Women\u27s Studies University of Nebraska-Lincoln Spring 2005

Since this is my last column as director of Women\u27s Studies, I want to highlight some important evolutions in the program as I step down in August. At the beginning of this semester, after considerable discussion, the faculty voted to change our name to Women\u27s Award from Judith Hart and Gender Studies Program. This change is consistent with other programs around the country. (The name change is in progress but is not yet official). As faculty and students have discussed this change over the past two years, we have recognized that this is not simply a cosmetic change. Instead it marks our intention to expand the scope of the program with an inclusive emphasis that has been emerging in our courses and to more intentionally include lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies and the categories of gender, masculinity, and sexuality in our scholarship and teaching. At the same time, we affirm the program\u27s emphasis on scholarship that informs our understanding of women\u27s experiences

Women\u27s Studies University of Nebraska-Lincoln Spring 2002

Women\u27s Studies has been on the road this semester. As the cliche says, on each trip the journey was as important as the destination. In January several faculty members loaded into a huge van to participate in the first joint UNO, UNK, UNL Women\u27s Studies Institute, where Barbara DiBernard led a very successful workshop on feminist pedagogy. Traveling away from our own classrooms and offices helped us as faculty to get acquainted with colleagues at other institutions and discuss the goals and challenges we all share. In March, Helen Moore and I with several students, braved an icy spring storm to attend the No Limits Women\u27s Studies Conference at UNK. This was the first year of our rotation of the conference among the three campuses. The trip to No Limits allowed students to get better acquainted with each other, to meet students from other campuses around the region, and to receive recognition for their scholarship and creative work. Traveling together also gave us time we often don\u27t have for serious and not so serious talk, for laughter, and socializing. Our conversations with students as we traveled and ate together were as stimulating as any seminar. So, even if a weekend in Kearney doesn\u27t sound like something you\u27d choose, I\u27d recommend it for its rejuvenating effects and for the reminder it provided that important teaching and scholarly interactions occur outside of our classrooms and offices

Women\u27s Studies University of Nebraska-Lincoln Fall 2004

I\u27m delighted to be introducing several newly appointed Women\u27s Studies faculty in the pages of this newsletter and to welcome Rose Holz as the associate director. Rose has been invaluable to all of us this fall helping with independent studies, advising, planning activities, and serving as faculty advisor for the Women\u27s Studies Student Association. The Women\u27s Studies faculty began this semester with a retreat where we considered future directions for the program. Several very energetic groups planned curriculum revisions and additions, considered changes in the structure of our program and updated and revised our by-laws; another group brainstormed potential research clusters on immigration and gender, girls in math and science, and LGBTQ studies

Women\u27 Studies University of Nebraska-Lincoln Fall 2001

This has been a busy and energizing semester, with several new Women\u27s Studies majors and faculty adding to the vitality of our program. The faculty began the semester reaffirming and redefining our identities and goals. Twenty-seven Women\u27s Studies faculty members attended a Saturday retreat at the Pioneer\u27s Park Nature Center. Julia McQuillan and Barbara DiBernard led focus groups that launched us into a vigorous morning of discussion, problem-solving and planning. We left with several resolves: to build on our commonalties and our enormous expertise as teachers, scholars, editors, writers, translators, rhetoricians, and organizers; to nurture the social and professional relationships among us in order to create opportunities for interdisciplinary work; to mentor each other; to continue to be inclusive of all women on campus and to create coalitions with other groups and within departments and colleges to empower women faculty and students to resist and address institutional sexism, racism, and homophobia and to promote institutional change; to strengthen our connections with women in the community, in order to ensure connections between our academic work and activism. As one of the focus groups said: We have all it takes: vast expertise, poetry, soul, and strategies for working the margin and the center

Women\u27s Studies University of Nebraska-Lincoln Spring 2001

Throughout the pages of this newsletter you\u27 II see the evidence of our program\u27s vitality in this 25\u2711 Anniversary year. One of the privileges of being the Director of Women\u27s Studies comes from observing the outstanding work of our students and faculty and participating in the events that extend the Program into the university and surrounding communities. This includes seeing three Women\u27s Studies majors on the Dean\u27s List for their outstanding academic achievement: Kris Gandara, Cherisa Price, and Dan Titus; The Women\u27s Studies Association production of The Vagina Monologues; our collaboration with other programs and departments in cosponsoring outstanding visiting scholars and writers like Toi Derricotte, Susan Socolow, C. S\u27thembile West, and Marta Wayne

