Amy's Global Mobilities

  I had enough adventures on my trip to Tunis to last for the entire trip. This is a LONG entry, because lots happened. If you don’t have time, you might find adventure three most interesting, followed by adventure one. ADVENTURE ONE Early in my first flight, from Chicago to Frankfurt, I noticed puffs of smoke erupting from the sweatshirt of my neighbor across the aisle. His head was buried in said shirt, but his hands were visible, and I noticed an e-cigarette in his hand. Quite apart from the fact that any kind of smoking is forbidden on airplanes, I am extremely allergic to something in the smoke from vaping (thanks to Sammi Crane whose former vaping habit allowed me to discover this). Shortly thereafter, I noticed my chest and airways constricting and the sensation that someone had run a sharp knife across the back of my throat – yep, his head was in the sweatshirt again. I quickly did some calculations involving the likelihood the plane would have to turn back if I complaine...

In a little less than two weeks, I will be leaving for Tunis to present a training institute on gender inclusive leadership for the Association of Tunisian Female Engineers ( ATFI ).  It's a Fulbright Specialist short-term placement. I'm excited and apprehensive, as there's lot to prepare and we've had multiple delays (thank you, COVID!). We will have one cohort each of the first two weeks, and I will play tourist for a few days at the end. We'll be covering much of the leadership information I learned as director of Women's Studies at NIU, especially during our two NSF ADVANCE grants. I'm looking forward to introducing some of the social norms advertising campaign we developed in EWOMS, which aimed to increase women's success in Calculus I (a gateway course to careers in STEM). I will also present evidence from our Catalyst grant on women's career satisfaction. If this is a return to some of the favorite parts of my career, it's also a return to...