STEMing the Tide: Brilliant Lecture On How Female Experts and Peers Act as "Social Vaccines" to Protect Young Women's Self-Concept in STEM

Yesterday, I had the distinct pleasure of attending a Distinguished Faculty Lecture at UMass Amherst given by the experimental social psychologist Dr.Nilanjana "Buju" Dasgupta. Dr. Dasgupta is renowned for her research on implicit prejudice and her work has been recognized with numerous awards.She is a faculty member in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at UMass.

The title of her lecture yesterday: STEMing the tide: How female experts and peers act as "social vaccines" to protect young women's self-concept in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics." With such a title, I had to go to the talk plus Dr. Dasgupta is committed to making a difference in the world and her research is fascinating.

Professor Dasgupta was introduced by our Provost, Dr. Katherine E. Newman.

Her lecture was brilliant. She noted that females, by not majoring in STEM fields, which tend to be some of the most highly paying ones, end up with income inequality. Although females have the freedom to say no to STEM, are their choices really free?

She began her lecture by thanking her husband, her sister, numerous colleagues, as well as students, including undergraduates.

Her lecture was true to the press release (but that did not capture her eloquence, energy, and passion).  She discussed how constraints can be lifted to allow students real freedom to pursue any academic and professional path, especially ones where their group is underrepresented. She highlighted results  from a decade of research identifying people and environments in high-achieving academic settings that act as “social vaccines” to inoculate young women’s self-confidence, motivation and persistence, protecting them against negative stereotypes.

Her prescriptions from data to policy are all based on rigorous scientific research and, if there is a will from institutions, eminently doable. For example, she made the following recommendations:

1. There is a need to increase students' contact with female faculty (we are speaking here of female students in STEM, in particular).

2. Colleges need to hire more female faculty in STEM.

3. Colleges must fund peer mentoring in STEM, beginning with students in their first year of college, since the benefits last over their college careers. Evidence for this was obtained from a study of engineering students at UMass Amherst and the results were clear and definitive.

4. Showcase successes of technical women in classes. This can be done through guest speakers and even having photos of successful females in your lecture slides!  Here I was reminded of the STEMGems book, by Stephanie Espy, which features 44 females in STEM, to inspire young females. I was honored to be one of the 44 selected for this book, which I have given out to some of my PhD students, my daughter (she is a STEMGem), and nieces.

5. For classes involving teamwork (a big part of business education as well as engineering) pay attention to the gender composition. It is especially important to have females motivated in STEM and having confidence.

6.  Timing matters - juncture points are especially critical - as when one matriculates in college or then decides on graduate programs.


After her lecture she was awarded the Chancellor's Medal from the UMass Amherst Chancellor, Dr. Kumble Subbaswamy.

Multiple times Dr. Dasgupta was recognized with voluminous applause from the audience. It was also interesting to hear her say that STEM majors are more likely to have a parent or sibling in STEM.

The Q&A that followed was also excellent and demonstrated the interest from the audience in the topic. And, yes, there were quite a few males present, which was great.

I never had a single female professor in STEM during my Brown University undergraduate days. When pursuing my PhD there in Applied Mathematics, with a specialty in Operations Research, I was drawn to Stella Dafermos, the only female professor in either the School of Engineering or the Division of Applied Math, in which she held joint appointments. She became my doctoral dissertation advisor and I her first PhD student. STEM was highly valued in my family and I always loved Math and saw it as the absolute truth. I will be graduating soon my 20th PhD student, and 10th female.

Fabulous STEM Slam Organized by the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter

I just returned from a very exciting event organized by the award-winning UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter.

The event was a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) Slam in which undergraduate and graduate students could present their research in a 3 minute talk with only props that they could carry on to the stage. There were 3 judges, two student ones, and my OR/MS colleague, Professor Hari Balasubramanian.

The student chapter officers did a spectacular job organizing this event which attracted speakers from numerous science and engineering departments at UMass Amherst. A big shoutout to Pritha Dutta, Ekin Koker, Deniz Besik, Amro El-Adle, Rodrigo Mercado, and Swaminathan Kandaswamy, with Destenie Nock, as the fabulous emcee, and Amirhossein Alamdar Yazdi assisting the officers!

The attention to detail made for a very successful, memorable, and exciting scientific and social event. There was also great attendance (and this is the Friday of a long weekend in Massachusetts plus a holiday weekend.)

