WMU Magazine
She’s out to double the number of women in physics
One of Western Michigan University’s most accomplished scientists is using her international reputation to further the national goal of doubling the number of women in physics by 2022.
Dr. Nora Berrah, professor of physics, is an active scientist and researcher who has attracted nearly $5 million in research funding since 1992. An internationally recognized scholar who uses her research to inform her teaching, Berrah studies the interaction of light and matter to better understand and control the properties of matter.
With more than 145 publications to her credit and 135 invited presentations at national and international meetings as well as at universities and national laboratories, Berrah combines her teaching and research efforts at WMU with her national and international research at the University of California’s Berkeley National Laboratory; at the free electron laser in Hamburg, Germany; and with her efforts at Stanford’s Linear Accelerator Center, one of the world’s leading research laboratories.
Berrah is especially excited about her latest efforts at Stanford using the Linac Coherent Light Source free electron laser—FEL.
“This x-ray FEL light, the first of its kind in the world, promises to have a huge scientific impact,” says Berrah, who is the co-team leader for the Atomic and Molecular Physics community using the facility.
According to the Stanford center, the applications for this x-ray free science are limitless: medicine, electronics, biology, solid-state physics, nanotechnology, energy production, and as yet undiscovered areas of application.
The Department of Energy funds over $400 million for the ultra-small and ultra-fast laser LCLS light at Stanford, including a suite of instruments, that offers the promise to use time-resolved measurements on all form of matter: from atoms to molecules to aggregates, including biological specimens such as proteins and viruses all the way to the solids. Berrah is involved in the design of the AMO instrumentations.
For her students, especially at the graduate level, Berrah’s involvement with these technologically advanced labs means the latest in atomic and molecular physics makes its way into their WMU classrooms and labs.
Her passion for science, for teaching physics and for research in atomic and molecular physics is contagious. It is matched only by her willingness to serve her profession. Now she is using her international reputation to focus attention on the nation’s need to recruit and retain female scientists in academe.
National workshop fuels gender equity efforts
Berrah is at the forefront of an effort by the scientific community to assess the current status of women in science, technology, engineering and math, collectively known as STEM disciplines. She’s a proponent of doubling the number of women in physics in the next 15 years. To that end, she recently worked with a colleague from Stanford University, Dr. Arthur Bienenstock, to co-chair a national workshop, held at the American Physical Society headquarters in Maryland. The Committee on the Status of Women in Physics, led by Berrah, as well as members of the broader scientific community, assisted in the planning and organization of the national event.
The title of the event was the National Workshop on Gender Inequity: Strengthening the Physics Enterprise in Physics Departments and National Laboratories. Its purpose was to address and examine the underlying reasons for the small pool of female physicists, which impacts adversely the national scientific workforce. Department chairs of 50 top research-oriented physics departments in the nation attended the event, along with 14 managers of physics-related divisions of national laboratories.
“Women often make sacrifices and give up having a family,” says Berrah. “It used to be and is still, to some extent, too hard to do both well. And the culture is such that one who does have a family risks having it questioned whether, as a female faculty candidate, she can do research, publish and raise grants. This is still in the mind of many academic and national laboratory administrators.”
The workshop on gender inequity sought to address these issues. Social scientists were invited to attend the workshop to discuss biases.
“The goal was to recognize the biases so that we can deal with them and eliminate them,” says Berrah. “The tone was a positive one; we wanted to provide tools to implement change, not point fingers.”
“Another goal was to convince leaders of institutions that actions need to be taken now to double the number of women in physics in the next 15 years,” says Berrah. “We produced, collectively, a set of recommendations that are already on the CSWP website.” A full report will be distributed to all physics departments in the country in 2008.
The recommendations from the workshop focus on how to change the culture and how to change the infrastructure to affect the current national figures that shows only 8 percent of physicists at major research institutions and only 13 percent of physicists nationally are women. A diverse and increased pool of talent is important for the scientific workforce development, notes Berrah, since the U.S. is on the verge of slipping behind Europe and Asia in workforce development and in the number of scientific breakthroughs.
