SWEEET 2018Gender and Beyond: Identifying and addressing everyday oppression
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Symposium: 12:30 am - 5:00 pm Location: Peter Clark Hall (Basement of the University of Guelph University Centre) Everyone attending CSEE 2018 is encouraged to participate in SWEEET.
Our 2018 theme, "Gender and Beyond: Identifying and addressing everyday oppression" brings light to the multitude of challenges and obstacles necessary to overcome in order to succeed in the field of ecology and evolution. We want to highlight the importance of diversity and talk about how to create and maintain safer and inclusive spaces for people of different backgrounds and identities. This is a particularly important subject, given current political and social events, highlighted in the media, such as the #meToo campaign. Our goal is to engage our members in combating everyday sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia, and other oppressions that people experience regularly through overt expression or microaggressions. |
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Invited Speakers
Sheila Colla is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, Toronto, ON. Her lab is interdisciplinary focussing on various social and ecological aspects of native pollinator conservation. She helped coordinate the IUCN Red List assessments for North America's 46 native bumblebees species and co-authored 'The bumblebees of North America: an identification guide' (Princeton University Press, 2014). With various NGO and academic partners, she runs a large-scale citizen science program (BumbleBeeWatch) which collects information on species abundance and distribution in Canada and the USA.
Shohini Ghose is a Professor of Physics and Computer Science at Wilfrid Laurier University. She is a theoretical physicist who examines how the laws of quantum physics can be harnessed to transform computation and communication. She and her co-workers made the first ever observations of cesium atoms that demonstrated a connection between chaos theory and quantum entanglement. She is a recognized expert in quantum information theory and is the Associate Editor of the Canadian Journal of Physics in this area. She co-authored the first Canadian introductory astronomy textbook that is now the leading text used by thousands of students in universities across Canada. Dr. Ghose is the founding Director of Laurier’s University Research Centre for Women in Science(WinS), whose mission is to build a strong community for women in science through research, communication and action. She is the Vice-President of the Canadian Association of Physicists, and is the first Canadian member of the Working Group on Women in Physics of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP). She is the recipient of several awards including a TED Senior Fellowship in 2018. She is an affiliate of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Institute for Quantum Computing, and a Fellow of the Balsillie School of International Affairs. In 2017, she was named to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.
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Danielle Lee is a behavioural ecologist at the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, where she studies behavioural variation across gradients. Her science outreach efforts emphasize sharing science to general audiences, particularly under-served groups, via outdoor programming and social media. Lee’s work includes The Urban Scientist a blog about urban ecology, evolutionary biology and diversity in the sciences, hosted by Scientific American Blog Network. She has also received numerous awards for her outstanding research and outreach, including 2015 TED Fellow; EBONY Power 100 2014 – Social Media Influencer; White House Champions of Change – STEM Access & Diversity; The Grio 100's Class of 2014 - Science & Technology Leader; Huffington Post Science Scientists on Twitter: 30 Biologists and Chemists to Follow; Top Women in Science to Follow on Twitter – Under the Microscope; 2011 Black Weblog Awards Blogging Heroine - Niche Blogging in Science; 2011 Young Professional of the Year, Urban League Young Professionals of Metropolitan St. Louis; 2009 Diversity Scholar, American Institute of Biological Sciences.
Amy C. Moors, is the Director of the Social Science Research and Evaluation Program at Purdue University’s College of Engineering and a Research Fellow at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute. In August, she is joining the Department of Psychology at Chapman University. Prior to joining Purdue, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Center for Institutional Diversity. She earned a Ph.D. in Psychology and Women’s Studies from the University of Michigan, a M.S. in Experimental Psychology from Villanova University, and a B.A. in Psychology and Women’s Studies from William Paterson University.
Dr. Moors’s research addresses the impact of inequity on people’s belonging, well-being, and satisfaction in intimate and professional contexts. In one line of research, she studies diverse expressions of sexuality. In her other line of research, she examines strategies for promoting diversity and inclusion in higher education. Dr. Moors has published more than 40 empirical articles and chapters related to gender, sexuality, close relationships, and inclusion. She is the Co-PI on a $1.65 million dollar grant from Purdue University for her work on academic climate transformation. Recently, she was recognized as a “Rising Scholar” by the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. |
2018 Organizing Committee
- Julia Kilgour (PhD candidate, University of Guelph)
- Xueqi Sharon Wang (MSc candidate, University of Guelph)
- Zachary Teitel (PhD candidate, University of Guelph)
- Ariel Greiner (PhD candidate, University of Toronto)
- Edward Tekwa (Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto)
- Justine Ammendolia (Research Assistant, Memorial University)
- Dori McCombe (Lab Instructor, University of Guelph)
- Dr. Christina Caruso (Faculty, University of Guelph)
- Dr. Moira Ferguson (Faculty, University of Guelph)
Tentative Schedule
Time |
Event |
12:30 |
Registration opens |
1:00 |
Opening remarks |
1:15 |
Speaker: Dr. Danielle Lee "A Seat at the Table: Creating Deliberately Diverse and Intentionally Inclusive Spaces in Science" |
2:15 |
Break |
2:30 |
Speaker: Dr. Amy Moors Group Activity |
3:45 |
Break |
4:15 |
Panel Discussion: Dr. Sheila Colla, Dr. Shohini Ghose, Dr. Danielle Lee, Dr. Amy Moors |
"A Seat at the Table: Creating Deliberately Diverse and Intentionally Inclusive Spaces in Science" summary:
As a professional society we study the amazing the diversity of life on this planet, but the demographic ranks of our researchers is less heterogeneous. Diversity and inclusion are more than philosophies – they are values. Values are demonstrations. Values require action – to act on behalf of your closely held philosophies. Creating spaces in ecology and evolution that are intended for and welcomes everyone requires individual, institutional, and infrastructural re-evaluation and reformation. Everyone and every organization dedicated to diversity and inclusion in the sciences should be prepared to do the work. This work includes:
- honest evaluation of what scholars from under-represented groups at all levels experience,
- critical examination of who participates in decisions, as well as their reasons, roles, and goals,
- dismantling systems of inequity and exclusion.
SWEEET gratefully acknowledges the following 2018 sponsors:
- McGill University - Department of Biology
- NSERC Women in Science and Engineering
- Simon Fraser University - Faculty of Science
- University of British Columbia - Faculty of Science
- University of Guelph - Department of Integrative Biology & College of Biological Sciences
- Université Laval - Département de Biologie
- University of Ottawa - Faculty of Science
- University of Victoria - School of Environmental Studies
- Wilfred Laurier University - Biology Department