Women\u27s studies is a vital, useful pursuit

We write in response to George Will\u27s May 21 column, The sad state of women\u27s studies. Women\u27s studies is thriving at the University of Nebraska. On the Lincoln campus, a major in this field has been offered for 25 years. In Kearney, students have been able to earn a minor in women\u27s studies since 1989; a recent student conference there drew nearly 100 participants. Just 15 months after its approval at UNO, 11 students are pursuing the major in women\u27s studies.This discipline helps students answer questions and prepare for careers as no other field can. Among women\u27s studies majors at UNO are students planning careers where they\u27ll work to end domestic violence and sexual assault. Others will go into business, the public sector or graduate school

Expanding Efficiency: Women\u27s Communication in Engineering

As engineering fields strive to be more inclusive of women, focusing on perceptions of women\u27s work is vital to understanding how women can succeed and the limitations they may face. One area in need of more attention is the connection between communication and women\u27s experiences in engineering. This article examines the gendered nature of writing labor in engineering, focusing on case studies of three women who were able to use writing effectively, yet how communication emerged as a gendered form of labor subject to gendered perceptions. While these women\u27s communication skills led to professional success, their association with writing echoes a historical division, where writing is viewed as less valuable than technical knowledge. This division has the potential to disadvantage women who are asked to take on more writing-related tasks. In addition, their writing and communication are subject to gendered perceptions of being ‘chatty’ or blunt rather than effective or efficient. Articulating these perceptions and attitudes can lead to a breakdown of the binary between writing and technical labor as well as appropriately valuing the contributions women make in engineering through writing

An XMM-Newton observation of the massive, relaxed galaxy cluster ClJ1226.9+3332 at z=0.89

A detailed X-ray analysis of an XMM-Newton observation of the high-redshift (z=0.89) galaxy cluster ClJ1226.9+3332 is presented. The X-ray temperature is found to be 11.5{+1.1}{-0.9}keV, the highest X-ray temperature of any cluster at z>0.6. In contrast to MS1054-0321, the only other very hot cluster currently known at z>0.8, ClJ1226.9+3332 features a relaxed X-ray morphology, and its high overall gas temperature is not caused by one or several hot spots. The system thus constitutes a unique example of a high redshift, high temperature, relaxed cluster, for which the usual hydrostatic equilibrium assumption, and the X-ray mass is most reliable. A temperature profile is constructed (for the first time at this redshift) and is consistent with the cluster being isothermal out to 45% of the virial radius. Within the virial radius (corresponding to a measured overdensity of a factor of 200), a total mass of (1.4+/-0.5)*10^15 M_solar is derived, with a gas mass fraction of 12+/-5%. The bolometric X-ray luminosity is (5.3+/-0.2)*10^45 erg/s. The probabilities of finding a cluster of this mass within the volume of the discovery X-ray survey are 8*10^{-5} for Omega_M=1 and 0.64 for Omega_M=0.3, making Omega_M=1 highly unlikely. The entropy profile suggests that entropy evolution is being observed. The metal abundance (of Z=0.33{+0.14}{-0.10} Z_solar), gas mass fraction, and gas distribution are consistent with those of local clusters; thus the bulk of the metals were in place by z=0.89.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Aligning assessment with the needs of work-integrated learning: the challenges of authentic assessment in a complex context

Work-integrated learning (WIL) is a feature of university courses, both in professional areas, where it is commonplace, but also across many different disciplines. Assessment of WIL can be complex as it involves parties and settings external to the university, and it can be problematic because of difficulties in aligning learning activities during placements with what is or can be assessed by the university. This paper explores the relationship between students’ placement experiences and accompanying assessments in contexts where activities are tightly coupled with the curriculum, and in those where it is not. It draws on a qualitative analysis of student interviews and drawings by the interviewees of their WIL experiences, supplemented with analysis of unit guides. Our findings highlight that students’ perceptions of authenticity of assessment were undermined by misalignments between the student, university and industry. Assessment authenticity was perceived by students as based on alignment between their current and future selves in the assessment process, involvement of industry supervisors and relevance of placement activities to assessment activities. The paper discusses the complexity of coordination of educational activities with external partners, especially when one party drives assessment. It then suggests a reframing of WIL assessment to promote alignment and authenticity