Florida bill would ban gender studies and give governor more power

The Impact of Race and Equality on Research Disparities in the U.S. and Beyond: The Case of SUNY Downstate Health Sciences

The integration of experiences of Black scientists with experimental data is one of the first things in the report. “We’ve been forced to look at racism, including structural racism, and the effect that it has had on educational disparities,” says Marcus Lambert, a workforce-diversity researcher and associate vice-president for research strategy and operations at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in New York City . “Ultimately,” he says, “I think this will be a go-to resource for our STEMM community for many years to come”.

In order for progression up the ladder to take place, it is necessary that you have opaque factors such as social networks and access to information on grants and how to win them. Senior figures are more likely than not to see potential in people who are similar to themselves, and this may be an effect called affinity bias.

Richards compares it to navigating from one side of a dark, cluttered room to the other — some are given a torch and others are not. There is no reason for people to help someone out. But if you’re not being helped out as much as others, then inevitably, it’s going to make a difference in progression,” he says.

Studies show women and marginalized academics tend to receive lower marks in how students rate their lecturers. Mitchell notes that time spent on work related to breaking down race- and ethnicity-based barriers also takes away from research time. There are differences in the grants process.

In chemistry, 6.1% of professors are of Asian descent, while 5.3% are of physics. Civil engineering professors are more diverse with 18% of them being Asian ethnicities, and 2.5% being Black.

HBCUs as Partners: Changing Florida Universities to Lead the Way in Protecting the Constitution and the Establishment of a New Nation

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday that he intends to ban state universities from spending money on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in hopes that they will “wither on the vine” without funding.

The committee takes note of the work being done by institutions to foster inclusive communities that serve members of under-represented groups, and suggests that others look to them as partners. M. Roy Wilson, the president of Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and a member of the committee, says that the culture of HBCUs goes beyond a student or faculty member simply seeing more people on campus who look like them. “If you talk to students who go to HBCUs, the things that they say about their institutions aren’t things I typically hear from other types of institutions,” he says, adding that any such comments probably relate to the resources, opportunities and mentorship that students receive.

Tuesday’s announcement was foreshadowed in December when the governor’s office asked all state universities to account for all of their spending on programs and initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion or critical race theory.

The Republican governor has also installed a controversial new board at the New College of Florida, a public liberal arts college, with a mandate to remake the school into his conservative vision for higher education.

One of DeSantis’ new board members, Eddie Speir, wrote in an online post that he planned to propose in that meeting “terminating all contracts for faculty, staff and administration” of the school, “and immediately rehiring those faculty, staff and administration who fit in the new financial and business model.”

The announcement follows a commitment by the presidents of the state’s two-year community colleges to not teach critical race theory in a vacuum and to not fund or support any institutional practice, policy or academic requirements that compel belief in critical race theory.

The governor wants to change Florida universities to be closer to him and his vision would put power in the hands of his political appointees.

Legislation was filed this week that would require general education courses at state colleges and universities to promote the values needed to preserve the constitutional republic, and that they cannot define American history as opposed to the creation of a new nation based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence. It would prohibit general courses “with a curriculum based on unproven, theoretical or exploratory content.”

The bill would put all hiring decisions in the hands of each universities’ board of trustees, a body selected entirely by the governor and his appointees, with input from the school’s president. A board of trustee member could also call for the review of any faculty member’s tenure.

Collaboration, mentorship, and diversity in biomedical institutions: The oSTEM lab collaborations of Jesse Lee and Gregory Beatty

For Jesse Lee, a fifth-year PhD student in Gregory Beatty’s cancer-immunology laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, this type of group structure has led to what he calls “one of the more healthy lab environments” that he’s been a part of. Lab technicians are each trained in specialized techniques, such as mouse surgery or histology, and several technicians will collaborate on a project, training students as they go. This, coupled with Beatty’s hands-on approach to mentoring, means that “you’re constantly working together and coordinating how your things run through each team”, Lee says. “Everybody knows a little bit about everybody’s projects, and everybody’s always thinking about someone else’s project.”

The university begins reaching out to potential students at a young age, according to the provost for academic affairs at Alabama State University. ASU has also developed a pipeline to recruit students from community colleges that offer two-year associate’s degrees. At ASU, students receive mentoring not just from faculty members, but from peers as well. The report recommends that universities team up with HBCUs to learn from their processes, and Pettis says that ASU is always on the lookout for new partnerships. “Gone are the days where larger institutions are simply reaching out to show a little diversity in their proposals,” he says. Being a quality partner and providing quality students is what makes an HBCU a good choice for you.

The committee began meeting before a wave of legislation by some US states seeking to clamp down on diversity initiatives and the inclusion in university curricula of the topic of racism. In addition, reports show that although the number of DEI roles created to help companies and institutions achieve a balanced workforce increased by 50% following the murder of George Floyd — a Black man who was killed in an encounter with police in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2020 — the attrition rate of those roles had risen to as high as 33% by the end of last year. Abby Ray, vice-president of marketing and communications at oSTEM, a national non-profit organization based in Grandville, Michigan, that advocates for people from sexual and gender minorities in science, says that such efforts underscore the need to keep pushing for change. “It is essential,” they say, “that we continue to uplift those individuals who have historically been oppressed and deliberately excluded from STEMM fields.”