This site provides a curated list of Black individuals and their stories who have contributed to different STEM innovations. This list can be used to support scientist spotlights. 

Here is a list of curated readings by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein that provide different perspectives on how we understand the co-constructing of science and society from a diverse communities. 

This article details the contributions of Charles Henry Turner to the examinations of animal behavior. This information can be used when teaching about contributions to science by Black scholars.  

DEI statement for Syllabi - drafted in spring FMN

"Ecuador has confirmed that a giant tortoise found in 2019 in the Galápagos Islands is a species considered extinct a century ago.

The Galápagos national park is preparing an expedition to search for more of the giant tortoises in an attempt to save the species."

 source: Giant tortoise found in Galápagos a species considered extinct a century ago | Galápagos Islands | The Guardian

Below are 21 simple teaching strategies that biology instructors can use to promote student engagement and cultivate classroom equity. To provide a framework for how these teaching strate- gies might be most useful to instructors, I have organized them into five sections, representing overarching goals instructors may have for their classrooms, including:

• Giving students opportunities to think and talk about biology

• Encouraging, demanding, and actively managing the participation of all students

• Buildinganinclusiveandfairclassroomcommunityforall students

• Monitoring behavior to cultivate divergent biological thinking  

• Teaching all of the students in your biology classroom

In this paper, we offer a brief review of six pedagogical and theoretical approaches used in education and science education that we grouped as inclusive pedagogies. Though not an exhaustive list, these pedagogies are more commonly used in educational research and have commonalities yet are distinctive in some ways. They collectively contribute to making science teaching and learning more inclusive to a broader population of learners, such as students from diverse cultural, linguistic, and social backgrounds and students with physical and learning differences who have traditionally been marginalized in learning science. Furthermore, these inclusive pedagogies aim to decrease educational inequities and raise the level of academic rigor and access for all students. Finally, we discuss ways these inclusive pedagogies can be extended to address reform efforts in science education.

The study of genetics centers on how encoded information in DNA underlies similarities and differences between individuals and how traits are inherited. Genetics topics covered in a wide variety of undergraduate biology classrooms can relate to various identities held by students such as gender identity, disability, and race/ethnicity, among others. An in- structor’s sensitive approaches and deliberate language choices regarding these topics has the potential to make the critical difference between welcoming or alienating students and can set a tone that communicates to all students the importance of diversity. Separating the sperm/egg binary from gendered terms in coverage of inheritance patterns, along with inclusion of transgender people in pedigree charts, may make the classroom more wel- coming for students of diverse gender identities. Choosing nonstigmatizing language and acknowledging disability identities in discussions of genetic conditions may help students with visible and invisible disabilities feel validated. Counteracting genetics-based pseudo- scientific racism and the stereotype threat to which it contributes may be facilitated by more thorough integration of quantitative and population genetics topics. Instructors may thus potentially enhance retention of students of diverse backgrounds in biology through careful consideration and crafting of how human differences are described and connected with principles of genetics.

Abstract: 

Racial and gender disparities persist in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) despite decades of mentoring interventions to improve recruitment and retention. We offer a STEM Mentoring Ecosystems (STEM-ME) framework to better situate, understand, and advance the mentoring systems that are needed to bring about change. We outline a STEM-ME framework, which we argue require shifts in perspective, expanding beyond individual mentees and mentors, as well as specialized mentoring programs, to analyze the mentoring ecosystems within which STEM mentoring operates. Next, we use this framework to examine and critique current mentoring infrastructure and mentor preparation; this includes an inventory of assets and gaps as pertaining to faculty, students, and administrators as mentors. Then, we examine how silos could be more synergistic, which new structures are needed, who and where the ecological stewards are, and implications for systems change. How the STEM-ME framework informs future empirical research and practice is discussed.

Reflection: This resource poses specific questions regarding what we should consider as we look to re-envisioning mentoring for Black STEM students at the national, institutional, and local mentoring networks 

This is a curated list of reading materials by Dr. Felicia Mensah that can help foster interpersonal growth and development as a teacher looking to engage in advocacy and activism for racially minoritzed students. 

The Syllabus Review Guide is comprised of six parts that provide the conceptual knowledge and practical know-how to conduct equity-minded self-reflection on an essential document in academic life: the syllabus. Throughout the Guide are examples that illustrate the ideas motivating syllabus review, as well opportunities to practice inquiry and to reflect on how to change your syllabi—and your teaching more generally—so are more equity-minded.

Drs. Nate Emery, Drew Hasley, and Ellen Bledsoe presented and led a conversation on their recent publication: Cultivating inclusive instructional and research environments in ecology and evolutionary science. Specifically, they focused on the following:

• The motivation for and development of the publication
• Overarching themes of: Empathy, Flexibility, and Growth Mindset
• Inclusive teaching practices (e.g. group learning, names/pronouns, syllabi and norms, and increased representation)
• Inclusive lab culture (e.g. recruitment practices, interpersonal interactions, and cultural norms)
• Inclusive fieldwork (e.g. advance prep, code of conduct, cost barriers, and accessibility)

Recorded on February 4, 2021. 

The Academic Data Science Alliance, an EDSIN network contributor, joined us to present on the work of ADSA's Ethics Working Group. They have been re-imagining the Data Science Lifecycle to incorporate ethical considerations into each stage of the data science workflow. Presentation was recorded on April 1, 2021.