“Now, with recommendations already on the APS website, and included in the report to be sent out in 2008 to every physics department in the U.S., chairs and managers will have specific recommendations to follow,” says Berrah. “They can be agents of change and many of them are willing to do the right thing.”
Funding for the workshop was secured through the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, with awards to Berrah of about $200,000. Supporting the workshop were representatives from a number of federal funding agencies. They included Tony Chan, assistant director of the NSF Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Patricia Dehmer, associate director of Science for Basic Energy Sciences and acting deputy for programs at DOE’s Office of Science, who participated in the discussions, panels and presentations.
Understanding Berrah’s commitment
Berrah’s passion and commitment to the goal of increasing the number of women in the hard sciences stem from her own experiences. She says they helped shape her vision for the next generation of women scientists.
Berrah recalls as a child having an innate curiosity. She always wanted to understand how things worked, especially things of a biological nature.
“I read science books and religiously watched science documentaries,” recalls Berrah. “To me, it was like a puzzle to crack.”
While the books and documentaries started her on her journey into science, it was a visit to a university setting that cemented her interest in science.
“When I was in middle school, I visited my brother-in-law, a physicist, at his lab. My observations of his work impacted me,” says Berrah. “I was attracted to it all—the big computer in a separate room—and saw it all as fascinating. I also realized that studying physics was a way to understand the world.”
Because she earned excellent grades in math, physics, and chemistry, her teachers assigned her to the science track in high school. After receiving her baccalaureate in the hard sciences, Berrah segued into physics with hopes to do research. Berrah describes her personal experiences as a female physicist as mostly positive.
“I have heard different stories from other women,” she says. Some of those stories still come to her today as she mentors to younger women in the physics field.
The culture of an academic life in the sciences, especially physics, is competitive and can be demanding and aggressive, she notes. Physics is a man’s club, and the work calls for 12- to 16-hour workdays. This is the culture that must change, she says. Women add to the diversity of the sciences, but the need to incorporate their needs for work and family are real issues that, if not adequately addressed, will continue to undermine the number of women actively pursuing the hard sciences as career choices.
Asked why she is a leading advocate to increase the number of women in physics, Berrah responds by saying, “Today, I am in a position where I feel I can tackle effectively this important issue. Gender inequity in the hard sciences, not just in physics, needs to change.”
“It is a service to the physics community, to the community at large and to society,” she adds, “since I hope that our national activities will allow middle school girls to not be inhibited and to not have the barriers that many of us had to jump. They should be part of the next generation of scientists.”
For more information, contact Dr. Nora Berrah at nora.berrah@wmich.edu.
Media influences adolescent girls’ views on science
The fact that few women choose careers in science and engineering has led researchers to study the reasons why girls as young as middle school age lose interest in science courses and turn away from science and engineering as future careers.
Dr. Jocelyn Steinke, a professor in Western Michigan University’s School of Communication with a joint appointment in Gender and Women’s Studies, is pooling her expertise with that of researchers at other academic institutions and research assistants at WMU to define how the media affect adolescent girls’ perceptions of science. Steinke specializes in research on science communication and explores the influence of media images of women scientists and engineers on adolescent girls’ perceptions of gender roles and their occupational aspirations.
“Research shows that girls start to lose interest in science around the age of 12,” says Steinke. “This is a decline in interest, not ability.”
“In some disciplines, men outnumber women in the science, engineering and technology—SET—workforce by 3 to 1,” reports Steinke. “It is important to encourage more women and other underrepresented groups to pursue SET careers in order to expand and diversify the ideas, perspectives, approaches, and practices in science, engineering, and technology.”
In order to increase the number of women in SET, it is important to understand what factors influence the interests and perspectives of young females. To this end, Steinke was awarded a $291,010 National Science Foundation grant for 2004-06 to assess the role of the media in influencing young girls’ perceptions of science and careers in SET.
