SALEM, Mass. (AP) — A teenager who raped and killed his high school math teacher was sentenced Friday to life in prison with eligibility for parole in 25 years.
Philip Chism was convicted in December in the 2013 death of Danvers High School teacher Colleen Ritzer. He was 14 when he followed the 24-year-old Ritzer into a school bathroom, strangled her, stabbed her at least 16 times and raped her.
American science is facing a critical shortage of female academics. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, women comprise only 37.5 percent of tenured faculty at American universities. The fraction of women drops precipitously among professors in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). For example, the American Institute of Physics reports in its 2010 survey of Physics Degree-Granting Departments, that only 14 percent of tenured physics faculty members are women. The statistics are even more abysmal for married mothers of young children.
Unfortunately, this trend is unlikely to reverse itself soon: despite a decade of concerted efforts to encourage the full participation of women in STEM fields, the number of women receiving bachelors' degrees in these areas has actually dropped since 2005. As a result, an even a smaller pool of qualified female candidates will be available for faculty jobs in the future.
