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"Like many students who apply to grad school, Danica Gressel wondered if she had what it takes to be successful. With help from some great mentors, faculty, and the ACS Bridge Program, she was able to put her doubts to rest and grow in confidence, professionalism, and skill."

Excerpt taken from inChemistry article [November 12, 2020]

Mentorship is key to the program’s success in diversifying the chemical sciences

Launched in 2018, the ACS Bridge Program is part of the ACS Bridge Project and aims to increase the number of Black, Latino, and Indigenous students earning doctoral degrees in the chemical sciences. The program is part of the NSF INCLUDES Alliance: Inclusive Graduate Education Network (IGEN) and is supported by a grant from the US National Science Foundation, with additional funding from the Genentech Foundation. The ACS Bridge Program is modeled after the successful American Physical Society Bridge Program, which matches students accepted into the program with partner institutions that provide individualized mentoring and support.

OBJECTIVES

1. Reflection: This guide can help you as an individual reader assess

   • understanding of key themes and ideas in the book and

   • implications for your thinking, behavior, & your organization’s policies & practices.

      

2. Discussion: You and your colleagues can use this guide to get on the same page about the science of social change, so that you can more effectively apply it. Research shows there is a critical role for collective sensemaking in the change process, especially as a group encounters new and different ideas.

    

3. Action Planning: The guide will support you in applying lessons from the case studies by a) articulating specific actions that you or your organization might take,

   • assessing the adequacy of efforts already underway or needs to course-correct,

   • coordinating with others who hold complementary perspective and expertise.

Our Mission

We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Our mission is to create spaces where people are seen, heard, and valued. To do this, the organization will use Nonviolent Communication and restorative practices to counter the effects of epidemic trauma in all systems: government, education, business, industry, and homes.

URGE's primary objectives are to:

1. Deepen the community’s knowledge of the effects of racism on the participation and retention of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people in Geoscience
2. Draw on existing literature, expert opinions, and personal experiences to develop anti-racist policies and strategies, and
3. Share, discuss, and modify anti-racist policies and strategies within a dynamic community network and on a national stage.

Read URGE's summary here.

Getting in is only half the battle. The Privileged Poor reveals how—and why—disadvantaged students struggle at elite colleges, and explains what schools can do differently if these students are to thrive.

The Ivy League looks different than it used to. College presidents and deans of admission have opened their doors—and their coffers—to support a more diverse student body. But is it enough just to admit these students? In The Privileged Poor, Anthony Jack reveals that the struggles of less privileged students continue long after they’ve arrived on campus. Admission, they quickly learn, is not the same as acceptance. This bracing and necessary book documents how university policies and cultures can exacerbate preexisting inequalities and reveals why these policies hit some students harder than others.

Despite their lofty aspirations, top colleges hedge their bets by recruiting their new diversity largely from the same old sources, admitting scores of lower-income black, Latino, and white undergraduates from elite private high schools like Exeter and Andover. These students approach campus life very differently from students who attended local, and typically troubled, public high schools and are often left to flounder on their own. Drawing on interviews with dozens of undergraduates at one of America’s most famous colleges and on his own experiences as one of the privileged poor, Jack describes the lives poor students bring with them and shows how powerfully background affects their chances of success.

If we truly want our top colleges to be engines of opportunity, university policies and campus cultures will have to change. Jack provides concrete advice to help schools reduce these hidden disadvantages—advice we cannot afford to ignore.

Advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in science

AGU’s leadership in establishing the Ethics and Equity Center will help promote greater diversity, equity, inclusion and integrity in scientific work and research environments. Delve into our newly redesigned site for tools to act and institute more inclusive practices in your workplace or organization.

Finding and Following Your Path

No matter your career stage, professional and career development are important to advancing yourself and helping guide others. AGU Pathfinder provides career and educational resources, webinars, mentoring services, and support for students and professionals at all levels in Earth and space science.

