Diversity and Inclusion in STEM Seminar

About a year ago I had the incredible good fortune to be selected as a member of the Graduate Student Advisory Council (GSAC) for the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE). As a member of this council I've worked on a lot of things that are very important to me and I've learned a lot.

In preparation for our annual scientific meeting (Evolution 2017) the other council members and I did a lot of digging to try to find data about the state of diversity in our field. Finding information was certainly not easy and you can find many of the resources I used here. What data we could find were shocking.

While I knew the issues of diversity and inclusion were critical, until I started plugging numbers into excel and creating graphs I didn't really grasp how critical. Nothing quite like data to make a scientist sit up and take notice, eh?

For example:

And these graphs represent the little data we were able to find on the subject. Undoubtedly you notice the absence of many groups in these numbers. We know even less about how LGBTQ (please correct me if this is not the correct acronym) and many other groups are fairing out there.

More importantly, numbers only tell part of the story. Is academia a welcoming environment for individuals who are not among the majority? No, it's not.

How do we change that?

I don't know but I'm trying. I brought an idea and tentative course structure to Dr. Matt Lovern, the interim department head of Oklahoma State's Integrative Biology Department. Dr. Lovern has taken on the leadership of our department's first ever Diversity and Inclusion seminar.

It is my intention to blog my thoughts and impressions of each week's meeting with the objective of helping others who will be taking on similar efforts at their own institutions. I welcome feedback and suggestions and hope this effort will join and inspire others to make our field and our world a place of equity.

Our first meeting is August 30th, see you then!