Virginia Valian

Dr. Virginia Valian speaking at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory In-House Education Retreat (#IHER2019)

CSHL WiSE was honored to host Dr. Virginia Valian as a keynote speaker at our 2nd annual In-House Education Retreat (#IHER2019)

Virginia Valian is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Hunter College where she studies language acquisition in early learners and second language learners as Director of the Language Acquisition Research Center. She is also a member of the doctoral faculties of Psychology, Linguistics, and Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center. She co-founded and co-directs Hunter College’s Gender Equity Project (GEP), which “promotes equity and excellence in every profession, especially academia”. The GEP receives funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and the Sloan Foundation and provides a wide range of workshops, initiatives, and resources to accomplish its mission.

Dr. Valian received her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Michigan- Ann Arbor and her Ph.D. in Psychology from Northeastern University. She has academic publications in journals including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Cognition, and Nature. Her most recent release published in Nature, is entitled Two Nobels for women- why so slow.?

Valian is the author of Why so slowThe advancement of women, which examines the factors impeding women’s progress towards professional equality using data from the fields of Psychology, Sociology, Economics, and Biology. This book was listed by The Chronical of Higher Education as being most likely to change one’s mind in their 2014 census of scholars. She also co-wrote An inclusive academy: Achieving diversity and excellence (2018), which examines how colleges and universities can better address diversity and argues for promoting inclusion in the pursuit of academic excellence.

Dr. Valian’s awards include the 2006 Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPN) Research Award for notable achievements in research related to women in engineering.

Even if you weren’t fortunate enough to hear her keynote address, “Still Too Slow: The Advancement of Women,” you can hear a recent interview with her: https://www.gc.cuny.edu/News/Podcasts/Detail?id=46840

Thank you to Dr. Valian for a great talk and thank you to WiSE VP DeeDee Rupert for writing this piece!

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