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Title:  "TRIAD" Seeks Educational Gender Equity
Date:    June 3, 1998




                   NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

June 3, 1998

For more information on these science news and feature story
tips, please contact the public information officer at the end of
each item at (703) 306-1070.  Editor: Cheryl Dybas

             "TRIAD" SEEKS EDUCATIONAL GENDER EQUITY

   A National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded project in
California is having an impact on the performance of middle
school-aged girls in science courses within the San Francisco
Unified School district.
   Leaders of the Women's Triad Project also say they are
developing a common language between research scientists and
teachers to create a better common ground between the two
cultures, aimed at improving teaching and mentoring of women.
   "We found that scientists and teachers have different
connotations of certain terms," says Liesl Chatman, executive
director of the Science and Health Education Partnership at the
University of California in San Francisco, where Triad was
developed.  "For a scientist, a model is a flexible
representation of how something might work -- it can be modified
as more is learned.  For a teacher, a model often refers to
something that is already exemplary.  A scientist views being
critical as essential to the process of scientific investigation
-- to pick apart what doesn't work.  To a teacher, being critical
often runs counter to creating a nurturing learning environment
for young people.  It is the balance of criticism and nurturing
that scientists and teachers can learn from each other."
   Chatman says Triad has helped young women show more interest
in science, improving their confidence by more risk-taking and
display more verbal confidence and more self-assuredness in their
defense of positions on projects.  The next step, says Chatman,
is to work with teachers to examine their own practices, to set
real goals and to create an environment in the classroom for
gender equality.  [Lee Herring]

                FEDERAL OBLIGATIONS FOR ACADEMIC
             SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING DECLINE IN 1996

   In 1996, federal obligations for academic science and
engineering (S&E) revealed a yearly decline for only the fourth
time since 1963, the year NSF first
began surveying this form of government investment in S&E.  The
information is based on the most recent data from NSF's annual
Survey of Federal Science and Engineering Support to
Universities, Colleges and Nonprofit Institutions, summarized in
a new Data Brief by NSF's Division of Science Resources Studies.
   The government's overall $14.3 billion dollars obligated for
fiscal 1996 in academic S&E activities was $23 million lower than
the previous year, a decline of two-tenths of one percent.
Adjusted for inflation, the 1996 obligations were two percent
lower than in 1995.
   Of the six major categories in federal obligations toward
academic science and engineering, only two increased for 1996 in
current dollars, a modest 1.3 percent in research and
development, and just over one percent in "other S&E," which
includes a range of miscellaneous activities.
   The survey data was compiled from 18 federal agencies that
provide nearly all of the academic S&E support to universities,
colleges and nonprofit institutions.  [Bill Noxon]
   For the entire data brief, see:
http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/databrf/db.htm

                   ASTROPHYSICS IN ANTARCTICA
                     EXPLORED AT AAS MEETING

   Antarctica's unique potential for astrophysics will be
explored in an all-day session at the American Astronomical
Society meeting June 10 in San Diego.  Conditions at the National
Science Foundation's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station -
particularly the extremely cold, dry, and highly stable
atmosphere - are exceptional for observations from millimeter to
infrared wavelenghts.  Also, the thick ice sheet is being used
for high-energy astrophysical particle detector telescopes.
   Over the past few years, the Center for Astrophysical Research
in Antarctica has done extensive site testing, operated an
observatory through the long winter and conducted cutting-edge
astronomical observations.  The session in San Siego seeks to
draw ideas from the astronomical community in order to plan
future observing facilities at the South Pole.  [Lynn Simarski]
For more information on the South Pole and the workshop, see:
http://astro.uchicago.edu/cara/

                              -NSF-