Wendy M. Williams
Occupation(s)Professor in the Department of Human Development, Cornell University
AwardsFirst Place in American Educational Research Association, 1995, 1996

Early Career Contribution Award from Division 15 of APA, 1996

Mensa Awards for Excellence in Research to a Senior Investigator, 1997, 1999, 2002

Wendy M. Williams (born 1960) is a psychologist and professor known for her research in the fields of intelligence with regards to training and development. Williams is a professor at Cornell University in their Department of Human Development.[1] Williams is also the founder of the Cornell Institute for Women in Science (CIWS),[2] a center with the intended purpose for studying and promoting women in science. Working along side the National Science Foundation, Williams leads the "Thinking Like a Scientist" program, which intends to diversify the science community by getting girls and other underrepresented groups interested.

Biography

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Williams attained her B.A. in English and Biology at Columbia University in 1982. In 1985, Williams achieved her masters at Yale University in psychology. While at Yale, Williams also got her M.Phil. in 1986 for physical anthropology and in 1991 for her Ph.D. in psychology. Williams currently works at the Cornell Institute for Women in Science, which she founded in 2009 and currently directs. She is a professor in the department of human development and specializes in intelligence.

Alongside Stephen Ceci, she has written and published many articles, as well as has authored nine personal books, including The Reluctant Reader, How to Develop Student Creativity, and The Mathematics of Sex. Williams has also edited five volumes and has had the results of her research cited in several psychology textbooks.

Williams is currently a member of the Association for Psychological Science(APS), as well as the American Psychological Association(APA) in the fields of general psychology, developmental psychology, educational psychology, and media psychology. While a member of the APA, Williams served as acting Member-at-Large for the for the Division 1 general psychology committee for two terms.

Williams leads the "Thinking Like a Scientist" program that was started at Cornell University, which serves to deepen common understanding of science and spark interest in underrepresented children. Unlike ordinary science courses, Williams' objective is not to have students understand vocabulary and terms in a compartmentalized manner, but to think scientifically in a real life manner.

Williams has received many awards and considerations over the course of her career. Williams has achieved the Senior Investigator Awards for Excellence in Research from the Mensa Foundation in 1997, 1999, and 2002. She won the Early Career Contribution Award from the APA in 1996, and the 2001 Robert Fantz Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology. In 2014, Williams won second place in the National Institutes of Health "Great Idea" Challenge. Her submission for the challenge was her research proposal regarding the role of gender and race in the grant-reviewing process.

Williams is a contributor for the New York Times as well as the Huffington Post, mostly with regards to sexuality having an influence on the scientific community.[3][4][5]

Research

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Williams is best known for her research in the field of intelligence. Williams focuses not only on what the subjects of her research are thinking about, but also how they are thinking about the world around them. Williams also focuses heavily on the importance of sex and gender in the scientific community, which is expressed in many of her articles on the New York Times[3] and Huffington Post.[4][5] In an article by Wired,[6] Williams and Ceci's work on the debunking of sexual discrimination in the scientific community is referenced often to explain just why it is so hard for women to get jobs and grants.

In Williams' research for The Mathematics of Sex, Williams and Ceci attempt to understand why women make up a minority of the scientists within the mathematics community. In doing so, they take the three leading theories: male brains are better physically at understanding and performing advanced mathematical and spatial operations; the second being social and cultural biases prevent the training and success of women in mathematical fields; the third claims that women are not as interested in mathematic careers as men. Through the use of multiple fields of research from economics to endocrinology, Williams and Ceci discover that the reason women are not as able to enter the mathematics field is because of a complex series of life choices made that differ between women and men.

Williams also had some research with the Halo Effect, with regards to whether a teacher was good or not. Through her research, Williams learned that students often praised their professors things outside of just teaching well; instead, students would acknowledge the equipment used or the legibility of the teachers' handwriting. These positive traits would then cause the students to get a false impression of their teacher, believing the instructor was good on these bases rather than how they would teach or what they would teach.

Publications

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Ceci, S. J., Williams, W. M., & Barnett, S. M. (2009, March). Women’s underrepresentation in science: Sociocultural and biological considerations. Psychological Bulletin, 135 (2): 218-261. PMID 1925407[7]

Ceci, S. J. & Williams, W. M. (2010). Sex Differences in Math-Intensive Fields. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(5), 275-279. (“Most downloaded article” of October 2010 on Association for Psychological Science website) PMID 21152367[8]

Whitecraft, M. A. & Williams, W. M. (2011).  Why are there so few women computer scientists?  In: Making Software: What Really Works, and Why We Believe It (second edition), ed. G. Wilson.  Cambridge, MA: Riley.

Ceci, S. J. & Williams, W. M. (2011). Understanding current causes of women's underrepresentation in science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108: 3157-3162 (issue 8); (featured as first article profile in "This Week in PNAS" and downloaded 57,000 times as of January 2016). PMID 21300892[9]

Barnett, S.M., Rindermann, H., Williams, W. M., & Ceci, S.J. (2011).  The relevance of intelligence for society: Predictiveness and relevance of IQ for societal outcomes. In S. Kaufman & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence. Pages 666-682.

Williams, W. M., & Ceci, S. J. (2012).  When scientists choose motherhood.  American Scientist, 100 (2), 138-145.  (Feature article) PMID 24596430

Valla, J. M., & Williams, W. M. (2012). Increasing achievement and higher-education representation of under-represented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields: A review of current K-12 intervention programs. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering 18(1), 21–53.  PMID 22942637[10]

Williams, W. M., & Barnett, S.M. (2013).  Modern Critique of IQ and testing. In P. L. Mason (Ed.), Race and Racism, 2ndedition. New York: Macmillan.

