Empowering student voices: How to broaden DEI discussions on your campus using the Chem4REAL podcast
From the media image of the college experience to financial questions, students’ understanding of how to navigate within the higher education system is uneven. Although navigating college can be overwhelming for any student, this is particularly true for a first generation student or student of a minoritized group. As an Afro-latina alumna who graduated with a bachelors degree in a STEM major, Scarlet explores the intersectionality of gender, race, multilingualism, and disability in episode 7 of the Chem4REAL podcast.
In the podcast, Scarlet Santos touches on the many challenges faced by students while pursuing their undergraduate degree. Scarlet describes her struggles and the support she found while transitioning to college and completing her degree in an honest and balanced manner. Many topics that Scarlet brings up resonate with students, faculty and staff in higher education.
Here, we will explore ways that faculty and staff at other institutions can use Scarlet’s words to open a discussion on their campuses, whether through an official office of diversity, an informal gathering, or a formal event with faculty, staff and/or students. Each campus is different and should develop their own strategy to explore topics of diversity, equity and inclusion. Without understanding what is happening on our campuses, we will never improve support mechanisms for faculty or the student experience.
Open a Dialogue with Students
Empower your students to talk about their experiences in a format that is open, inclusive, and safe. Your event can be a formal panel discussion through your office of diversity and equity, an informal departmental/unit discussion or a student group event.
One suggestion is to invite your campus community to listen to Scarlet’s podcast then host an open forum with students to reflect on the issues pertinent to your campus. Be certain to engage your diversity officer, student life representatives, and administrators, as well as faculty, staff, and students.
While an open dialogue facilitated by a stakeholder is one strategy, panel discussions can also foster thought-provoking dialogue while guaranteeing representative perspectives. Involving faculty and staff into the discussions with students is a great way to build community, as a foundation of trust is likely to already exist from classroom engagements; the role of faculty and staff is to listen, offer support, and share ideas for improvement as is appropriate. It is critical to have a “pre-discussion” conversation with all participants to ensure that no one feels pressured to divulge sensitive information and that everyone has considered the possible consequences of revealing their stories. It is also critical to transparently provide resources for students who may not know how to find assistance and for faculty/staff who may not know how to direct students to the appropriate resources. The take-home message here is to open a dialogue, being sensitive to the power differential between faculty, staff and students, and to work together to optimize these events for everyone.
Things to consider:
- Focus on the students, don’t make faculty and staff the center of the conversation. People need a safe space to tell their stories. You can always have another event to discuss issues raised.
- Highlight the event without blaming or shaming students/faculty or staff who speak out. Discourage the outing of individuals. Mutual respect is critical when opening these dialogues.
- Provide conduits to support resources for anyone who wishes to talk to a professional about their individual experiences, or file a complaint.
- Schedule additional events to further the dialog.
Offer round-tables for students, staff, faculty, and administrators with real-life scenarios. Break into smaller groups, provide scenarios of a bias event and discuss possible options for responding. This type of event is a great icebreaker for getting conversation started and also works wonderfully using virtual breakout rooms. After the breakout rooms, brainstorming solutions with faculty, students and staff as a group helps to clarify responsibilities, so that community members can respond with optimal compassion and grace when faced with a bias event.
Practice Intentional Inclusivity
For faculty, talk about how you are fostering inclusion and belonging in your class. Share your personal pronouns, put statements on your syllabus, develop assignments that highlight diversity, and use class time to promote underrepresented professionals in your field. For administrators and staff, talk openly about your intentions to treat everyone equally, to be unbiased, to look at your actions from the lens of others, being open to feedback. Set-up routine check-ins for issues that arise and group think responses to them. For students, talk about your experiences as a springboard to asking students to talk about theirs. Encourage dialogue, share DEI resources, and be their model for enabling diversity and inclusivity. Find faculty and staff advocates. Explore with others how you wish your experience had been handled and how together we can move forward.
Listen to the podcast for these helpful suggestions and more. Also, if you are interested in engaging undergraduate students in research in the classroom, lab or community, then the full Chem4REAL podcast series is for you. The podcast conversations provide another avenue for faculty development and growth as we discuss research equity, sustainability, logistics, advocacy, proposal or publication writing, and much more- all with an eye toward increasing access to this high impact practice and the discipline we love.
Seek Funding
Funding sources can be used to promote inclusion and diversity on your campus and in your department. There are many excellent programs out there. Be an advocate! Build a grant team and pursue funding opportunities to enable grassroots change. Here are a few examples for funding mechanisms to consider (with links to their websites):
Seek Professional Training
Faculty, staff, students, and administrators should consider developing leadership capacity and knowledge hubs. There are many excellent resources and programs available and a few strategic ones are listed here:
Centering DE&I in UR and Creative Activity Conference 2021
If you are interested in listening to the full episode, you can link directly to it here. The transcript for the episode can be downloaded here: Chem4REAL Podcast Transcript Episode 7.
You can explore all of our episodes at the bottom of this post or you can search for the Chem4REAL podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. New episodes are released monthly. As always, please be sure to subscribe and leave a rating as it helps others to find the podcast. We hope to hear your thoughts!
The authors of this post are Dr. Karen Almeida (left) and Dr. Amy Deveau (right). Dr. Almedia is a biochemistry professor at Rhode Island College and focuses her research on the repair of damaged DNA. Dr. Deveau is the current chairperson of CUR Chemistry and is a professor at University of New England. Her research interests are in organic and medicinal chemistry.
https://anchor.fm/curchem
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