It is almost 11pm and I'm finally back to this -- trying my second post.  I was a very, very long day and inspiring!

Quick side note: I just figured out that I can publish posts separately and not just have one long blog.  I'm also figuring out that you have to save your work early and often, and that posting a picture  before saving can erase your work -- live and learn.  Posting pictures is difficult because the internet is slow and intermittent.

In the mean time here are a couple of related web sites:

COACh:

http://coach.uoregon.edu/coach/

This COACh workshop:

http://coach.uoregon.edu/coach/index.php?id=17

The talks this morning consisted of each woman presenting one slide (supplied earlier) and talking 5 minutes about their background, work, and something interesting about themselves -- and everyone was  creative.  Prof. Khadija Ziat, who I mentioned yesterday, presented first and we all agreed no one could do better.  Not only did she describe her work on water chemistry, but also the importance of Science in unifying the people on the planet.  She is a powerful speaker and clearly a force of nature.  Another particularly inspiring talk was by Kathryn Pharr from the US State Department -- also stressing the unity of science.

During these talks everyone paid close attention and took notes and there were lots of questions -- all trying to discover where we could overlap in our research.  There were obvious alignments and some that need to be explored.

At lunch we all tried to interact as much as possible -- people were changing tables and taking notes to find more consillience.

After lunch there was a panel run by Nora Berrah (Algerian born and raised and now at Western Michigan -- I know her well from BESAC) with two women each from Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and the US.  Sue Clark, a chemist from Washington State, and I were the US panelists.  We compared and contrasted funding, career paths, roadblocks to science in general, and roadblocks to women scientists.  We all learned a great deal!  Some bullet points:

• The percentage of women in the sciences in N. Africa was much higher than the US!
• N. African scientist get a guaranteed base which is very small; dependent on ratings of that professor and institution and then can apply for more grants from their ministry and outside. They do not have to cover student tuition -- that is covered.  The funding they get as a base can maybe allow them to go to one conference a year and sometimes one cannot accomplish her work with the available funds.
• This is quite different for US where the grants are larger but are used mostly for salaries and tuition waivers.
• Tuition is free in N. Africa -- but the sources to pay the students are low.  Many students live at home and their entire subsidy goes to commuting and some food.  The ones far from their University have to find families to live with -- or some of the schools do have dorms -- but those are harder to afford.   Rural students were definitely more challenged in this.   
• Career paths were not all that different between countries -- in academia it is assistant to associate to full professor.  However, the requirements for each level were quite disparate.
• Recruitment of good students seemed not to be such a big problem.  I pointed out that in the US the undergraduate declaring physics as their major basically doubled over the last few years -- the problem was not recruitment but how to give these increased numbers the same quality of education as before.
• All agreed that barriers were infrastructure (like equipment), funding, and other demands on time -- teaching loads, committee work, etc.  This is for all scientists -- men and women alike.
• Barriers for women were all over the map -- some great stories and some not so great.  This is clearly spotty and changing rapidly -- transience rules.  This is best not to blog!

I'm going to post this before I lose anything and then try to post some pictures -- maybe they will load overnight!