Williams, W. M., Barnett, S. M., & Sumner, R. A. (2013).  Where are all the women in academic science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields?  In Handbook of Research on Promoting Women’s Careers, Eds. London: Edward Elgar.

Rindermann, H., Ceci, S. J. & Williams, W. M. (2013). Whither cognitive talent? Understanding high ability, its development, relevance and furtherance. In S. B. Kaufman (Ed.), Beyond Talent or Practice: The Complexity of Greatness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ceci, S. J., Ginther, D., Khan, S., & Williams, W. M. (2014). Women in science: A changing landscape. Psychological Science in the Public Interest (whole-issue, book-length article).

DeFraine, W.C., Williams, W.M., & Ceci, S.J. (2014). Attracting STEM talent: Do STEM students prefer traditional or work/life-interaction labs? PLoS ONE 9(2):e89801. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0089801 PMID 24587044

Williams, W. M., & Ceci, S. J. (2014, November 2). Academic science isn’t sexist. The Sunday New York Times, “Gray Matter” Editorial.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/02/opinion/sunday/academic-science-isnt-sexist.html?_r=0

Ceci, S. J., Ginther, D., Kahn, S., & Williams, W. M. (2015). Women in science: the path to progress. Scientific American Mind, 26.

Williams, W. M., Barnett, S. M., & Wethington, E. (2015). What women in science need to know about work-life balance. In Success Strategies of Women in Science: A Portable Mentor (P. Pritchard, Ed.). New York: Elsevier.

Williams, W. M., Blythe, T., White, N., Li, J., Sternberg, R. J., & Gardner, H. I. (1996). Practical intelligence for school. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.[11]

Ceci, S. J., & Williams, W. M. (2010). The mathematics of sex: How biology and society conspire to limit talented women and girls. New York: Oxford University Press. (Reviewed in Science: Miller, R. T. (2009). Women in science: Preference and penalties differ, Vol. 326 (20 November 2009), 1063-4.)[12]

Sternberg, R. J., & Williams, W. M. (2010). Educational psychology, second edition. Boston: Merrill. (Introductory college-level textbook)[13]

Ceci, S. J., & Williams, W. M. (Eds.) (2007). Why aren’t more women in science? Top researchers debate the evidence. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association Books. (Winner: 2007 Independent Publisher Book Award--Bronze Award, 65 national categories, 2,690 books submitted for 2007 awards; Reviewed in Science, 13 July 2007: Vol. 317. no. 5835, pp. 199–200: “Women in Science: Can Evidence Inform the Debate?” by Marcia C. Linn; Reviewed in Science News, March 24, 2007, Vol. 171, page 191; Reviewed in Scientific American Mind: Branan, N. (2007), “A Lab of Her Own, review of Why Aren’t More Women in Science?”, p. 81, vol. 18, number 1, Feb.-Mar. 2007; Reviewed in five additional journals/periodicals.)[14]

References

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Your references should go here.

  1. ^ "Human Ecology Bio Page". www.human.cornell.edu. Retrieved 2016-11-04.
  2. ^ "ciws". www.human.cornell.edu. Retrieved 2016-11-04.
  3. ^ a b Williams, Wendy M.; Ceci, Stephen J. (2014-10-31). "Academic Science Isn't Sexist". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-11-04.
  4. ^ a b "Wendy M. Williams | Huffington Post". www.huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2016-11-04.
  5. ^ a b "Wendy M. Williams | Huffington Post". www.huffingtonpost.com.
  6. ^ Technica, Ars. "Sex Discrimination in Science Continues, But Reasons Unclear". WIRED. Retrieved 2016-11-18.
  7. ^ Ceci, Stephen J.; Williams, Wendy M.; Barnett, Susan M. (2009-03-01). "Women's underrepresentation in science: sociocultural and biological considerations". Psychological Bulletin. 135 (2): 218–261. doi:10.1037/a0014412. ISSN 0033-2909. PMID 19254079.
  8. ^ Ceci, Stephen J.; Williams, Wendy M. (2010-10-04). "Sex Differences in Math-Intensive Fields". Current Directions in Psychological Science: 0963721410383241. doi:10.1177/0963721410383241. ISSN 0963-7214. PMC 2997703. PMID 21152367.
  9. ^ Ceci, Stephen J.; Williams, Wendy M. (2011-02-22). "Understanding current causes of women's underrepresentation in science". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 108 (8): 3157–3162. doi:10.1073/pnas.1014871108. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 3044353. PMID 21300892.
  10. ^ Valla, Jeffrey M.; Williams, Wendy M. (2012-01-01). "INCREASING ACHIEVEMENT AND HIGHER-EDUCATION REPRESENTATION OF UNDER-REPRESENTED GROUPS IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, AND MATHEMATICS FIELDS: A REVIEW OF CURRENT K-12 INTERVENTION PROGRAMS". Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering. 18 (1). doi:10.1615/JWomenMinorScienEng.2012002908. ISSN 1072-8325. PMC 3430517. PMID 22942637.
  11. ^ Williams, Wendy M. (1996). Practical intelligence for school. New York: HarperCollins College Publishers. ISBN 978-0673998507.
  12. ^ Ceci, Stephen J.; Williams, Wendy M. (2010). The mathematics of sex : how biology and society conspire to limit talented women and girls. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195389395.
  13. ^ Sternberg, Robert J.; Williams, Wendy M. (2008). Educational psychology (2nd ed. ed.). Boston, Mass.: Allyn and Bacon. ISBN 978-0205626076. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
  14. ^ Ceci, Stephen J.; Williams, Wendy M. (2007). Why aren't more women in science? : top researchers debate the evidence (1st ed. ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. ISBN 978-1591474852. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
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Category:1960 births