Below are a few photos of the speakers who spoke on fascinating and wide-ranging scientific topics such as AI and consciousness, the preservation of food nutrients in outer space, reducing traffic congestion through cooperation, antibiotics and resistance to them, what causes butterflies in your stomache, RNA, rocket science, and even math modeling. All thirteen speakers were recognized with a nice slide. Props included an orange, a balloon, emulsions, and some bottles.

Pizza and donuts were provided  to fuel the speakers and the audience, which also voted for their audience choice award recipient.

While the votes were being tabulated, which were done with a nice Excel spreadsheet, there was a very entertaining trivia segment in which audience members who answered the questions posed by Destenie Nock correctly earned prizes.  In addition to the audience award winner, there was a first place and a second place winner.

All presenters were given certificates and we took the nice group photo of the speakers, judges, officers, and friends, below.

Congratulations to all involved on a wonderfully organized scientific event that showcased the importance (and fun) of public speaking on your scientific research! Thanks to the hard-working, creative, spirited, and super enthusiastic UMass Amherst Student Chapter Officers on the success of this event that will be hard to top and that was intellectually rewarding and great fun!

Bravo to the terrific UMass Amherst Student Chapter Officers for the magnificent team-work and attention to detail! You are all operations research stars!

Phishing is Like Fishing - A Fitting Finale to Our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series

Where has the academic year gone?

We are now in the final weeks of a very busy semester and yesterday we had the pleasure of hosting my colleague, Dr. Ryan Wirght, of the Operations & Information Management Department, in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series, which the students of this award-winning chapter, help me to organize.

This year we hosted 6 speakers, including Dr. Michael Fu of the Smith School at the University of Maryland, Dr. Les Servi of MITRE (both of whom I saw at the recent INFORMS Analytics Conference in Boston), as well as Dr. Mary Helander of IBM (who, coincidentally, was involved in helping to organize the same conference in terms of speaker selection), as well as Dr. Eric Gonzales, a recent great addition to the UMass Amherst faculty, who had been at Rutgers,and Dr. Adams Steven, another colleague of mine, who received hid PhD from the Smith School last year.

Yesterday, was the grand finale, since it was the last speaker of our academic year!

Dr. Wright's talk was on: “Towards a Behavioral Model of Online Deception Detection."

The audience consisted of students from the Isenberg School of Management and the College of Engineering as well as faculty. Dr. Wright began his lecture with an overview of the cybersecurity failures at both Target and Adobe and associated financial and reputational costs and took us on a journey of how to build a human firewall to combat such attacks. 

He shared with us his research, which is behavioral, and includes experiments (often with undergraduates as subjects),  and findings, published in top IS journals, on phishing and human susceptibility and vulnerability, along with effective response training, including mindfulness training. The insights garnered are fascinating. Needless to say, the audience had many questions, always a sign of an outstanding speaker and presentation. 

Top lesson:  be aware and think before you click on a "suspicious" link. Don't use technology mindlessly.

I took the following photos of  Dr. Wright lecturing yesterday and with some of the audience members. Given that it was a Friday, and Monday is Patriot's Day here is Massachusetts, which is a holiday, plus the day of the running of the Boston Marathon, we were so pleased that the talk attracted a standing room only audience.

And, yes, the second photo below, illustrated an analogy between phishing and fishing - think of that url as a "hook."

I always say, you have a great topic and speaker, you promote it appropriately, and we did, and they will come!

I have written tips on organizing a successful Speaker Series, which you can accessed here.

Computer Programming Should be Part of the Curriculum

I often tell my students that if they know how to write computer programs (that solve problems) that they will never be out of a job.

Computer programming (sometimes called coding, although I prefer the former term) requires knowing a computer language and being able to break up a problem that you want to have solved into component parts.

In developing an appropriate computer program or software, you have constructed a usable product.

It may involve constructing an algorithm (a series of steps) that, when executed by the computer, will deliver the answer to you, a client, or an organization.

It has even been said that automobile companies are software companies, since cars are now so dependent on computer programs.

Douglas Rushkoff, in a column, Learn to code, get a job, for CNN.com argues eloquently for coding to be on a par with knowing the alphabet and numbers or how to read and write and do math.

He notes: If you know how to code, you can get a high-paying job right now, or make valuable stuff right now. You will understand more about how the world works, and become a participating member in the digital society unfolding before us. You will be enabling America to compete effectively on both the economic and military frontiers, where we are rapidly losing our competitive advantage due to our failure to teach ourselves code.

I couldn't agree more.