At AGU, we’re especially committed to inspiring and educating present and future generations of diverse, innovative, and creative Earth and space scientists. We know that the impact of our science grows when individuals and groups who aspire to contribute to science are welcomed and supported and when we have a strong pipeline. By helping all people at any stage of their careers, and through a commitment to creating ethical, inclusive and diverse work environments, we can strengthen the global Earth and space science community and broaden its positive impact on society.

A FREE online magazine for Graduate Students & Postdocs, the GP Chemist focuses on career advice, wellness, career paths, lab life, awards, fellowships, and general topics related to grad student and postdoc life. 

"There is such a lack of diversity in STEM graduate school when it comes to ethnicities, especially when it comes to the Vietnamese community. Having more people within the Vietnamese community represented in STEM allows graduate school in STEM to be more accepted and normalized to Vietnamese who are considering a career in STEM. Read more to learn how Thomas Pho overcame this challenge as he pursues his PhD in the chemical sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology."

Excerpt taken from inChemistry article [September 22, 2020]

"With help from the ACS Bridge Program, a preparatory program designed to support and mentor students from underrepresented minorities in their pursuit of graduate education, Isel Rivera, now a second-year doctoral student at Indiana University studying the interaction of nanoparticles, shares how she landed on a path to success."

Excerpt taken from inChemistry article [February 24, 2021]

Has your program effectively communicated with students about racial violence?

About this guide

It can be overwhelming to know where to start or what to do when racial violence comes to the fore, and we know that people have different levels of experience and background knowledge. To effectively and empathetically serve your students, we offer some guidance based on current research and evidence.

Across the country, Black Americans are experiencing vicarious or direct trauma as a result of systemic racism and our long history of police violence. Black Americans are nearly three times more likely than white Americans to be killed by police and five times more likely than white Americans to be killed unarmed, according to the Mapping Police Violence database.

Racism can lead to higher levels of psychological distress, including suicidal thoughts, anxiety, and depression. Discrimination is the single strongest predictor of graduate student anxiety and depression. While a secure mentor-mentee relationship, combined with support from friends and family, may be a good place to discuss what students may be experiencing, mentors should not take the place of a mental health professional. If needed, direct your students to campus/ community resources.

Our IGEN Project Quarterly Newsletter highlights the work being done by our alliance members and partners.

Featured in this issue:

• 2021 IGEN National Meeting Save The Date! & program planning.
• Launch of IGEN's new website 
• Opportunities to Learn: Equity in Graduate Education Virtual Journal Clubs
• Bridge Program News

The complete presentation is available in PDF for download.

This resource links to The Graduate Adviser archive by Leonard Cassuto at The Chronicle of Higher Education.

In 2013, the University of Texas at Austin’s computer science department began using a machine-learning system called GRADE to help make decisions about who gets into its Ph.D. program -- and who doesn’t. This year, the department abandoned it.

Before the announcement, which the department released in the form of a tweet reply, few had even heard of the program. Now, its critics -- concerned about diversity, equity and fairness in admissions -- say it should never have been used in the first place.

“Humans code these systems. Humans are encoding their own biases into these algorithms,” said Yasmeen Musthafa, a Ph.D. student in plasma physics at the University of California, Irvine, who rang alarm bells about the system on Twitter. “What would UT Austin CS department have looked like without GRADE? We’ll never know.”

GRADE (which stands for GRaduate ADmissions Evaluator) was created by a UT faculty member and UT graduate student in computer science, originally to help the graduate admissions committee in the department save time. GRADE predicts how likely the admissions committee is to approve an applicant and expresses that prediction as a numerical score out of five. The system also explains what factors most impacted its decision.

The UT researchers who made GRADE trained it on a database of past admissions decisions. The system uses patterns from those decisions to calculate its scores for candidates.

For example, letters of recommendation containing the words “best,” “award,” “research” or “Ph.D.” are predictive of admission -- and can lead to a higher score -- while letters containing the words “good,” “class,” “programming” or “technology” are predictive of rejection. A higher grade point average means an applicant is more likely to be accepted, as does the name of an elite college or university on the résumé. Within the system, institutions were encoded into the categories “elite,” “good” and “other,” based on a survey of UT computer science faculty.

