It was the RSES student conference on Thursday and a chance to find out exactly what everyone else is up to, and hopefully finally work out who everyone is. In order to fit in most of the department's grad population and a few of the honours (aka 4th years) students, talks were limited to just eight minutes, which is nothing. I trimmed my Pliocene ENSO talk down to what I thought would be suitable, and still only really got through half of it! As you might expect there were some really good talks and some really dull ones. The dullness being from the Petrologists in the first session, but it picked up through the Tectonicists (!), Physicists and Environmentals.
There was also a BBQ after, on the departmental BBQ (which I find fantastic!) and then beers on into the evening for those who stayed. Overall it was a good day, but most of the people I kind of already knew, those who hide away, still hide away! Oh well!
What was very interesting to note was that of the 37 talks over the course of the day, 19 were guys, 18 from girls, which is damn good for a science subject. At grad level in RSES at least, there appears to be no real gender gap. The corresponding stat though, was that there were only three talks for which the supervisors were female. Above the post-doc level, the gender gap, especially in this department, is huge. Is this something that needs active change? or will the gender gap grow itself out? or both, of course!
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