My exposure to computer programming came in college at Brown University, beginning with a course in Operations Research and Linear Programming. Senior year I spent a lot of time writing code in a computer science course and getting the code to work correctly and nicely was time-consuming but also fascinating and, may I say, "addictive." Upon graduation, it was easy to get a job in the high technology sector because I had such skills and programming in assembly language to be used on submarines was my first assignment (my first industry job was at System Consultants, which had many contracts for the Navy and I was based in Newport, Rhode Island, quite the idyllic setting).

Now as a faculty member, I still enjoy implementing the algorithms to solve complex network problems ranging from supply chains to dynamic transportation networks.

Computer programming is about solving problems and it is fun!

It should be part of the curriculum and every college student (and probably high school student, as well) should have the experience of how creative and powerful of an experience it us to be able to write computer programs. We would not have Google, Facebook, or Twitter without computer code. It's hard to imagine what the world would be like without software!

Risk-Taking, Innovation, and Steve Jobs

The sun has not yet risen, the power has not failed, and we are awaiting Hurricane Irene, which is to hit landfall in our part of the Northeast sometime today. Hurricane Irene and emergency preparedness have been the center of attention with mass transit shutdowns in Philadelphia, NYC, New Jersey, and Boston, and thousands of flights cancelled and even airports closed as the hurricane barrels up the northeast corridor. Manhattan was eerily quiet yesterday as my uncle, who is in his 90s, related to us, after his walk to Lincoln Center and back to his apartment.

During this period of preparing for Hurricane Irene, and, unlike when the tornadoes hit Massachusetts on Jun 1, 2011, there was sufficient warning, the announcement was made, in case you missed it, that Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Inc. had stepped down, but had asked to remain on the Apple board as its chairman. He had been fighting pancreatic cancer for two years and had had a liver transplant and the best wishes and accolades streamed from around the globe from leaders, executives, and consumers of Apple's products from the iPod to the iPhone and iPad. Jobs' attention to detail and sense of aesthetics are legendary. He is also the holder of 313 patents according to The New York Times.

Jobs is the consummate innovator and innovation is an elusive talent and quality that has generated much interest in both industry and academia and is essential for economic growth and prosperity. In fact, presently, we at the Isenberg School, are looking to fill a chaired faculty position as the Isenberg Professor, who is to focus on innovation. Innovation has even attracted the attention of nations and, according to John Kao, an innovation expert, and as reported in The Times, the raw materials for innovation, which other nations may be surpassing the US in, include:

• government financing for scientific research,
• national policies to support emerging industries,
• educational achievement, engineers and scientists graduated, and
• even the speeds of Internet broadband service.

What the US does have, however, and what other countries may lack, and which is essential for a climate for innovation, Mr. Kao notes, is a social environment that encourages diversity, experimentation, risk-taking, and combining skills from many fields into products that he calls “recombinant mash-ups,” like the iPhone, which redefined the smartphone category.

To learn how to become a great innovator, we need look no further than Steve Jobs and, as academics have pointed out: the five traits that are common to the disruptive innovators or what makes up The Innovator's DNA: questioning, experimenting, observing, associating, and networking to search for new ideas. Ceaseless curiosity and willingness to take risks make up their genetic code.

Thank you, Steve Jobs, for showing us how it should be done -- even after your firing from Apple, you rose to lead the company to new heights.

Teaching Improves Research in STEM Fields

In an intriguing study published in the August 19, 2011 issue of Science, entitled, Graduate Students’ Teaching Experiences Improve Their Methodological Research Skills, researchers, using a performance rubric, compared the quality of methodological skills demonstrated in written research proposals for two groups of early career graduate students (those with both teaching and research responsibilities and those with only research responsibilities) in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields at the beginning and end of an academic year. They found that students who both taught and conducted research demonstrate significantly greater improvement in their abilities to generate testable hypotheses and design valid experiments. Their conclusion: These results indicate that teaching experience can contribute substantially to the improvement of essential research skills.

The Chronicle of Higher Education ran an interesting commentary on this study, Want to Be A Good Researcher? Try Teaching.

The article noted that one might expect similar conclusions in the social sciences and quoted several economists and studies.

Our doctoral students at the Isenberg School of Management are required to show competency in teaching before receiving their PhDs, which is, typically, demonstrated by their teaching of two undergraduate courses.

This also helps them on the job market, assuming that they pursue an academic career, as many of them do.

Now, with this study, our Management Science PhD students can further reap the fruits of their labors.

And, as I wrote in my earlier post, the Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman suspected this all along!