Every application GRADE scored during the seven years it was in use was still reviewed by at least one human committee member, UT Austin has said, but sometimes only one. Before GRADE, faculty members made multiple review passes over the pool. The system saved the committee time, according to its developers, by allowing faculty to focus on applicants on the cusp of admission or rejection and review applicants in descending order of quality...

Read the complete article here. 

This slide, taken from IGEN's Reverse Site Visit 2020 presentation, highlights individual disciplinary society's progress made in year 2 towards project goals.

[RSV Presentation Part 2, slide 6]

Geoscience graduate programmes across the United States are increasingly dropping a controversial standardized test from their admissions requirements.

The graduate record examinations (GRE), which was introduced in 1949, aims to measure verbal and quantitative reasoning, analytical writing and critical thinking. In recent years, academic researchers and others have criticized the test, claiming that it unfairly weeds out capable students and restricts the flow of women and people from minority ethnic groups into the sciences.

Geosciences departments began to eliminate it as an admissions requirement last year. The trend, dubbed GeoGRExit, has gained impetus as programmes seek to maintain numbers of graduate applications in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. But the geosciences have trailed behind other scientific disciplines. So far, more than 300 biology and biomedical graduate programmes have dropped the test, according to a list maintained by Joshua Hall, director of graduate admissions for the biological and biomedical sciences programme at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Some 62 US geosciences programmes no longer require applicants to submit GRE results, according to a database maintained by Sarah Ledford, an urban hydrologist at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Around half of those have dropped the requirement since 4 June, when the American Geophysical Union’s weekly news magazine, Eos, published an opinion piece calling for the test to be abandoned. It argued that eliminating the GRE could help to boost diversity in one of science’s most exclusive disciplines.

In most fields of science, medicine, and technology research, men comprise more than half of the workforce, particularly at senior levels. Most previous work has concluded that the gender gap is smaller today than it was in the past, giving the impression that there will soon be equal numbers of men and women researchers and that current initiatives to recruit and retain more women are working adequately. Here, we used computational methods to determine the numbers of men and women authors listed on >10 million academic papers published since 2002, allowing us to precisely estimate the gender gap among researchers, as well as its rate of change, for most disciplines of science and medicine. We conclude that many research specialties (e.g., surgery, computer science, physics, and maths) will not reach gender parity this century, given present-day rates of increase in the number of women authors. Additionally, the gender gap varies greatly across countries, with Japan, Germany, and Switzerland having strikingly few women authors. Women were less often commissioned to write ‘invited’ papers, consistent with gender bias by journal editors, and were less often found in authorship positions usually associated with seniority (i.e., the last-listed or sole author). Our results support a need for further reforms to close the gender gap.

This visualization allows one to view the past, present, and (estimated) future gender ratio of authors on academic publications listed on PubMed. The four buttons at the top allow subsetting of the data by journal, research discipline, the author's country of affiliation, and position in the author list (where 'overall' includes all authors).

• The lefthand plot shows the estimated author gender ratio for each subset of the data (e.g. a journal, or a scientific discipline) in a certain year. The year can be controlled via the slider. The gender ratio was estimated by fitting a curve to the data, as described in the accompanying paper.
• Clicking on a data point in the left plot will bring up a curve showing our estimate of the past, present, and future gender ratio, as well as the author gender ratio and its 95% confidence limits (shown by the error bars, which can be toggled on or off).
• Hovering the mouse cursor over a data point shows the sample size in terms of the number of men and women authors, and the number of papers.

Associated publication

This visualization accompanies an article published in PLoS Biology.

Holman L, Stuart-Fox D, Hauser CE (2018) The gender gap in science: How long until women are equally represented? PLOS Biology 16(4): e2004956. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2004956.

