Virtual Journal Club Archive
The intersectional privilege of white able-bodied heterosexual men in STEM
One way that discussions and work toward equity may vary from diversity or inclusion is in attention to power and privilege. When we don’t pay attention to these issues, people are more likely to experience a hostile or chilly climate day to day, career trajectories and opportunities are negatively impacted, and inequalities are reproduced. This paper can help STEM community members become more attuned to how privilege operates and how they can interrupt it in support of more equitable learning and work environments.
Departmental support structures for physics graduate students: Development and psychometric evaluation of a self-report instrument
The American Physical Society’s Bridge Program (APS-BP) has significantly higher persistence rates than physics graduate education across the country (90% vs 60%). Motivated by this early positive outcome, the researchers aimed to explore and offer empirical evidence as to what aspects of the Bridge Program contribute to these higher persistence rates. This paper describes the development and psychometric evaluation of a survey instrument, the “Aspects of Student Experience Scale (ASES)”, that was designed to evaluate physics graduate students’ experiences related to different forms of departmental support that may have made the APS-BP successful, namely: (a) mentoring and research experience, (b) professional development, (c) social and academic integration, and (d) financial support.
Exploring the Role of Community Cultural Wealth in Graduate School Access and Persistence for Mexican American PhDs
This study utilized the community cultural wealth framework to uncover and contextualize the ways that Mexican American PhDs activated their funds of knowledge in order to access and persist in graduate school. This paper also points to the importance of advisors and other institutional agents in empowering students directly and nurturing their strengths.
Reimagining Merit and Representation: Promoting Equity and Reducing Bias in GME Through Holistic Review
This article examines the impact of a holistic review screening process on advancing racial equity in graduate admissions. In this study, 547 applicants to a psychiatry residency program were evaluated for interview selection via three distinct screening rubrics: one holistic review approach and two non-holistic processes (Traditional and Traditional Modified). Relative to Traditional, Holistic Review significantly increased the odds of URM applicants being selected for interviews. Researchers found that assigning value to specific lived experiences (i.e., resilience and distance travelled) and de-emphasizing elements with documented racial biases (i.e., test scores) contributed to the significant increase in odds ratio of interview selection for URM applicants.
(Re)Shaping the Socialization of Scientific Labs: Understanding Women’s Doctoral Experiences in STEM Lab Rotations
Lab rotations are a common structure for advanced training in STEM disciplines, and they provide early socialization experiences that may impact the identity development of graduate students as scholars. This study uses interview data from 54 women pursuing STEM doctorates to explore the gendered nature of laboratory rotations. The authors found that women’s perceptions of PI mentoring styles and the climate of the lab influenced their selections of laboratories where they would conduct research for the longer term. The findings in this study add to existing research that documents how systems of oppression (e.g., sexism, racism) can become embedded in academic learning environments to shape students’ graduate school experiences and professional pathways.
Developing an Indigenous Mentoring Program for faculty mentoring American Indian and Alaska Native graduate students in STEM: a qualitative study
American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) doctorates in STEM, are certainly underserved, and as a result are underrepresented, calling for a culturally congruent mentorship program. Because traditional Western academic paradigms are typically constrained to non-Indigenous assessments and perspectives, the authors’ primary question is ‘how can AI/AN graduate students in STEM successfully navigate graduate education with their cultural identity intact?’. Peer-reviewed articles, personal communication with professionals working in the field of AI/AN academic success, and professional training literature are used as the foundation for addressing the scarcity of Indigenous participation in the STEM fields. While it is true that STEM programs value academic rigor, Indigenous communities have values, too. Thus, we are working toward instituting a bicultural mentoring program that provides bicultural accountability. This paradigm includes the amalgamation of traditional academic mentoring with Indigenous values and kinship structures. A model is offered to help conceptualize and develop an Indigenous mentoring program (IMP) for STEM faculty who mentor AI/AN graduate students.
We want black students, just not you: How white admissions counselors screen black prospective students.
This study is one of the first to empirically test the existence of intraracial discrimination in admission processes. Thornhill draws upon Carbado & Gulati’s (2013) theory of intraracial selection and discrimination which posits that gatekeepers prefer Black applicants who serve their institution’s purposes. This audit study of the responses to emails sent from prospective Black applicants to 517 admission decision-makers build on previous studies that explore bias in admission recruitment processes. The author examines whether there is evidence of white admissions decision-makers practicing intraracial discrimination when they engage with prospective Black applicants. Thornhill constructed four emails, with varying degrees of racial salience (ie, the significance of race as a factor in the narrative). Each admissions counselor was sent two narratives, one that made the applicant’s race salient and one in which race was not salient. The study explored whether white college admissions decision-makers screen out Black students who display a commitment to antiracism. The researcher finds that admission decision-makers respond less frequently to inquiry emails from Black prospective students who express a commitment to antiracism than a group of Black students who reveal no interest in racial justice issues.
“Am I going crazy?!”: A Critical Race Analysis of Doctoral Education
This article sheds light on the racialized experiences of Black and Latinx doctoral students, through ethnographic interviews of 22 students within 3 research universities. Looking through the lens of critical race theory at students’ stories of these experiences, the authors argue that the culture of doctoral education can be dehumanizing and marginalizing for Black and Latinx students, who came to question whether they might be “going crazy” when talking about their experiences.
Typical Physics Ph.D. Admissions Criteria Limit Access to Underrepresented Groups but Fail to Predict Doctoral Completion
This study measured the relationships between common admissions metrics (i.e., undergraduate GPA and GRE scores) and PhD completion. The sample included nearly 4000 physics PhD students enrolled in 27 PhD programs from a variety of schools; the students were roughly representative of the student body in physics. The study looked at four analytic subsets of the data: All Students, US Only, US Women, and US Men. The work provides evidence that most of the commonly used admissions metrics have limited statistical validity, and those that have statistical validity, have limited practical benefit. It was also shown that scores on the GRE physics exams have strong gaps based on race, gender, and country of origin. Additional statistics were reported about the demographic composition of physics as a discipline, from undergraduate degrees awarded through PhDs completed.
Implicit Theories of Change as a Barrier to Change on College Campuses: An Examination of STEM Reform. The Review of Higher Education
The authors discuss the challenge of implementing change in STEM higher education, specifically focusing on practitioners’ theories of change as a potential barrier. In particular, the authors address the issue of how change agents’ implicit theories of change impacts their ability to implement change processes. They also focus on STEM faculty, who are typically novice change agents with less experience to guide and modify implicit theories of change. In order to examine these issues, the authors studied the theories of change of practitioners on 11 campuses involved in STEM reform. The authors focus on change agents’ unexamined views about change, their learning and adoption of explicit theories of change, and the processes of implementing change.