Partnering with Steinke in this study, “Assessing Media Influences,” were Drs. Maria Lapinski from Michigan State University and Aletta Zietsman-Thomas from University of Witswatersrand, along with graduate students from WMU studying communication, engineering, education, and sociology. Steinke was awarded a second NSF grant of $498,354 for 2006-09 to study “Adolescents’ Identification with Male and Female Scientists on Television,” and she is now collaborating with Drs. Lapinski; Marilee Long, Colorado State University; Brooks Applegate, WMU; Lisa Ryan, a Michigan public school teacher and WMU graduate students studying communication and engineering. Both grants assess and evaluate the media’s part in role modeling.
Studies emphasize the importance of role models for youths. This means that, for female adolescents, the absence of female science role models in the media may contribute to the factors that influence their perceptions of viable career paths.
“It is important to look at middle school students’ perceptions of female scientists in mass media,” says Steinke, “because the media present roles for women that may influence girls’ perceptions of which roles are considered appropriate or acceptable for women.”
Female middle school students are at an age when the media are important sources of influence for them. Research shows that, for some girls, their self-esteem also wanes at this point and they turn to the media to find answers to the questions “Who am I?” and “Who do I want to be?”
Steinke sees three primary factors as underlying causes for the scarcity of women in SET.
“I believe it is a combination of factors that begin to work during the early years, and when there are few interventions in place to counter these factors, girls may lose interest in science” reports Steinke. “The three primary factors identified as influencing girls’ interest in SET are: the home environment and parents, schools and teachers/peers, and popular culture and the mass media.”
Media effects on youth, in general, and young females, in particular, are well documented. Boys and girls grow up seeing images of women and men on television. These images cumulatively influence the way youth think about male and female roles.
Why this occurs is the focus of Steinke’s research and grant work with the National Science Foundation.
“It is important to look at middle school students’ perceptions of media portrayals of scientists,” says Steinke, “because these portrayals may shape their perceptions of who can be a scientist.”
If researchers can begin to understand the experiences and perceptions of adolescent girls, perhaps they can recommend the types of positive images of women scientists that promote girls’ interest in SET.
“Some of the gender counter-stereotypes we see in television portrayals of women scientists show them as intelligent, capable, successful, and interesting,” says Steinke. “Other gender stereotypes of women show them as dependent, not as capable as men, more interested in romance than careers, and unable to balance work and family responsibilities.”
With the first grant, Steinke went into middle schools in Michigan to evaluate the effects of an intervention focused on creating awareness of the stereotypes and counter-stereotypes of women, working women, and women in SET careers featured in media portrayals in television programs and films. The findings were interesting.
“One of the primary findings from the media influences grant was that middle school-aged boys who reported that media were important in their lives were also likely to report negative perceptions of women in SET,” remarks Steinke.
“When asked to draw a picture of a scientist, boys were more likely to indicate the scientist was male, and represented more stereotypes of scientists, in general, than did girls,” said Steinke. “In addition, both female and male students acknowledged that television programs and films were important sources of information for the scientists they drew.”
The first grant’s findings led Steinke to the current NSF grant now in progress. This research project, “Adolescents’ Identification with Female and Male Scientist Characters,” focuses on exploring middle school students’ perceptions of specific scientist characters in popular television shows.
“It is important,” says Steinke, “to look at the media programs that middle school-aged students are currently watching.” (Those programs run the gamut from CSI and Friends to MythBusters and Bill Nye the Science Guy.)
Based on students’ self-reporting of what shows they watch and current listings of popular science shows, the second NSF grant examines 14 television shows that feature scientists.
“Our first goal is to document specific attributes and traits of scientist characters and our second goal is to then examine the specific attributes and traits of the characters with which middle school students are most likely to identify,” Steinke says.
If scholars can increase the number of women involved in science, engineering, and technology, she believes, the nation will move in the direction of diversifying its workforce and ensuring that women and underrepresented groups play an important role in answering the hard scientific questions that face the current generation. An understanding of how the media influence girls’ perceptions of science and scientists during the formative years of middle school may offer some solutions for educators and parents who want to offer an alternative worldview for adolescent females.