Meet Dr. Vanessa Kercher, a clinical assistant professor at Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington. As a clinical assistant professor in the Kinesiology Department for the School of Public Health at Indiana University (IU). Dr. Kercher’s research passion focuses on helping individuals optimize their physical activity experiences through behavioral strategies to promote sustainable, positive health behaviors. At IU, Dr. Kercher serves as the advisor for Exercise is Medicine® On Campus and partners with a worksite wellness program, Healthy IU, to support the well-being of employees at IU. She also serves on the editorial board for the ACSM Health & Fitness Journal and is a member at large for the National ACSM Certification Committee Review Board. Prior to joining the faculty at IU, Dr. Kercher was a clinical exercise physiologist at a medical fitness center in Kalispell, Montana where she led multidisciplinary projects, including evaluation of clinical wellness interventions in multiple remote rural locations, community health needs assessment in complex health care systems, and psychometric development for clinical wellness coaching and cardiac rehabilitation programming.

Meet an inspiring WomanInSTEM! Caroline Guerra, a student at the Community School of Naples, is researching how to transform food waste like banana peels and corn husks into innovative, eco-friendly bioplastics.

SWENext offers a variety of resources for students, educators, SWE members, and adult advocates. It includes recruitment flyers, various outreach resources, books, and presentations for your use. Program support is generously provided by Bechtel Corporation.

In the Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month Meet Dr. Claudia Espinosa-Garcia, an instructor at Emory University. Witnessing her father overcome a brain disease when she was a child ultimately inspired her to enter neuroimmunology. She is a first-generation college graduate and the only woman in her family with a PhD. She believes women, as minorities across the world, face innumerable barriers in STEM. Years ago, She had no one to guide her or advice when she was lost. Nowadays, it is a privilege for her doing what she loves for a living. Therefore, besides her work in the lab, she is a member of many organizations supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion. For example, AWIS, an organization supporting women success and driving systemic change; SACNAS, a society that aims to further the success of Chicano/Hispanic and Native American students in science. Additionally, she is part of the FALAN networking that promotes relationships between neuroscience researchers in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the rest of the world. She sincerely hopes she can help to those in need.

Twenty years ago, when one of us (E.W.) joined the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Melbourne, Australia, women represented only 13% of the academic staff. By the end of 2017, the figure was still only 16%, despite efforts to bridge the gender gap. For years, women were told by those working in the field that they simply had to be patient as the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce caught up with social movements, and that a new generation of young female engineering and science graduates was coming through. But that hasn’t happened. Despite a small increase in the number of women studying STEM subjects as undergraduates or postgraduates in Australia, female enrolment in these fields was only 36% of the total in 2019. Female representation in science and engineering, especially at the senior level, is still appallingly low. Find out how a one-year recruitment drive led to an unprecedented increase in women faculty across STEM departments at The University of Melbourne.

Dr. Holly Porter found meaningful work in forensic biology, but she had to overcome obstacles to get there. For SummerOfScience, she shares her story and advice. As a DNA analyst at the Baltimore City Police Department her role involves completing the technical as well as analytical steps involved in recovering and analyzing DNA from evidence items. In addition, she authors reports, review the work of other analysts, and testify in court. She has more recently begun working on audit teams to assess crime laboratories to ensure that they are maintaining high standards and performing quality work.

Dr. Christina Chuck shares how food engineering impacts society and the status. Her profession is food engineering, a multidisciplinary area that leverages chemistry, biochemistry, nutrition, microbiology, and engineering to solve problems associated with the food system. Food science and engineering use scientific principles to overcome storage, processing, packaging, and food distribution challenges. Her mission is to use science to make healthier and nutritious foods readily accessible to all, to improve the lives of countless people struggling with food-related diseases.

The JWST is poised to unlock revolutionary discoveries. Astrophysicist Dr. Jane Rigby is charged with figuring out how best to harness the capabilities of this amazing observatory. “Give me a telescope, and I can come up with something good to do with it,” says Jane Rigby, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who serves as the agency’s operations project scientist for the $10-billion James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most powerful off-world observatory yet built by humankind. Over the course of her career, Rigby has used many of the world’s premier ground- and space-based astronomical facilities - and she is helming one of Webb’s many “early release science” campaigns front-loaded for its first year of observations, utilizing the telescope to study star formation in galaxies across eons of cosmic time. But her main work with Webb is to work with her team to ensure everyone fortunate enough to use it can do “something good,” by looking after the full breadth of scientific investigations the telescope will perform for researchers around the globe during its planned five-year primary mission. This is no small task: For those hoping to squeeze as much science as possible out of this one-of-a-kind observatory, each and every moment of Webb’s time is precious - and Rigby oversees the schedule.

Title IX was passed on June 23, 1972, by the United States Congress for the purpose of prohibiting sex discrimination in any education setting or other activity that receives funding from government assistance. Title IX states: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Over the years, Title IX has provided protection and justice for victims of sexual harassment and assault, students that are pregnant and parenting, members of the LGBTQ+ community, teachers, coaches, and athletes. Read about the history of Title IX, why it’s still relevant, and recommendations for institutions and policymakers in Title IX at 50 a report by the National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education (NCWGE). AWIS is a member of NCWGE.

"Physics taught me that time moves like an arrow, always pointing forward. But I’d argue time is more like a tightly wound spiral. The names and faces are new at each turn, but this feeling that we don’t belong has hardly budged." Important article by Katrina Miller, a physics PhD student and journalist.