘Communication Styles’. This fascinating subject elicited questions from the audience ranging from workplace situations to roommate disputes.

For informal conflict resolution we were advised to ask open-ended questions, and never assume anything. To mediate, one must not take things personally; one must focus on the goal, and work towards a resolution that addresses the underlying conflict. It’s not easy! One particularly challenging aspect is that people can have very different communication styles. To illustrate this, Martha gave us a self-test of 30 questions to show how we each can demonstrate competitive, collaborative, compromising, avoidance or accommodation behaviors. In different situations every one of us uses a blend of these styles, some more successful than others. No style is better or right, and it is possible to learn new behaviors, to negotiate and reach our goalsA professional mediator must listen supportively, remain neutral, and keep confidentiality. Rather than proposing a solution for a problem brought to her, the Ombudsperson aims to understand the underlying conflict and empower the individuals to find common ground for resolution. The Ombudsperson office at Stanford has worked with about 900 people in the past 4 years. Martha originally was t rained as a lawyer. Now her work blends the skills of a consultant, coach, shuttle diplomat, and policy trainer. She also teaches listening techniques and classes on workplace violence.

The Mentoring Program will have its third and final meeting in June. The dinner program will be announced in the newsletter and at chapter meetings, and is open to all members of AWIS and their friends. If anyone is still interested in becoming a mentor, you may contact Kay Brown, co-Chair of Mentoring, at Kbrown@PremierBiosoft.com. About ten students are still hoping to be paired during the current academic year.

AWIS National Board Meeting

Linda Mantel, AWIS National President, Catherine Didion, Executive Director of AWIS National, and the members of the AWIS National board convened in San Francisco for a weekend of business meetings, receptions, and networking at the AAAS meeting held in San Francisco in February. Topics discussed at the AWIS National Board meeting included plans for celebrating the 30th anniversary of AWIS at the October 2001 AWIS conference; selection process for nominating AAAS fellows; improvements at the National website at www.awis.org. Interaction between our local chapters with the National office was strengthened at the AWIS reception on 18 February 2001.

Executive Board Elections for 2001 – 2003
Association for Women in Science, Palo Alto Chapter