You can get a mentor who is a professional scientist or engineer in industry or government through MentorNet. Apply online at MentorNet.net at anytime during the year. Open to Dartmouth men and women undergraduates, graduates, post docs and junior faculty.
Dartmouth faculty serve WISP in valuable ways: as intern supervisors and mentors, as panelists, as steering committee members and as proponents of and fellow experimenters with its new concepts. In 1993-94, funded by a multi-year grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, WISP initiated a series of programs intended to acquaint faculty with new teaching methods and modifications of existing methods to help not only women, but all students, in achieving their full potential as learners. As a result of their participation throughout the project, faculty develop a better understanding of the particular barriers women may face in pursuing their interests in science, increase their knowledge about the breadth of learning styles and needs in the classroom, and can become stronger advocates for reducing the gender gap among students studying science.
During the 1996-97 academic year, WISP worked collaboratively with the offices of the Dean of the Faculty, the Provost and Academic Computing, to present Computing Technology and Teaching Seminars as follows:
Mark Taylor, Director of the Center for Technology in the Arts and Humanities and Preston S. Parish, Third Century Professor of Humanities at Williams College
Dartmouth College Faculty: Robert Gross, Professor of Biological Sciences and Director of the Center for Biological and Biomedical Computing; Michael Walters, Professor of Chemistry, and Susan Schwarz, UNIX research engineer, Dartmouth College.
Dartmouth College Faculty: Carl Beckmann, Professor of Engineering Sciences; George Cybenko, Dorothy & Walter Gramm, Professor of Engineering Sciences; Fillia Makedon, Professor of Computer Science, Dartmouth College.
Eric Roberts, Charles Simonyi Professor for Innovation in Teaching, Department of Computer Science, Stanford University.
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Christopher Strenta, Director of Institutional Research, Dartmouth College
Claudia Henrion, Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Dartmouth College
Delo Mook, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Dartmouth College
Mary Lou Gerinot, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, Dartmouth College
Sue Rosser, Director of Women's Studies, University of South Carolina, Senior Program Officer for Women's Programs at the National Science Foundation
Susan McGee Bailey, Director of the Center for Research on Women, Wellesley College
Senior Science Majors and Dartmouth Science Faculty
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The Dartmouth Institute for Science Teaching presents more extended opportunities to reflect on teaching and learning in the sciences. Typically, The Institute is a 2 and a half day retreat which has been held in residence at the Minary Center at Squam Lake New Hampshire. Past Institutes have included:
Focused on the intellectual issues surrounding web-based learning, introduced the structural issues of web site design, and provided practical hands-on experience with HTML
Facilitator: David Johnson, Cooperative Learning Center at the University of Minnesota. The hands on approach to this Institute required active engagement of the faculty, the same kind of active learning that is required of students in the cooperative learning environment of the classroom.
"I expected an introduction to cooperative learning and found instead an intense training session. This was extremely valuable and exceeded my expectations..."
Co-Facilitators: Dartmouth Mathematics Professor Dorothy Wallace and Physics Professor Delo Mook Focused on planning the implementation of a major NSF grant to design and implement an integrated math curriculum with introductory science courses.
"...I learned more than I expected I would, I worked harder than I expected I would, I will change my teaching because of this..."
This three day teaching institute provided a retreat for junior and senior faculty from the physical sciences to discuss effective teaching practices. The Institute was facilitated by Dartmouth Physics Professor Delo Mook. Guest speaker: Eric Mazur, The Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics and Professor of Physics at Harvard University, presented "Understanding of Memorization: Are We Teaching the Right Thing?"
Purposely selecting students who have difficulty in his introductory physics course, Professor Delo Mook hired women to help him redesign his course in a way that embraced multiple learning approaches. Different students learn in different ways and Mook's belief is that the trouble some students have with physics may not be a reflection of their ability to learn. Both men and women are being helped by the teaching aids he continues to build into his course.
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