Tag: Perception

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: How to make STEM fields more welcoming

Research from the Pew Research Center in 2021 and 2022 shows that despite longstanding efforts to increase diversity in STEM, Blacks and Hispanics remain vastly underrepresented. How might we do better? A 2022 survey asked Black adults what would attract more young Black people into STEM careers and found that seeing “more examples of high . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: More Evidence of Bias in Government Research Funding Agencies

In a previous Weekly Roundup, we highlighted a meta-analysis of funding by the National Science Foundation over a 10-year period.  To review, in 2019, NSF funded 31.3% of proposals from White scientists, but only 22.4% for Asian scientists; the overall funding rate was 27.4%.  This translates into a single year award surplus of 798 grants . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: More Evidence of Bias in Government Research Funding Agencies

In a previous Weekly Roundup, we highlighted a meta-analysis of funding by the National Science Foundation over a 10-year period.  To review, in 2019, NSF funded 31.3% of proposals from White scientists but only 22.4% for Asian scientists; the overall funding rate was 27.4%.  This translates into a single-year award surplus of 798 grants for . . .

Disability – An Axis of Diversity

This week’s article spotlights disability as an axis of diversity. According to this article, 26% of adult Americans have at least one disability, yet data from 2004 suggest that only 4% of faculty members report a disability. Stigmas or biases, inability to fund graduate education while maintaining necessary medical care, lack of role models, and . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Gender-diverse teams produce more novel and impactful scientific work

Today’s ADVANCE article comes from the field of medical sciences, where women are increasingly more prevalent; simultaneously, the field is moving towards more team approaches to research. The study authors collected a set of 6.6 million medical research papers over the last 20 years to assess the impacts of gender diversity among research authors on . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Aligning our behaviors, systems, and practices with our values to create climates that cultivate high social belonging

The climate or community that we create within our classroom and within our academic units can profoundly impact how individuals perform within those settings.  This recent study in the Journal of Chemical Education determined that students’ social belonging in a general chemistry course could predict academic performance in that course. Social belonging included both an . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Chicken or the Egg: Is pay in a field low because women enter it or because women tend to prefer lower paying jobs?

We recently acknowledged March 15th as equal pay day, the date when women’s pay for the prior year finally equals what men earned. In other words, women must work 2-½ months longer to make the same amount and Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous women have to work even longer. Why? A popular explanation is that women . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: High school chemistry textbooks fail to advance positive role of women in field

Many young people are introduced to professions like Chemistry in high school and textbooks play a major role in informing students about the discipline and the people who work within it. An article in Chemistry World shines a light on what happens when textbooks are biased in their representation. A study of four widely used . . .

When Bad Behavior Becomes Sexual Harassment

by Institutional Equity Sexual harassment is no joke. This topic is no longer off-limits, and allegations are being taken more seriously than ever before. But when does behavior cross from bad to unprofessional to sexual harassment? Is sexual harassment only egregious acts of physical touching or fondling? Does the behavior have to occur more than . . .