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Jen, a student I taught early in my career, stood head-and-shoulders above her peers academically. I learned she had started off as an engineering major but switched over to psychology. I was surprised and curious.
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Was she struggling with difficult classes? No. In fact, Jen’s aptitude for math was so strong that she had been recruited as an engineering prospect. During her first year, her engineering classes were filled with faces of other women. But as she advanced, there were fewer and fewer women in her classes—until one day, she realized she was the only woman in a large lecture class of men.
Jen began to question whether she belonged. Then she started to wonder if she cared enough to persist in engineering. Her quest to understand what she was feeling brought her to my psychology class.
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Comments
Which kind of diversity
I work in STEM and it can be a difficult field to succeed in. Diversity can be extremely helpful in solving complex problems.
When I say diversity helps solve problems, I'm referencing diversity of thought. It seems as though this article is referencing diversity of genitalia and skin color - neither of which are relevant to STEM work. I hope I'm wrong.
Another Elephant in the Room
How much do you suppose it affected students' "need to belong" when universities threatened the academic standing of those who declined to be treated with the [...word removed by moderator...] gene products being marketed as COVID vaccines?
Many students, some well on their way to STEM degrees, were kicked off their hard-earned career paths because they made a personal decision over a novel technology with less history of human use than Thalidomide had (when it was pulled from the market). Many more students fearfully surrendered their bodily autonomy and right to informed consent in order to preserve their academic standing.
Perhaps I sing a one-note song, but I have got to think that the sex of your mentor matters a lot less than the threats of an institution trying to coerce you into taking drugs (while holding your future in its hands).
I understand that your research is probably not recent enough to have examined the educational and psychological outcomes of these egregious intrusions; however, I find it deeply disturbing that nobody is willing to even mention them in discussions of belonging/inclusion at school and in the workplace.
If you are going to invite me to have empathy for students who feel isolated as they find themselves surrounded by fewer and fewer people sharing similar outward characteristics, perhaps you should say something—anything at all—about students who felt isolated because their futures were unjustly held to ransom in order to bully them into consuming pharmaceutical products that have almost no history of human use.
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