Inspired by Success
      Bhatia says the WISE lecture series has been an overwhelming success, having brought three prominent speakers to campus within the last year. Open to the public, each forum has drawn a diverse audience from throughout campus and the community. Newton adds: “We focus on educating the community about who this person is, and what her accomplishments are. We try to reach out across the disciplines and into classrooms to make sure we involve as large a group of people as possible in the activities.”
      Ph.D. candidate Hill praised the forums for bringing together such diverse groups. “They are a good time for us to sound off, and talk about things that work and don’t work,” she says. Newton says the lectures act as a catalyst for a range of discussions. “The most gratifying thing is to hear the lecture and then see the question-and-answer session go on for so long, among students and faculty alike, that finally after an hour you have to bring it to a close,” she says. “People want to still be there, asking questions. And then to watch students and faculty stand around together after the lecture talking engineering or science for a long time—that’s what you really hope for; to bring people together.”

      Each speaker also conducts a second talk at local schools. Ruzena Bajcsy, director of the National Science Foundation, met with 30 female students from inner-city schools the day after her talk at SU. “These young girls had the chance to hear from a prominent speaker on computer engineering,” Bhatia says. “Along with those students came their teachers, who seemed very excited to be there.” While the short-term impact of such forums on the high school students is difficult to judge, she says, in the long run, the result will be positive. “When you hear and see, even for a short time, people who are successful, then you may begin to think, ‘If they can do it, I have a chance to do it too.’”
      Bajcsy also met with women faculty members over lunch. “She is a wonderful role model for all of us,” Bhatia says, “a prominent researcher who holds an important position at the National Science Foundation, which can change the direction of research. And she’s raised a family as well. It’s nice to see a woman scientist who’s so comfortable in these roles, prominent yet still down to earth.”
      Newton says Stanford ecologist Pam Madsen made a similar impression on campus. A renowned researcher, National Academy of Sciences member, and mother of two small children, Madsen prompted one student to ask, “How do you do it?” Newton also notes the prominence of the latest speaker, Lynn Margolis, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In her September talk, “From Gaia to Gender: Ideas Informed by Science,” she discussed such issues as whether there is enough room on the planet for both human and nonhuman species to coexist. “She’s one of the nation’s most revered scientists,” Newton says. “And she’s credited with a first-order discovery of how our cells evolved from microbial cells. Because this is a major event in evolutionary history, she’s a towering figure, someone known all over the world.”
      The lectures and accompanying social events bring together women faculty members in various disciplines and campuses, including the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Newton says. Many men also attend, along with undergraduate and graduate students in scientific and engineering disciplines. “Imagine you’re an undergraduate woman chemistry major,” Newton says. “What’s the likelihood that in the conventional structure you would meet with women scholars in Earth sciences, or faculty members from other schools? That just doesn’t happen.”