ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Acknowledging structural barriers – a visualization shift from leaky pipeline to a hostile obstacle course in academia

Equal practices are often mistaken as synonymous with equitable practices.  However, the path to get from point A to point B can be different for different people because the surrounding system of people (faculty, staff, students, society) does not respond to all individuals similarly. For example, those who have regularly been extended the benefit of . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Recommendations for LGBTQ+ Inclusivity

Creating more inclusive academic communities and making equity and diversity hallmarks of campus culture are lofty goals. What are the actual practices that can make such goals concrete features of university life? A recent essay in CBE-Life Sciences Education makes the case that inclusivity requires thoughtful, proactive strategies. Specifically, the authors advance fourteen actionable recommendations . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Supporting Indigenous Students

As we work to diversify our student body, we need to reflect and adapt commonplace practices to be inclusive of the needs of students from different backgrounds. Today’s Roundup features a study of stresses related to self-beliefs, ethnic identity, and cultural congruency experienced by Native American undergraduates and how we might adapt to better support . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Gender Inequities in Academic Medicine and the Life Sciences

You may have read the article in the New York Times that came out recently about women physicians earning 2 million less over their lifetimes than men physicians.This study and a variety of research topics on gender inequities within medicine and the academic life sciences are discussed in a recent Freakonomics MD podcast led by . . .

Project Implicit: A Virtual Session on Implicit Bias

Implicit bias is an automatic reaction we have towards other people. These attitudes and stereotypes can negatively impact our understanding, actions, and decision-making. We will be hosting a virtual session on implicit bias presented by Sylvia Perry, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University from Project Implicit. The objectives of the Education Session are . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: The importance of leaders developing support for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

This week’s article from the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education explores the importance of academic leadership in developing support for diversity, equity, inclusion, and sense of belonging (DEIS) among faculty. Academic leaders with more visibly favorable attitudes towards diversity positively influence faculty in their awareness and support for DEIS. This research suggests that this . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Allyship for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Sense of Belonging

A critical component of promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and sense of belonging (DEIS) is deep and meaningful collaboration that enacts allyship. This is a cooperative model whereby people from diverse backgrounds, especially those with power and privilege, join together in solidarity to overcome systems that disadvantage some groups, including unlearning assumptions about what constitutes “help” . . .