Contacts

The gender data were collected by Luke Holman from the School of BioSciences at the University of Melbourne. This data visualisation was made by Errol Lloyd.

Theodore Hodapp, Director of the NSF INCLUDES: IGEN Project presents the hard facts which show the disparities of equity in graduate programs across STEM disciplines. Hodapp hares how IGEN and its disciplinary society parters and bridge program institutions are tackling this issue and making a difference in increasing equity in graduate STEM education through a bridge program model offered at partner institutions.

Executive Summary

At the January 2017 AAS meeting in Texas, the AAS Council (now the AAS Board of Trustees) approved the creation of a Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion in Astronomy Graduate Education. This document details the charge, goals, membership, structure, and activities of the task force.

The Task Force held its first meeting in November 2017. At that first meeting, the Task Force members, to facilitate the work of the Task Force, approved the creation of three working groups. Each working group was co-chaired by two Task Force members who recruited additional members from the community. These working groups took primary responsibility for soliciting input from the community around their topic and developing the recommendations contained in this report. In addition, presentations were made to the four AAS Diversity committees (CSWA, CSMA, SGMA, and WGAD) by the Task Force liaisons from each committee to directly solicit their input and feedback. The committees were also given a chance to review this report in draft form to comment. All recommendations were discussed and approved by the entire Task Force. See Appendix II for details of the Task Force creation and timeline of activities.

The Task Force’s list of detailed recommendations by category is summarized below. Details of each recommendation, and the justification behind it, including references from social science research supporting the recommendation, are found in the main report. Evidence-based resources and tools that will help in the implementation of the recommendations are included in the Appendices.

This report examines over 150 indicators, looking at academic experiences and outcomes, and how these educational journeys differ, by race and ethnicity.

When graduate admissions committees meet to review applicant files, letters of recommendation are one component of the holistic review process that provides information about the applicant’s previous work, personality, and potential for success as a doctoral student. In order to ensure that letters of recommendation are effective tools for enhancing equity, we must critically assess how we write, read, and solicit letters of recommendation. This is especially important because numerous studies have demonstrated the presence of implicit biases in letters of recommendation (Dutt et al, 2016; Madera et al., 2019; Trix & Psenka, 2003). The presence of these biases in letters of recommendation can influence how prospective students are evaluated by admission committees and therefore may produce and reproduce racial and gender inequality in doctoral education.

"Geoscience graduate programs are increasingly abandoning the controversial test as an admissions requirement, a welcome development for equity and inclusion in the field. How can your school be next?"

"Julie Posselt, Theresa Hernandez, Deborah Southern, and Steve Desir from the Pullias Center and Fatima Alleyne from University of California, Berkeley, share their collective perspective on a year that continues to defy description."

Mentoring Up is an active learning approach designed for post-doctoral scholars and junior faculty to support development of the skills needed to successfully navigate the research training environment and proactively manage their mentoring relationships. The curricula integrate topics from Entering Research and Entering Mentoring to develop mentoring up skills. These curricula were originally developed for use with trainees across the science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) disciplines.

Themes and Concepts

• Building Research Self-Efficacy
• Aligning Expectations
• Maintaining Effective Communication
• Addressing Equity and Inclusion
• Enhancing Work-Life Integration*
• Fostering Independence
• Promoting Professional Development

*Unique to Junior Faculty Curriculum

CIMER Project mentee training materials are designed for those who wish to implement process-based, professional development workshops, courses, or programs for undergraduate and graduate research trainees. The materials are designed to be used as part of a learning community, where trainees share and learn from one another.  Request mentee training at your institution or organization

Successful bridge programs share certain key components and exist within a supportive institutional context. These contextual and programmatic components build on one another to provide students with a complete educational experience, from admissions and induction to research and mentoring.

The APS Bridge Program Resources webpage lists effective practices for inducting new students into graduate programs, as identified and described by APS Bridge Sites. It also includes specific strategies for developing a solid foundation for students before and well after their arrival on campus.

