Well, there won’t be any algebraic number theory at all, since that isn’t rooted in Western tradition at all…algebra comes from team Not White Europeans.
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Those with doctorates often make poor high school teachers-it is a very different skill set from the scholarly research which earned them the degree to begin with. Of course, given the academic markets for professors compared to K12 teachers, it may be their only choice. K12 schools are desperate for teachers now.
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I am not STEM faculty (or any type of faculty), and I haven’t had this conversation with my faculty member friends. I will be giving a friend a call tomorrow because I am curious… but would like to hear about the details of what you guys are talking about. What sort of DEI document is a STEM faculty member required or expected to write? What sort of DEI requirements would be expected for research grants? What is required by ABET?
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Here is guidance from UPenn to its grad students as to how they should write a DEI statement as they go into the academic job market: https://careerservices.upenn.edu/application-materials-for-the-faculty-job-search/diversity-statements-for-faculty-job-applications/
My D had two retired college professors teaching AP classes in her HS and they were both outstanding.
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These were my questions as well. Unfortunately, I don’t have any faculty friends to ask. My last STEM class was HS physics more years ago than I want to admit to.
Are these DEI requirements geared to class content or as a way of ensuring that all students are equitably treated? In my opinion, the latter would be good while former could go many ways.
Here is a page that looks into some potential problems with DEI statements.
We have to write DEI statements for certain research proposals and sometimes it takes extraordinary mental gymnastics to make connections between the research field I’m active in and the societal DEI goals required. I’m not convinced anyone reads them in our case. But I’m not an academic.
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I just went and looked at faculty postings on a popular academic job website. I searched for full-time tenure track positions in chemistry & biochemistry and clicked on the first 20 results that included clear instructions for what materials to submit.
The positions were at a variety of schools, public and private, large and small, elite and obscure.
Of the 20 positions, 15 require specific DEI statements to be submitted as part of the application package. Of the other 5, three of them had strong statements about DEI with instructions to address the topic in their other application materials (e.g., incorporate it into your research and teaching statements). The remaining 2 schools had statements about the importance of DEI efforts, but did not explicitly instruct applicants to address it in application materials.
If you’d like to see examples, you can go to careers.insidehighered.com or to jobs.chronicle.com and look at some of the job postings.
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Thanks, that’s helpful. I read through this guidance, and I guess I feel… neutral?
What I gathered from the document was that a DEI statement would mostly address the author’s experiences with diversity, what they learned from those experiences, and how they felt it would affect their interactions with a diverse population going forward. It doesn’t seem crazy that a faculty member in any discipline might be expected to be thoughtful about this. Even college applicants are asked to write something like this (at least my kid seemed to be writing a lot of essays about experiences with diversity and what he learned from them).
On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to have to justify the content of each and every specific unversity course or research project based on how it would contribute to DEI goals. That seems weird since lots of technical topics wouldn’t seem related to DEI at all. Is this happening as well?
Its required uniformly across disciplines where it is required at all, not just in STEM. We want to know that our future colleagues have thought about how to treat students equitably.
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Yes.
One aligns with my ethics. I prefer allowing everyone to live their life and teaching about various things that really happened from different perspectives, not just white colonialism as has been typical of the US in the past. I think this strengthens the US and individuals.
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Ok, do you have an example of some guidelines or requirements for that?
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That’s exactly what the statements are supposed to address.
I’ve not seen this happen and yes it would be weird. DEI issues don’t creep into my own class content very much, or into my STEM prof spouse’s. Though there are a few times here and there – I talk about phrenology in my first neurobiology lecture, I mention that it’s important to seek out perspectives from patients with disabilities rather than just talking about them, my spouse makes their students learn about female chemists, etc. Nothing big, just basic consideration of people who may not get most of the positive attention.
Other than that, my efforts at DEI center around the experiences of the students and my colleagues and trying to actively support their success.
As for grants, DEI stuff is just one facet of the NSF’s broader impacts goal: https://beta.nsf.gov/funding/learn/broader-impacts. You can meet the broader impact requirement in other ways. They also seek to train and retain scientists from underrepresented groups.
The training thing is similar for NIH (Home | Diversity in Extramural Programs) but since they’re a health agency, they also have special grants to serve certain populations (Guide Data Table | Diversity in Extramural Programs). Otherwise, the NIH does not have a specific requirement to address DEI in their proposals. My last several NIH grants haven’t said anything about it.
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I am temporarily closing this thread for review.
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I’m reopening the thread for now, after deleting a number of comments that were clearly not in compliance with Forum Rules. If the conversation veers too far into political sniping, it may be closed again and not reopened.
As much as I would love to let everyone just rip on this topic, I need to ensure that the Forum remains civilized and respectful place. Please refrain from debate and politicized or antagonistic comments.
For those interested, feel free to join the Politics Forum, where being a bit uncivilized is allowed😉
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/g/Politics-Forum
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Overall, I like free expression and the US was built upon that idea. I prefer not to have a politician saying what we can and can’t learn.
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Especially one who has no idea how to teach.
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