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Introduction to the Faculty Resource Guide: Integrating Social Justice, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Issues in STEMM courses

Author(s): Pat Marsteller1, Eliza Reilly2

1. Emory University, BioQUEST 2. SENCER

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Summary:
We live in challenging times. Higher education faces many challenges including changes in enrollment pattern, fiscal constraints and lack of public acceptance of the value of the degree relative to its costs. Our students are more diverse in…

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We live in challenging times. Higher education faces many challenges including changes in enrollment pattern, fiscal constraints and lack of public acceptance of the value of the degree relative to its costs. Our students are more diverse in countless intersectional ways: culture, neurodiversity, background, experience as well as gender, ethnicity etc. They have different hopes and aspirations. To reach all we must engage, know who they are, understand potential biases, and create welcoming environments, both brave and safe spaces, where students can address the challenges that confront the world. In response to call for STEM education reform in the 90’s, thousands of science educators have worked tirelessly to change academic culture and play their part in delivering on the social contract between science and a truly inclusive democratic society. The goal of this Faculty Research Guide is to expand the community committed to a more humane, socially responsible educational practice that will make a better future for us all and point the way to “strategic, collective action.”

Licensed under CC Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International according to these terms

Version 1.0 - published on 12 Jul 2024 doi:10.25334/QBGJ-X440 - cite this

Contents:

Description

As part of the open education resource on Social Justice, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, we are creating a resource guide for faculty that summarizes the current literature on how to prepare to teach controversial DEI and Social Justice issues. The group (Kristen Butela, Jen Bunz, Shuchismita Dutta, Melissa Haswell, Sharon Homer Drummond, Pat Marsteller, Melanie Lanahan, Heather Rissler) has been meeting biweekly in Fall 2023 to gather materials and begin the process. The faculty resource guide assembled by this group will be available as an OER and will contain materials that faculty need to think about as they consider SJEDI for classes, such as:

  • Glossary of terms that relate to SJEDI
  • A Toolkit that includes:
    • Self-work Centering your identity: Historical understanding of system issues - racism, patriarchal and white-centered education system (decolonization);
    • Identifying student needs and aspirations
    • Syllabi statements
    • Setting learning outcomes for SJEDI
    • Inclusive teaching strategies
    • Class rules and compacts for discussion
    • Tools for teaching difficult and potentially controversial topics
    • Case studies and examples of how we or others have used the resources for self-reflection, identifying student needs and goals, and examples from syllabi.

The full open education resource will include background information on key social justice and diversity equity and inclusion topics, collections of annotated existing resources across all disciplines and invitations to work on new resources.

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