Three take-aways on the challenges and successes of STEM DEIA

I was inspired to write this post by the excellent Sci on the Fly episode hosted by AAAS STPF Fellow, Heather Masson-Forsythe. Heather interviewed three amazing women working in academia, industry, and government at the intersection of STEM and DEIA. You can check out the interview with Trenell Mosely, Juliet Johnston, and Bailey Duhe here.

Trenell, Juliet, and Bailey did such an excellent job of encapsulating this topic that I really don't have much to add to their commentary. Instead, I'll spend this post summarizing my top three take-aways from their remarks, and how they relate to my experiences as a new immigrant, AAPI, and woman in STEM.

1. Diversity is excellence

Multiple studies have shown that a diverse, inclusive workforce leads to improved creativity, innovation, and productivity.

Diversity is about allowing employees to bring their whole selves to work without feeling "othered" and creating space for intentional community. It helps to reduce the subconscious strain and additional headspace that members of marginalized communities need to devote to making themselves fit into the mold of "normalcy". Freeing up that creative real-estate - and allowing for a free, collaborative exchange of diverse viewpoints working on a single problem - means a workforce that is both happier and more productive.

2. DEIA needs to be both individual and institutional

There is definitely space for individual DEIA approaches: reading recommended books, calling out micro-aggressions... And at its core, DEIA is about finding ways to motivate individual changes in behavior.

However, DEIA also requires an institutional shift. There's a real need for multidisciplinary, integrated DEIA training as a part of all STEM programming. DEIA should be normalized as part of the job, not just as a one-off volunteer opportunity or a checkbox to fill on a grant application.

More importantly, DEIA work needs to be valued, without persons from minority backgrounds being pressed into serving a DEIA facilitator role unless they chose to do so. Having well-meaning but untrained, uneducated volunteers responsible for institutional DEIA without organizational support is a sure way to ensure burnout for your DEIA team.

3. DEIA is both about education and about creating safe spaces for marginalized communities.

Yes, education is important. But so is maintaining the humanity of your marginalized colleagues. They should not be required to clinically set aside their own needs - as scholars, as scientists, as people - just to educate their peers on "what it feels like" to identify as a certain race, class, gender, or sexual orientation.

DEIA is about creating safe places for emotional expression - and about meeting the needs of a community where they are.

When I was in graduate school, I volunteered with a local ESL group for students, visiting scholars, and their families. As an F-1 visa student myself, I could empathize. We swapped stories about our home countries, went to see plays and "classic movies" (classic to my American friends, not to me), and even celebrated American traditions like Thanksgiving together. (With a twist. If you've never had biriyani for Thanksgiving, you don't know what you're missing). I helped my new friends find translation, childcare, and immigration resources around campus when they asked. The memories I made with this group were some of my best on the UIUC campus.

DEIA is hard work - but work that is beginning to gain more traction and acceptance broadly across the STEM fields. In an ideal world, diversity would be so mundane that it was standard in all aspects of STEM training - the expectation rather than the exception.

Until that day, we continue inching forward towards a more diverse and inclusive world: one blogpost and one podcast at a time.

Trenell Mosely is a AAAS STPF Fellow at the National Institutes of Health and an expert in genetics and DEIA. Juliet Johnston is the founder of Queer Science at the University of Minnesota; she is a current postdoc at Georgia Tech where she studies urban microbiota. Bailey Duhé is a cultural anthropologist and DEI consultant at Cardu Collective.