Research mentor training is an evidence-based, interactive approach designed to help mentors develop skills for engaging in productive, culturally responsive, research mentoring relationships—relationships that optimize the success of both mentors and mentees. Request mentor training at your institution or organization

The National GEM Consortium’s, GRAD Lab offers underrepresented students exposure to the benefits of research and technology careers in a highly interactive one-day event.

Speakers may range from current graduate students to senior managers to faculty and senior administrators. They are selected from diverse communities and disciplines to present on the following topics:

• “Why Graduate School”
• “How to Prepare for Graduate School”
• “Understanding the GEM Fellowship”, and
• “Voices From the Field: Real Life Research and Internship Experiences”

GRAD Lab encourages young people of color to consider graduate engineering or science education and applying for the GEM fellowship. Focusing on the global importance of research and innovation, life-long career benefits, and real world role models the symposium will help each student envision his or her future as a technology leader, successfully apply for a GEM fellowship, and gain entry to a graduate program. GRAD Lab is GEM’s portable and scalable solution for developing diverse technical talent with advanced degrees.

The Pathways to Science Resource Toolbox has many resources to support students as they prepare for and apply to graduate school.  Students will find great suggestions for preparing their applications and faculty & staff will resources to help them be better support their students.

The Individual Development Plan (IDP) concept is commonly used in industry to help employees define and pursue their career goals. 

myIDP provides:

• Exercises to help you examine your skills, interests, and values
• A list of 20 scientific career paths with a prediction of which ones best fit your skills and interests
• A tool for setting strategic goals for the coming year, with optional reminders to keep you on track
• Articles and resources to guide you through the process

To learn more about the value of IDPs for scientists, read the first article in our myIDP series.

Successfully preparing for, finding, and transitioning into a graduate program requires an investment of time and effort. Central to this process is the on-going consideration of your goals, strengths, and opportunities. The contacts in your network will also provide information, advice, and support. Remember that great resources for learning about graduate school are undergraduate advisers, graduate faculty, and graduate school events held as part of undergraduate programming at ACS meetings.

If you’re considering graduate school, there is a lot you can do to ensure your success... and it’s never too early to start. Most important is completing a rigorous undergraduate curriculum, such as one that meets the requirements of an ACS-certified degree. Since chemistry research is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, taking electives in other scientific areas of interest can be good preparation for interdisciplinary graduate work.

Research has shown that students struggle with mental health issues such as anxiety and depression at higher rates than the general population. While some stress and uncertainty is unavoidable in training, research mentors can have a direct impact on the well-being of members of their research group. By recognizing how usual norms and practices in the academy create environments that can undermine wellbeing, particularly for minoritized students, we can become more thoughtful about the impact of our own behavior in as mentors-- and begin to foster research and learning environments that support well-being. This workshop will also encourage discussion about how mentoring can positively and negatively impact mentees’ sense of autonomy, competence, personal growth, and belonging. Developing the skills to have open conversations about the often stigmatized topics of mental health well-being is key to this process.

This workshop presents data and research about the role of typical admissions criteria and practices in maintaining racial/ethnic inequalities in graduate education. Suitable for a wide variety of audiences, practical strategies for rethinking typical admissions criteria and processes are introduced, with a focus on equity-based holistic review and embedding attention to equity throughout the admissions and recruitment process. All aspects of this session are rooted in current research. Participants will learn how common admissions mindsets & practices tend to inhibit access for underrepresented groups, and they will be introduced to strategies to improve diversity & equity through holistic review processes.

