October 19, 2007

Virginia Valian Discusses Gender Inequality in Career Advancement

Virginia Valian, Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Linguistics at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), spoke on gender equity issues this past spring at McKnight Hall. Dr. Valian is a cognitive scientist with research interests centered on language acquisition and sex differences in cognition. Her general interest in gender equity led her to write the book Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women (MIT Press 1998).

In her lecture, Valian integrated concepts and data from psychology, sociology, economics, and biology to explain the disparity in the professional advancement of men and women. Her claim is that men and women alike have implicit hypotheses about gender differences - gender schemas - that create small sex differences in characteristics, behaviors, perceptions, and evaluations of men and women. Those small imbalances accumulate to advantage men and disadvantage women. The most important consequence of gender schemas for professional life is that men tend to be overrated and women underrated.

She asserted that, although most men and women in the professions sincerely hold egalitarian beliefs, those beliefs alone cannot guarantee impartial evaluation and treatment of others. Only by understanding how our perceptions are skewed by gender schemas can we begin to perceive ourselves and others accurately. Her goal in writing the book Why So Slow? is to make the invisible factors that hinder women's progress visible so that fair treatment of men and women will be possible.
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August 18, 2007

Sokolova Receives Research Opportunity Award

This past summer, Dr. Sokolova received a Research Opportunity Award (ROA) of $25,000 from the National Science Foundation to supplement her current NSF CAREER grant. ROA awards support research and training of faculty from predominantly undergraduate institutions allowing them to pursue research as visiting scientists with NSF supported investigators.
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June 18, 2007

Robin Coger Appointed to Prestigious Center for Scientific Review Committee

CHARLOTTE -- June 18 -- The National Institutes of Health announced that Robin Coger, professor of mechanical engineering in UNC Charlotte's William States Lee College of Engineering and Director of the Center for Biomedical Engineering Systems (CBES), has been appointed to serve as a member of the Center for Scientific Review's Gene and Drug Delivery Systems Study Section.

Members are selected based on achievement in their particular scientific discipline, quality of research, and publication in scientific journals.

Study sections review grant applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), make recommendations to the appropriate NIH national advisory council and survey the status of research in their fields of science. The work of the study sections is valuable to medical and allied research in the United States.

Coger's term begins July 1 and continues until June 30, 2011.

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