Resources
Connecting Students, Advisors, and Research Groups
The level of support that PhD programs provide students receive when searching for a research group varies widely across disciplines. While some students come in with a clear sense of their research interests and potential advisors, others may struggle to find the right fit without adequate guidance.
Identifying and Leveraging Community Cultural Wealth in Physics Bridge Programs
Bridge programs exist to support the transition into graduate programs, typically supporting groups who are marginalized in higher education. Even with the preparation and community that bridge programs provide, students may still face challenges in their graduate programs. While racially minoritized students are often able to overcome these challenges by drawing on various forms of cultural capital they possess, the forms of cultural capital they utilize are often overlooked and unacknowledged in the academy. This research-based guide is designed to help students in physics and other fields’ bridge programs recognize and become empowered by the cultural wealth they already possess.
Starting Conversations About Culture in STEM
Nudging the culture of STEM graduate programs, so they are more inclusive of students from racially minoritized backgrounds, can help address inequities in access and degree completion in the STEM disciplines. This research-based guide is designed to help departments begin changing culture by offering conversation starters about matters of climate, and identify key areas for improvement.
The Hidden Curriculum In Transitioning to Graduate School
Thoughtfully designed orientations can reduce inequities in confidence, connections, and sense of belonging that often accompany social identities such as race and class. This resource guide focuses on the hidden curriculum of graduate school, and how programs can design new student orientations that make unwritten rules explicit.
Rubric Checklist
The use of evaluation rubrics can help to create more equitable admissions processes. However, it can be difficult to know how to design and implement them to be effective tools. This research-based guide was designed for departments and programs who are adopting evaluation rubrics in their admissions processes to self-assess their rubrics against common standards.
The Equity-Minded Mentoring Toolkit
Mentoring relationships are critical to scholarly identity development and sense of belonging for graduate students, but the benefits of mentoring can often vary in inequitable ways across social identities such as race, class, and gender. This toolkit was designed to engage mentors in deeper thinking about how mentoring relationships in graduate education can embody equity-mindedness. The exercises in the Equity-minded mentoring toolkit are designed to help establish shared understandings of mentoring expectations and facilitate conversations about equity in mentoring relationships.
Racialized Gatekeeping Systems: Guidance for Navigation & Transformation
This document distills takeaways and input of 200+ attendees of webinars held by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) and the NSF INCLUDES Alliance: Inclusive Graduate Education Network (IGEN) in March 2023. In these events, panelists and participants discussed the newest NASEM report Advancing Antiracism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEMM Organizations: Beyond Broadening Participation (ADEI), and research findings from studies conducted by members of the IGEN Research Hub.
Graduate Student Debt Relief Resource Guide
This resource guide explores graduate student debt trends and synthesizes recently announced student debt relief policies. The Equity in Graduate Education Resource Center team has developed this resource guide to (1) help leaders get the word out about student debt relief programs and (2) to begin raising awareness in the graduate education community about student debt as an equity issue.
Sample Public Service Loan Email
The Equity in Graduate Education team has developed the following sample email as part of a broader effort to educate the graduate education community about Public Service Loan Forgiveness and student debt relief programs.
Doctoral Candidacy and Qualifying Exams: A Guide to Contexts, Costs for Equity, and Possibilities of Transformation
The Doctoral Candidacy and Qualifying Exams research brief synthesizes published research and findings from the IGEN Research Hub’s studies of qualifying exams in STEM disciplines.
Promoting Graduate Student Wellbeing: Cultural, Organizational, And Environmental Factors In The Academy
This resource synthesizes current knowledge about cultural, organizational, and environmental factors in higher education which are known to support or inhibit the wellbeing of graduate students.
Resources for Supporting Graduate Student Wellbeing
Mental health and wellness; Meditation and mindfulness; Self-care; Managing stress; Resisting the fallacy of unworthiness; Suggested scholarly readings.
Preparing Graduate Admissions and Recruitment for Effects of Covid-19
Guidance for an equitable, empathetic approach to graduate recruitment & admissions in COVID-19; Actions the graduate education community are taking; Questions for administrators & faculty to ask themselves.
Communicating with Students about Racial Violence
The importance of effectively and authentically communicating with students; Educating oneself on systemic racial inequities; Initial steps and recommendations for communicating with and supporting Black students.
Discussion Guide for Equity in Science
Equity in Science synthesizes several years of research aimed at advancing what we know about how change happens in STEM courses, departments, and disciplines -- its possibilities, limits, and how it is already occurring in some spaces. This guide is written to encourage reflection, discussion, and action.
Equitable Practices for Writing, Reading and Soliciting Letters of Recommendation
In order to ensure that letters of recommendation are effective tools for enhancing equity, we must critically assess how we write, read, and solicit letters of recommendation.
Postdoctoral Hiring & Equity Issues in Stem: Employment Trends, Policy, and Research
This research brief explores employment trends, policies, and scholarly research about postdoctoral hiring and equity issues in STEM.