(Also, obviously, online conferences have lower carbon footprints) Many traditionally in-person scientific meetings have shifted to virtual formats during the COVID-19 pandemic. As an attendee (and organizer) at several virtual conferences over the last two years, I heard a lot of people talking about how they look forward to conferences being “back to normal” next…
Search Results for: inclusion
Planning for safe and inclusive field research
StandardFieldwork can be the best part of being a scientist. But when unprepared or abusive leaders take trainees into the field, they can cultivate an unsafe and harmful environment. So It’s nice to see that National Science Foundation is taking steps to improve the safety and inclusivity of field research. NSF is now proposing that…
Stepping up to do the work in an academic society
StandardToday, the Ecological Society of America is dropping its ballot for a new round of seats on the Governing Board. I’m hoping to serve the society as the VP for Education and Human Resources. If elected, I’ll begin a 3-year term in summer 2021.
Help us to diversify and humanize biology courses!
Standarda guest post by Project Biodiversify (www.projectbiodiversify.org @biodiversifying) We contain multitudes. Our courses should reflect this. We contain multitudes. Like an ecological niche, a person’s identity is composed of infinite dimensions that make up a person or group’s collective identity space (Figure 1). However, in science – a discipline that has historically valued objective and…
Benefits of virtual conferences for ecology and conservation research
StandardNote: This is a guest post by Lauren Kuehne and co-authors of Kuehne et al. 2022. Hot on the heels of Catherine Scott’s excellent post in early February, where she summarized Skiles et al. 2021 on how virtual conferences shifted conference attendance, we want to share a brand new article in Conservation Biology related to…
Sign up now for EEB Mentor Match 2020
StandardPlease sign up to mentor a student in applying for grad school and for fellowships, to help build a more inclusive environment in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. #eebMentorMatch
They’re not even trying at NIH
StandardI just saw this, and I think everybody needs to see this. Here it is: I'm in a NIH review panel helping decide where millions of research dollars go – 26 experts in their respective fields. Yet just one is a woman. C'mon, this is crazy. @stemwomen — Rick Peltier (@20000breaths) November 19, 2019
Recommended reads #190
StandardWhatever you might say about mental health support to your students in your syllabus, the tone of your overall document appears to be more important. “Attracting Diverse Students to Field Experiences Requires Adequate Pay, Flexibility, and Inclusion” is the title of this article in BioScience. Yup. “Don’t call it [academic] integrity when you really mean…
Recommended reads #191
StandardWhew! It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these for you. So I’ve got some great stuff lined up. A Call to Re-examine How Student Success Is Defined in Higher Education The B Lane Swimmer Two ways to fairly grade class participation Out in this desert
Play The Game, or Change The Rules?
StandardI feel a dilemma — or rather, a tradeoff — when I think about investing time, money, and effort into supporting undergraduates to gain admission to graduate programs. On one hand, we all know that the system is rigged, such that students who come from whiter and wealthier backgrounds have a huge leg up.
Fixing a racist common name that I coined
StandardLet me introduce you to one of my favorite animals, Aphaenogaster araneoides, and a major league screwup of mine.
Recommended reads #196
StandardA short quiz for my students in lieu of asking about their vaccine status or requesting that they wear masks “You do not have to be a revolutionary to see that some kind of [climate] upheaval has already started and that it can only really be delayed or mitigated than stopped entirely. If the goal…
Othering ourselves from the research community in teaching-focused institutions
StandardI started this blog back in 201cough because I was fed up with so many people in the broader research community not understanding what happens in teaching-focused universities. And people who think they have an understanding, but that understanding is filled with stereotypes, bias, and misinformation, driven by a lack of direct personal experience. I…
Fit goes both ways
StandardThe problem isn’t the concept of fit. The problem is when we place the full onus on the candidate to fit the institution. It’s the job of the institution to change their shape, so that they are capable of fitting the candidates that the institution needs. Fit goes both ways.
What are the reasons we have for dropping the GRE?
