By: Juliana Medeiros

What can we do to create more equitable and inclusive STEM educational systems? This year, the Scientist Lecture Series is featuring speakers that have successfully run boots-on-the-ground institutional diversity initiatives. These leaders have strong records of advocacy and are employing innovative ideas to build anti-racist/anti-sexist programs, truly they are changing the system in support of a more diverse STEM workforce.

February’s lecture will feature scientists from Project Biodiversify! Dr. Ash Zemenick, Dr. Alex Webster, and Dr. Sarah Jones will speak on some common missteps in biology education settings that negatively impact diversity, equity, and inclusion and will outline methods to remedy these. These scientists will also give an overview of Project Biodiversify, which is a group of research biologists generating materials that promote diversity and inclusion in biology teaching. The online repository at Project Biodiversity features teaching materials and methods aimed at increasing the diversity of biologists highlighted in lectures, humanizing biologists, and making biology classrooms inclusive to students of all backgrounds.

We hope you will join us for this virtual seminar on February 16^th at 7:00 pm! The lecture is free, but registration is required through the HF&G website here.

We hope you will join us not only for February’s seminar, but also for the final talk in the series (details here)!  With this lecture series, we hope to provide action steps for those who have the power to define the systematic aspects of the STEM work environment (professors, administrators, supervisors), to give inspiration to students in STEM who are eager to see people in leadership positions making changes to the SYSTEM of STEM, and to show members of the public how organizational transformations can take place in support of a more diverse workforce.