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BLACK, BROWN, BRUISED: How Racialized STEM Education Stifles Innovation
3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
Location: Zoom webinar
Speaker:
Ebony McGee, PhD
Associate Professor of Diversity and STEM Education
Associate Professor of Medicine, Health, and Society (secondary)
Department of Teaching and Learning
Peabody College
Vanderbilt University
Abstract
Black, Brown, Bruised: How Racialized STEM Education Stifles Innovation brings together more than ten years of research on high-achieving, underrepresented racially minoritized (URM) students and faculty in STEM fields. I attempt to offer a deep appreciation of what it means to be a STEMer of color and academically successful in contexts where people of color are few and negative beliefs about our ability and motivation persist. I explore questions such as these: How do some students manage to survive brutal academic climates, and what does it cost them? Why do schools continue to recruit URM people into disciplines whose climate regularly drives them away? How does excluding people of color from STEM disciplines limit innovation?
My research had similar or overlapping questions and comparable critical theory of race frameworks. It revealed that most of the stress STEMers of color reported was not associated with academic demands. Stereotyping colored their daily interactions with others, becoming cognitively intrusive and creating constant tension in their academic lives. The impact of being successful in STEM yet marginalized manifested in mental health difficulties, disrupted STEM career trajectories, minority status stress, impostor phenomenon, and other problems. Layers of conscious and unconscious bias sapped the motivation of the most determined and well-prepared students and faculty. Some URM STEMers managed to cope but not heal from these obstacles and succeed in their studies and careers.
My research goes beyond reciting basic principles and the virtues of mentoring and gets down to the nitty gritty. I argue for the implementation of sustainable actions that create equitable and inclusive contexts in which URM students and faculty feel welcome, can be open about who they are, and can see themselves as thriving in their chosen disciplines. I expose the need for unique supports designed for URM students in STEM, ones that go beyond ensuring their mere survival to helping them flourish and feel like valued members of their disciplines. These supports include a race-conscious acknowledgement of the challenges URM STEM students endure and the willingness of institutions and departments to confront their own racial discrimination, stereotyping, and hostile environments. Solutions do not involve fixing the URM student; rather, I put the burden for change on STEM departments and their racialized cultures.