STEM disciplines are believed to be founded on the idea of meritocracy; recognition earned by the value of the data, which is objective. Such disciplinary cultures resist concerns about implicit or structural biases, and yet, year after year, scientists observe persistent gender and racial inequalities in their labs, departments, and programs. In Equity in Science, Julie Posselt makes the case that understanding how field-specific cultures develop is a crucial step for bringing about real change. She does this by examining existing equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts across astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, and psychology. These ethnographic case studies reveal the subtle ways that exclusion and power operate in scientific organizations and, sometimes, within change efforts themselves. Posselt argues that accelerating the movement for inclusion in science requires more effective collaboration across boundaries that typically separate people and scholars—across the social and natural sciences, across the faculty-student-administrator roles, and across race, gender, and other social identities. Ultimately this book is a call for academia to place equal value on expertise, and on those who do the work of cultural translation. Posselt closes with targeted recommendations for individuals, departments, and disciplinary societies for creating systemic, sustainable change.

Our IGEN Project Quarterly Report highlights the work being done by our alliance members and partners.

Featured in this issue:

• The Vision and Goals of NSF Includes: IGEN
• Building the IGEN Community (Goal 4)
• Catalyzing the Adoption of Inclusive Practices (Goal 2)
• Conducting Research and Propagating Results (Goal 3)
• Increasing Participation of UREM Students (Goal 1)
• IGEN Project Summary

Our IGEN Project Quarterly Report highlights the work being done by our alliance members and partners.

Featured in this issue:

• Building the IGEN Community (Goal 4)
• Catalyzing the Adoption of Inclusive Practices (Goal 2)
• Conducting Research and Propagating Results (Goal 3)
• Increasing Participation of UREM Students (Goal 1)
• IGEN Project Summary
• Avenues for Collaboration between IGEN and Aspire

Our IGEN Project Quarterly Report highlights the work being done by our alliance members and partners.  

Featured in this issue:

• Building the IGEN Community (Goal 4)
• Catalyzing the Adoption of Inclusive Practices (Goal 2)
• Conducting Research and Propagating Results (Goal 3)
• Increasing Participation of UREM Students (Goal 1)
• IGEN Project Summary

The Pullias Center’s Julie Posselt serves as a member of The National Academies of Science "Panel on the State of the Profession and Societal Impacts" in Astronomy and Astrophysics that generate a comprehensive strategy and vision for the next decade of science in astronomy and astrophysics. 

What are the hidden rules and practices that affect who gets respect and opportunities in higher education? How can we reconstruct these rules to encourage equity in the system? A new chapter in the Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research book series by Julie Posselt and a team at the Pullias Center takes a hard look at these fundamental questions and suggests how evaluation and decision making can be leveraged for equity.

The Pullias Center’s Julie Posselt, Steve Desir, and Román Liera are leading an effort to shine a light on this typically unrecognized source of bias that has the power to shape the careers of graduates and other applicants looking to enter or advance in the workforce. Letters of recommendation are used in admissions and hiring to glean information and qualities which may go unnoticed in the review of an applicant’s file. However, they are also one of the most common places that bias is written into applicant records– sometimes in subtle ways. 

Our IGEN Project Quarterly Newsletter highlights the work being done by our alliance members and partners.

Featured in this issue:

• A preview to the 2019 IGEN National Meeting
• Growing Academic Partnerships!
• Research & Inclusive Practices

Our IGEN Project Quarterly Newsletter highlights the work being done by our alliance members and partners.

Featured in this issue:

• New Professional Networking Group
• Workshops and Resources for Equity in Graduate Admissions
• Disciplinary Partner Updates

Selected research curated to foster learning and adoption of inclusive practices in graduate education.

The APS Bridge Program Student Induction Manual documents effective practices for inducting new students into graduate programs, as identified and described by APS Bridge Sites. It also includes specific strategies for developing a solid foundation for students before and well after their arrival on campus.

These quarterly gatherings break down research studies and social theories that are relevant to equity in graduate education, with attention to practical implications.  

OVERVIEW & GOALS

• Preparing higher education change agents to facilitate interactive workshops on holistic graduate admissions.
• Faculty and administrators with an interest in improving graduate education in STEM, and without competing financial interests, are welcome to apply.
• Preference will be given to applicants who are faculty in the physical or social sciences and who have with demonstrated effort increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in doctoral education.