Gender equity at ANU.

I applied for ‘A Day in the Life' at Deloitte where I had the pleasure of participating in their Insider program. We were taken inside their Canberra building at Russel and learnt about Deloitte's core values and practices.

Earlier this year, we had the pleasure of meeting up with Catherine Galvin, a lecturer and researcher at the ANU, to ask her about herself, and her experiences with gender equity in STEM.

When you think of scientists in popular culture, who comes to mind? Maybe it’s Bill Nye, Leonard and Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, Stephen Hawking, or Bruce Banner from the Marvel franchise. Or maybe you think of Dr Jane Foster from Thor or Scully from The X-Files. More likely than not the image that comes to mind is of a white male scientist.

The Australian Federal Government recognised achieving gender equality in STEM as a key component of its 2016 National Innovation and Science Agenda. This was seen in the support and implementation of two national programmes looking to tackle the issue of gender equality.

In July of 2019, I had the privilege of attending the inaugural Grace Hopper Down Under celebration with a group of ANU students studying in the Computer Science area. My name is Chloe Lamplugh and I am an executive of Fifty50.

This week we are speaking to Dr Kai Xun Chan, who has been named 2017 ACT Scientist of the Year. This annual award recognises the achievements of early-career researchers and seeks to celebrate and showcase scientific excellence in the ACT and inspire young people to pursue a career in science.

Liz Cowling is the 2019 Natasha Linnard Scholarship recipient, which is a scholarship awarded to a student who demonstrates excellence in mentoring female engineering students. Fifty50 caught up with Liz to discuss International Women’s Day and the importance of role models.

Continuing in this series of interviews, we caught up with Ellen Cliff, who was named the Queensland Rhodes Scholar for 2017. The Rhodes Scholarships are awarded to students around the world to support postgraduate study at the University of Oxford.

One of the greatest struggles in the push for gender equity in STEM is the ongoing attempt to fix the “leaky pipeline.” For newcomers to the area, the leaky pipeline refers to the alarmingly low retention rates of female-identifying people as they advance through the levels of academia and industry achievement- or, more precisely, as they don’t.

ANU Fifty50 is delighted to present the second instalment of our “Role Models in STEM” series, aimed at showcasing the achievements of people in STEM, we want to ensure young people have a future filled with opportunities regardless of gender and the associated unconscious bias that comes with that.

It’s an all-too-common scenario to most of us- sitting in a tutorial, listening and learning (or trying to), only to find that any opportunity to ask questions or to provide answers is snatched up by the same person each time. So how can we change the classroom dynamic that is such a broadly applied part of our university culture? How do we improve gender equity at ANU?

To launch the “Role Model’s in STEM” series, we caught up with Toby Hendy, a recipient of the 2017 ANU Westpac Future Leaders Scholarship who will begin her PhD in Physics in August at the Research School of Physics, ANU.

It all begins with an idea.

Fifty50 interviewed another inspirational female to celebrate International Women’s Day! Her name is Liz Cowling, a student at ANU and Fifty50’s Brand Management Director.