Laura McCullough

University of Wisconsin–Stout | UWS · Department of Chemistry and Physics

Women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields are under-represented, and women are also less likely than men to be in leadership positions, generally. Little is known about the intersection of these areas: women in leadership in STEM. To determine what sort of barriers and assistance female STEM leaders have encountered,...

Women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields are under-represented, and women are also less likely than men to be in leadership positions generally. Little is known about the intersection of these areas: women in leadership in STEM. To determine what sort of barriers and assistance female STEM leaders have encountered, a...

The International Conference for Women in Physics (ICWIP) meets every three years in locations around the globe. Under the auspices of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), ICWIP draws female physicists (and a few males) from over two dozen countries to meet for three days and share stories and research, in order to promote a...

A considerable body of research exists on women in leadership and likewise, on women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields. However, the intersection of the two is terra incognita: women in leadership in STEM. At the most fundamental level, we do not even have a solid idea of how many women hold leadership positions in STEM...

A considerable body of research exists on women in leadership and likewise on women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields. However, the intersection of the two is terra incognita: women in leadership in STEM. At the most fundamental level, we don't even have a solid idea of how many women hold leadership positions in STEM....

If we are to increase women’s participation in physics, we need to attract and retain women at all levels in the field. Strong gains have been made in faculty numbers at the associate and assistant professor level, but full professors remain predominantly male, and the numbers of women working as lab directors or department chairs is mostly unknown...

The United States has a major deficit in the proportion of women earning degrees in physics, peaking around 20%. To promote excellence and maximize creativity, additional efforts to diversify the physics community must be implemented. Challenges to improving the proportion of female physicists include microaggressions, active discouragement, poor a...

A website on gender bias in physics (https://genderbias.compadre.com) was created to help women and gender minority physicists communicate their stories, ideas, and questions about gender bias in physics.

This book begins with an examination of the numbers of women in physics in English-speaking countries, moving on to examine factors that affect girls and their decision to continue in science, right through to education and on into the problems that women in physics careers face. Looking at all of these topics with one eye on the progress that the...

At the 2007 Physics Education Research Conference, a workshop on publishing and refereeing was held with a panel of editors from four different publishing venues: the physics education research section of the American Journal of Physics, the Journal of the Learning Sciences, Physical Review Special Topics-Physics Education Research, and the Physics...

Column Editor's note: Laura McCullough teaches physics at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. She has a Ph.D. in science education and conducts physics education research on gender issues in physics. I was impressed with her passion for this issue when I heard her speak at an AAPT session several years ago, and I think you will agree that the insigh...

Using "Science News" as a teaching tool promotes writing about science, talking about science, and broadening students' views about what science is. This article describes an ongoing assignment in which students choose one article from "Science News" each week and write a brief summary and explanation of why they picked that article. (Contains 1 fi...

The physics community has been concerned about low participation by women for many years. Although some progress has been made, the percentage of women in undergraduate physics is less than half that in mathematics and chemistry. The authors conducted site visits to nine undergraduate physics departments, five with high participation by women and f...

A persistent gender gap exists on one of the most commonly-used physics conceptual tests, the Force Concept Inventory. The test includes many stereotypically male contexts such as hockey, rockets, and cannonballs. A revised version of the test was created using stereotypically female contexts and both versions were randomly administered to 300 coll...

The physics community has been concerned about low participation by women for many years. Progress has been made, but the percentage of women in undergraduate physics is still less than half that in mathematics and chemistry. To learn - what works - in attracting and retaining women in the undergraduate physics major, the authors conducted site vis...

This paper reviews the current status of women in physics, and the current literature and programs available on this topic.

Computers are appearing in every type of classroom across the country. Yet they often appear without benefit of studying their effects. The research that is available on computer use in classrooms has found mixed results, and often ignores the theoretical and instructional contexts of the computer in the classroom. The University of Minnesota's phy...