by Charissa Young
Edith Taylor leads future female scientists of America by example
Edith Taylor isn't thinking about the sub-zero wind blowing against her numb face. As she leads her field team across the Transantarctic Mountains, all she can think about are fossils. Finding fossils. Specifically, fossils entombed in rock-like peat. Surveying the barren landscape ahead, she trudges forward in her mountaineering boots on to the next patch at the end of the plateau. Pick in hand, Taylor takes a deep breath and swings at a hard black mass. These specimens may be able to use us about the future of global warming.
Fifty-four-year old Taylor is from a breed so rare, she might as well bleed blue. Taylor is one of the world's leading experts on plant fossils and she has explored Antarctica on eight separate occasions. She was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. But, most importantly, Taylor is a female scientist in a line of work still heavily dominated by males, a fact she is actively working toward changing. In fact, the KU Women's Award Hall of Fame recognized Taylor's advocacy work and inducted her in 2004.
Taylor may be queen in Antarctica, but at the University, she's more fittingly democratic. Instead of brown bag lectures, Taylor leads brown bag discussions.
Arms crossed, salt-and-peppered hair securely bunned, she sits at the front of a classroom across from scientists diverse in age, ethnicity and gender, who come on their own time to discuss the politics of women in science.
They begin by discussing the pipeline effect, in which women drop out of their
careers on the way to the top. This is not unheard of at the University of Kansas. The number of male to female assistant professors is almost equal, 149 to 138, respectively, the Office of Institutional Research and Planning (OIRP) reported in 2005. But at the higher position of professor, women constitute only 18 percent of the faculty.
Taylor made it through the pipeline, but she says women often feel they have to choose between their careers and raising a family because the government doesn't offer enough support, like childcare or maternity leave, for female scientists to be successful at both.
"If society's brightest women are then choosing not to reproduce, our society is in big trouble," she says.
In an effort to educate KU students on the oppression of women in science,Taylor teaches the seminar Women in Science each fall. The course introduces students to scientific products, inquiry and careers as studied by feminist scholars.
Heather Burkard, KU alumna, took Taylor's seminar in the fall of 2004. She says Taylor taught everything from gender discrimination in health insurance coverage to the media's stereotypical portrayal of female scientists as spinsters. Taylor defies this stereotype by balancing teaching and researching with marriage and children, Burkard says. She hasn't seen
"I've been a real champion for getting more girls to go into science and getting more college women to go on and do more graduate work in science,"Taylor says.
many female role models in science like Taylor, which she says makes it difficult for women to imagine themselves in the field.
"We could definitely use more Edith Taylors in the world." Burkard says. "Women like her are few and far between."
Taylor's agenda to increase the number of females in the science pool seems to be working, at least with one student who took the seminar. Jennifer McNutt, KU alumna, says that learning about prominent female scientists provided her the motivation to push forward to be a cosmetic surgeon. She wants to be a role model like Taylor and other scientists she learned about in the seminar, she says.
Taylor doesn't just "talk the talk" when it comes to getting more women in science, but she also "walks the walk," as Thomas Taylor, her husband and coworker, says.
In addition to speaking out on feminist issues, Edith Taylor actively volunteers in several outreach programs to recruit future generations of female scientists. Taylor has participated in TRIO days which serve underrepresented and low-income students. She supports these young high school students, whom she sees as potential scientists, by giving them the "joy of discovery" through hands-on workshops.
Last month, Taylor volunteered at Expanding Your Horizons, a discovery program that connects women in math or science careers to girls in sixth through eighth grades.
Patty Ryberg, Omaha graduate student,
assists Taylor at these workshops. Taylor
lets the students participate in science, Ryberg says, teaching them how to prepare Antarctican fossils for the microscope while talking to them about her travels to the continent. "She really makes science exciting and accessible," Ryberg says.
The fossils Taylor uses in these workshops is not in short supply at the University. Taylor says her field teams, which collected the fossils, have added at least 200,000 specimens to the University's fossil plant collection, the largest in the world. The peat Taylor discovered in Antarctica is particularly important because it could help experts predict the effects of global warming. With carbon dioxide levels constantly on the rise,Taylor says,"the only way we can know the future of global warming is to look back at the past, to look at fossils."
The fossils are preserved in petrified peat, which looks like dark rock.
Petrified peat is akin to backyard compost turned to stone, Taylor says. The tree rings found in the peat serve as a fossil record that tells us not only how old a tree was, but also what sort of climate it lived in, she says.
Because plant life is practically nonexistent in Antarctica today, it seems unimaginable that the continent once had forests full of trees. But Antarctica, in fact, had a warm climate 260 million years ago.
Some people don't worry about global warming because it will lead to more vegetation growth in areas previously too cold to support it, Taylor says. But, as Taylor has found, the trees that grew in
ANTARCTICA; THE COLD HARD FACTS
Antarctica is 98 percent thick continental ice sheet and 2 percent barren rock
The United States is about 1.5 times larger than Antarctica
The highest temperatures occur in January along the coast and average slightly below freezing
There are 27 stations for restricted helicopter landing
In 1998, NASA satellite data showed the antarctic ozone hole was the largest on record, covering 27 million square kilometers
Source: The World Factbook, http://www.cia.gov/
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