StandardDropping the GRE is not enough, not even close. Sure, pat yourself on the back for dropping the GRE — briefly — and then roll up your sleeves.
“How do we diversify our seminar series?”
StandardMost scientists are not actually beating seminar invites away with a stick — that’s just a curse for people with high visibility. There are a ton of great speakers who aren’t that famous.
Dismantle the pipeline
StandardThe pipeline metaphor isn’t wrong. We’re just looking at it the wrong way.
Recommended reads #183
StandardHas more than a month passed since I’ve done a rec reads post? My gosh. Which in 2020 time, is, like, 27 years? This is a relatively condensed list of things I’ve bookmarked since the last one. And there are no takes on the election. (Though if you do find a 10,000 word insider’s view…
Getting lots of competitive REU applications from URM students
StandardSo we did this thing that worked. Let me tell you about it.
Recommended reads #171
StandardNoted philosophers reconsider their key insights after a month of social distancing. George Saunders’s letter to his students about the pandemic. Our pandemic summer [highlighted read] This piece by Ed Yong is another supreme piece of journalism. He’s going to get an award for his work in The Atlantic during this pandemic, I hope?
Are REUs always good for students enrolled in MSIs? It’s complicated.
StandardIn my department, we have a complicated relationship with REU (Research Experience for Undergraduate) programs. We have several well-funded active labs on my campus that provide quality mentored research opportunities to biology undergrads, so students in our department do who want to have impactful research experience have access to them. However, it’s still valuable for…
Science can lead us to better futures if we lead with hope
StandardThis is a guest post by Edauri Navarro Pérez. The struggle of hope For a while, I have been struggling with the concept of hope. Our reality has been tackled so hard with tragic events (COVID-19, immigration irregularities and insecurity, climate change, discrimination, and more) that talking about hope felt ironic to me at some point.…
Please focus more on inclusion so that diversity recruitment efforts can work
StandardIf your space is not actively good for minoritized scholars, please stop recruiting them until you get your crap together.
Who can we trust?
StandardWhen you’re in a position where someone can marginalize you without experiencing adverse consequences, you’re more susceptible to having others take advantage of you. The tragic implication of this dynamic is that the people who are in the greatest need of support and collaboration are also the people who need to be the most selective in choosing professional partnerships.
Gender inequity at every step of publishing
StandardI sat down to my laptop this morning and was looking forward to getting to work. But then I looked at the news. And I saw this: “It is apparent that the gender gap manifests at every stage of the publishing process — choice of journal, editorial decisions, referees’ decisions and even citations…This suggests something…
Science has an atheism problem
StandardAn alternative title for this post might be: Atheism has a jerk problem.
Excellent mentoring strategies
StandardAn article arrived in my inbox this morning and it seems so spectacular, I wanted to highlight it as its own post: Emery, N., A. Hund, R. Burks, M. Duffy, C. Scoffoli, A. Swei. 2019. Students as ecologists: Strategies for successful mentorship of undergraduate researchers. Ecology and Evolution. DOI: 10.1002/ece3.5090
Recommended reads #144
StandardTo groom better scientists, harness the power of narrative. Applying for faculty jobs and don’t know what an institution means when they’re asking for you to “demonstrate interest and ability to advance diversity, equity and inclusion?” Apparently enough people asked UC Berkeley, so they decided to spell it out.
Recommended reads #153
StandardTwo tenures How to hold a better class discussion “It’s time to recognize how men’s careers benefit from sexually harassing women in academia“
The price of the Gender Tax at home
StandardFellow men, I recommend against joining a criminal conspiracy to get your kids into a prestigious college. But if you do go this route, you better do your share so that your own ass gets arrested along with your spouse.
Let’s imagine an alternative universe, where it’s illegal to get your kid braces, or arrange for them to go to summer camp, or to pick them up after soccer practice, or to be involved in their girl scout troop, or to go to parent-teacher conferences. Ask yourself, would your spouse be more likely to get arrested than you would be?
