Diversity & Inclusion
Diversity
The Department of Microbiology & Immunology is committed to promoting an inclusive environment among graduate students, postdocs, staff, and faculty. Our department strives to foster and sustain an environment of inclusiveness and equity that empowers us all to achieve our highest potential without fear of prejudice or bias. We commit ourselves to building an exemplary educational community that offers a nurturing and challenging intellectual climate, a respect for the spectrum of human diversity, and a genuine understanding of the many differences – including race, ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, and religion – that enrich a vibrant metropolitan research university. We expect every member of our academic family to embrace the underlying values of this vision and to demonstrate a strong commitment to attracting, retaining, and supporting students, faculty, and staff who reflect the diversity of our larger society.
As a department engaged in research and education, we must embrace our diversity. It is well known that multiple perspectives that can identify creative solutions to solving challenges increases performance. By working to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion within the department’s culture, we will also improve scientific discovery and the sense of belonging and grit in our students, staff, and faculty.
Engagement
Engagement activities for students, staffs and faculty that reflect our commitment:
Service and Leadership opportunities for students
- Science Policy & Outreach Group (SPOG)
- SPOG is a graduate student organization interested in helping others understand the importance of science. For more information visit their website: https://spogatuofl.weebly.com/
- Learning Science Pathway (LSP)
- LSP is program aimed at introducing high school students to scientific research career paths through a paid research internship. For more information visit their website: https://spogatuofl.weebly.com/louisville-science-pathways.html
Microbiology and Immunology Summer Transitional Research Experience (MISTRE)
- M&I’s summer high school program MISTRE provides stipends to two high school students who lack science exposure to participate in a 7-week summer internship in a research laboratory in the M&I department. MISTRE is now merged with Louisville Science Pathways, which is the Science Policy and Outreach Group’s University-wide internship program lead by a M&I student. This merger provided exposure to weekly career seminars, and how to apply to two- and four-year colleges, with emphasis on careers in the biomedical field.
M&I Diversity Book Club
- The M&I Diversity Book Club meets monthly to discuss D&I topics relevant to students, faculty, and staff in STEM. The goal of the book club is to identify issues and propose solutions. For information, please contact Dr. Pascale Alard at pascale.alard@louisville.edu
Diversity Book Club Schedule | ||
Session | Topic/article | Resource Link |
2021 |
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15-Mar | Becoming trustworthy white allies | https://reflections.yale.edu/article/future-race/becoming-trustworthy-white-allies |
Unpacking the Knapsack (privilege) | http://convention.myacpa.org/houston2018/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/UnpackingTheKnapsack.pdf | |
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19-Apr | Implicit bias test from Harvard | https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html |
What is bias? | ||
An AI saw a cropped photo of AOC. It autocompleted her wearing a bikini (MIT technology review). | https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/29/1017065/ai-image-generation-is-racist-sexist/ | |
Image representations learned with unsupervised pretraining contain human-like biases (ACM Conferences) | ||
16-May | Race and gender gap in academia | |
College faculty have become more racially and ethnically diverse, but remain far less so than students (pewresearch) | https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/31/us-college-faculty-student-diversity/ | |
Sexism in the academy (n+1) | https://nplusonemag.com/issue-34/essays/sexism-in-the-academy/ | |
Racial and gender biases plague postdoc hiring (Sciencemag) | https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2019/06/racial-and-gender-biases-plague-postdoc-hiring | |
Strategies to improve equity in faculty hiring (MBcC) | ||
14-Jun | Ways to be more inclusive and imposter syndrome (Guest: Ryan Simpson) | |
12-Sep | Microaggression and being a upstander (Guest: Mireia Guerau) | |
Language matters: considering microaggressions in Science (life sciences education) | ||
Moving from bystander to upstander (NIH video) | ||
17-Oct | 10 simple rules for building an anti-racist lab | |
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| 29-Nov | First Generation Graduates in Academia | |
| 13-Dec | Health Inequity (Guest: John Chenault) | |
| 2022 | ||
| 7-Mar | NIH Diversity Supplements (Guest: LaCreis Kidd) | |
| 1-Apr | Microaffirmations and other inclusive Practices (Guest: Cynthia Ganote) | |
| 18-May | How mentorship shapes scientific identity in STEM. (Guest, Dr. Johnna Frierson, Assistant Professor of the Practice of Medical Education and Assistant Dean, Graduate and Postdoctoral Diversity and Inclusion, Duke University) | |
| 22-Sept | Promoting equity and inclusion through effective mentor-mentee relationship (Guest, Dr. Frierson) | |
| 24-Oct | Importance and impact of training the mentors | Evaluation of a Culturally Responsive Mentorship Education Program for the |
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| 2023 |
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| 12-Dec | Socialization of graduate students including underreprested students (Guest: Meghan Pifer College of Education and Human Development) | |
| 2024 | ||
| 10-Jan | Exploring White Supremacy Characteristics in our Organizations (Guest: Ryan Simpson and Kiana Fields HSC Office of Diversity & Inclusion) | |
| 14-Feb | We Have to be ‘Twice as’ Good: A Review of Achievement Goals for BIPOC Learners (Guest: Christopher D. Seals, Assistant Dean of Faculty Affairs and Advancement) | |
| 14-Aug | Racial, skin tone, and sex disparities in automated proctoring software” (Guest: Debbie Yoder-Himes Department of Biology) | |
| 20-Nov | How to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in Educational Settings: Behavior Change, Climate Surveys, and Effective Pro-Diversity Initiatives | |
| 4-Dec | Discussion about resources at ABRCMS and SACNAS conferences | |
Resources
Resources at UofL:
- Office of Diversity & Equity
- HSC office of Diversity and Inclusion
- School of medicine 2020-23 Strategic Plan
- The 2021 Celebration of Teaching and Learning featured a timely conversation between President Bendapudi and Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations about Race. https://celebration.zohobackstage.com/2021?lang=en
Explore external resources: