Scientific Societies Advancing STEM Workforce Diversity: Lessons and Outcomes from the Minorities Affairs Committee of the American Society for Cell Biology

Abstract

Promoting diversity and inclusiveness in the STEM academic workforce remains a key challenge and national priority. Scientific societies can play a significant role in this process through the creation and implementation of programs to foster STEM academic workforce diversification, and by providing mentoring and skills development training that empower scientists from under-represented minority (URM) backgrounds to succeed in their communities of practice. In this article, we provide examples of challenges met by scientific societies in these areas and present data from the American Society for Cell Biology, highlighting the benefits received by trainees through long-term engagement with its programs. The success of these initiatives illustrates the impact of discipline-specific programming by scientific societies in supporting the development of URM scientists and an increasingly diverse and inclusive academic STEM community.

Social Capital From Professional Engineering Organizations and the Persistence of Women and Underrepresented Minority Undergraduates

“…travel awards, advice about what classes to take) as well as emotional support (i.e. advice about how to respond to negative treatment by others in STEM) (Puccia et al, 2021;Segarra et al, 2020). This research extends these prior findings by examining PEO participation rates across groups, how participation in various women-and race/ethnicity-focused PEOs in their first year of their engineering degree program affects women and URM student's persistence to their fifth year, as well as identifying the specific mechanisms through which student gain social capital through these organizations.…”

Scientific Societies Fostering Inclusive Scientific Environments through Travel Awards: Current Practices and Recommendations

“…Finding Sponsors: How Scientific Societies Obtain Funding for Travel Awards Travel award programs can be funded through federal grants, such as IPERT and R25 grants. For example, the ASCB MAC has a long history of this type of funding (Segarra et al, 2017(Segarra et al, , 2019. Travel awards funded through federal grants are often associated with specific strategic programming or interventions at the relevant conferences and are usually not available solely for individuals attending single events like an annual meeting.…”

“…URM is a broad designation that refers to members of groups that are underrepresented in the scientific workforce (including Black/African-American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and other Pacific Islander racial/ethnic groups), as described by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and its Office of the Director for Scientific Workforce Diversity (NIH, n.d.). As scientific societies are increasingly recognized as potential support systems and developmental scaffolds for individual trainees across different career stages (Potvin et al, 2018;Segarra et al, 2019), diversity-focused committees have often been charged with designing and administering travel awards as part of their larger responsibility to foster inclusion and facilitate the professional development of URM members. Some published metrics have provided insight into both the successes and shortcomings of travel award programming in promoting inclusive membership and professional development.…”

Diversity through equity and inclusion: The responsibility belongs to all of us

“…Learn about microaggressions, microaffirmations, stereotype threat, imposter syndrome, tokenism, and cultural competency in teaching and mentorship. There may be opportunities to gain such training on campus through campus divisions of equity and inclusion, ASCB Minorities Affairs Committee programs, workshops, and presentations ( Segarra et al , 2017 , 2020 ), and diversity-focused conferences, such as SACNAS and ABRCMS. Require annual training in aspects of inclusion, belonging, diversity, and cultural awareness for all faculty.…”