For years, media articles and research studies have noted that fewer women major in sciences than do men. One theory of why this gender gap persists is that young girls believe science is just for boys and men. Now, a new CD-ROM featuring associate professor of geology Lauret Savoy, along with other women scientists, is out to tell girls age ten and above what it's like to be a scientist.
Funded by the National Science Foundation, the new disc is called Telling Our Stories: Women in Science, and Savoy is one of eight women scientists featured in it. Through this interactive forum, Savoy is introduced as a role model, and in it she shares personal photos of her childhood, family, and hobbies and answers such questions as "Why do you like being a scientist?"
What Savoy
likes about the CD-ROM, now available to elementary and middle school teachers
through McLean Media in Sausalito, CA, is "that it reaches young girls at
a critical stage. I think the personal format of the material shows girls
and their parents that being a scientist is not mysterious."
Through the CD-ROM, viewers can take a field trip with Savoy to her research areas in the Canadian Rocky Mountains and American Southwest and perform an interactive experiment with her on ancient environments and the fossil record. All eight women profiled in the CD-ROM are covered in the same way. Also included is a database on women scientists, past and present. Viewers can access 130 women by name, scientific field, or birth date through the database. One of them is MHC alumna Virginia Apgar '29, a physician who developed the Apgar score for rating the health of newborns.
Savoy, who is interested in environmental history, was first contacted in 1993 for the project, which is also part of the Smithsonian Institution's permanent Science in American Life exhibition. Visitors to the Smithsonian's Museum of American History can use the CD, which is installed in an interactive kiosk and provides text, visual displays, and audio.
![[Go Back]](../goback.gif)