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Meeting 2

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Angeline Burrell edited this page Aug 18, 2020 · 3 revisions

Date and Time: 18 Aug 2020 15:00 BST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT Present: Angeline, Kate, Alexa, Mack, Melissa Apologies: John

Sample recommendation letters

Mack and Kate have provided drafts of good and bad recommendation letters for a pre-PhD applicant focusing on gender bias. We discussed the use of blank, gendered, and gender neutral names in the example. We settled on using a gendered name because Alexa brought up that gender neutral names tended to be treated as female anyway and Kate found it unsettling to work around a blacked out name.

We discussed different ways to present the letters on the website, and would ideally like to have them display side-by-side with a summary explaining the differences and why one letter is stronger than the other. Both are written to describe the same person with the same skills, and not written to be deliberately bad.

ORCiD

Angeline looked into joining ORCiD as an organization and found that between the annual cost of membership (~$5,000) and the need to incorporate as a non-profit, this avenue of providing recognition for reviewers is prohibitive. We all discussed ways of working with an organization to achieve this end without spending money or involving lawyers, without much success. We discussed other ways of making sure community recognition is provided for those who participate. Alexa brought up the idea of writing a letter in something like EOS or space weather. Kate brought up that herself, Mack, and Angeline will need to get this pub released and so should talk to our line managers about the time spent on this project. Angeline and Alexa looked into different journals for publication and found a few that had a $0 publication fee. https://www.agu.org/Publish-with-AGU/Publish/Author-Resources/Publication-fees

We also talked about reporting the impact of this project in the annual report giving credit. To measure this, it would be useful to have:

  • SPA/MIST demographics (possible)
  • Recommendation letter level (yes)
  • Target institution (possible)
  • Recommendation level bias concern (optional)
  • Writer race/gender/career level (optional)
  • Relative change in gender bias (yes)
  • Relative change in racial bias (not yet possible)

Website update

Melissa updated develop branch to have a nicer format, with each section on the page containing information that will be on separate pages once a navigation bar is introduced. More links, suggested by Alexa at the first meeting, were added. A logo created by Angeline was added, and Mack and Alexa word-smithed the tagline for the page. We decided to keep it as is, both to draw people in (give them peas with their mashed potatoes) and also because letters with less unconscious bias are better letters.

Set the next meeting time

Because John is likely to be busy next month, we are meeting at a later time of day to accommodate those living on the West Coast.

14 Sept 2020 18:00 BST, 13:00 EDT, 10:00 PDT

Tasks for next meeting:

  • All - add to guidelines for review text document on develop branch of ELSP
  • Angeline - put up guidelines for review document on ELSP, work with Alexa to write good/bad nomination letters, provide anyone who needs it here with help using GitHub
  • Alexa - Work with Angeline on writing good/bad nomination letters
  • Kate - Finish good undergraduate recommendation letter, talk to NRL folks about time/resources spent on this project
  • Mack - Write bad race/socioeconomic class PhD-to-postoc recommendation letter
  • Mel - Add a navigation bar to the webpage

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