URWISE

This Sunday Dec. 6th marks the 20th anniversary of the École Polytechnique massacre.
All across Canada vigils are held on this day every year to not only remember the 14 young women who were murdered, but more importantly to renew our commitment to end violence against women.

For women in science and engineering it is even more important to remember these women who were targeted for being women in non-traditional career paths. The murder of these woman became the impetus for many changes in our world because it highlighted discrimination and violence against women in such a brutal way.

Here at the U of R the vigil will be held on December 4th, at 11:45 in the Riddell Crush area (the area in front of the theater).
Please take time out of your busy day to attend this short and very important vigil.

For those of you who are too young to remember Dec. 6th 1989 please read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massacre.

URWISE and University of Regina Faculty Association Status of Woman Committee (URFA-SWC) are pleased to co-sponsor a joint brown bag lunch this Friday, October 23 in ED623 at noon. Lisa Griffith and Dr. Elisabeth Kosters, geologists with very different career paths (including both private and academic work) will speak candidly with us about life as a woman in the male dominated Geoscience field. Some topics we hope to touch on include:

Lisa Griffith
Lisa was born in the USA but spent the majority of her childhood in Canada and is a dual citizen. Lisa actually started out as a Biology student but partway through her third year she took a geology class that included a field trip where she collected her first fossil – she never looked back. Lisa earned her B.Sc. in Texas and her M.Sc. in Geology at the University of Calgary. She has spent the past 30 years working for various companies in the oil industry and for the past five years she has run her own consulting company. Lisa specializes in pool optimization and core description. While working for bigger companies she initiated the drilling of over 140 wells (not all were successes). In her consulting business she has worked on everything from teaching short courses to building reservoir models for gas storage in Oklahoma to basin evaluation in Mauritania to prospecting with a start-up oil and gas company. Lisa’s leadership roles have included a stint as Lead of a Development Geology group, as a Technical Specialist, and as a Chief Geologist. She is the past president of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologist CSPG. Lisa’s husband of 23 years is also a geologist and they have two children in university (neither studying geology).

Dr. Elisabeth Kosters
Elisabeth is originally from the Netherlands where she did her B.Sc. and M.Sc. in geology. She then moved to the USA to work for the Louisiana Geological Survey where she completed her PhD as part of her job and also became the proud mother of her daughter. Since leaving LGS Elisabeth has worked in government (the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology) as a policy advisor for a national think tank and in academia. She taught at several universities in the Netherlands and in Canada, and was the Dean of Research and Graduate studies at an international graduate school. Elisabeth met her Canadian husband while in this position, and they returned to Canada seven years ago. Here she has adjunct positions at the earth science departments of Acadia University and of Dalhousie University where she lectures and has been involved in several projects. For the past two years Elisabeth has been managing director of Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences (CFES) – a job that came to her when Lisa Griffith suggested her to the CFES board. Yes – women’s networks are important, essential and crucial!

We are honored to have Elisabeth and Lisa share some of their personal experiences as Woman in Science. While Elisabeth’s and Lisa’s personal experiences are in geology; woman in all science and engineering fields will find more similarities than differences to their own experience.
For our students in science and engineering this is a chance to hear about life as a professional woman in science. Come armed with your questions!