Continuous education and growth

We are dedicated to continuous education and growth in our personal and collective understanding of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Learn more about how you can participate in continuous education and growth opportunities below.

Our Challenges to the Community

We have created a living document with suggestions for anti-racist education. This collection of resources includes visual and audio learning materials compiled by members of our department. We challenge our community members to engage with the resources and opportunities presented in our document.

The CIC Journal Club

The goals of the CIC Journal Club are to make DEI-related conversations more accessible, to help start more conversations about DEI in the department, to invite our peers to contribute their perspectives, and to call attention to problems related to DEI in the field of BME. 

The CIC Journal Club holds one discussion per semester. The most recent meeting of the club, the paper The extent and drivers of gender imbalance in neuroscience reference lists  was discussed. Students and faculty shared their perspectives with gender biases in reference lists and how we can be more active in citing authors on our own manuscripts.

References for papers discussed by the Journal Club:

1. Chesler, N. C. A How-To Guide for Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in Biomedical Engineering. Annals of Biomedical Engineering. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-019-02223-2. (Fall 2020)
    
2. Stevens et al. Fund Black scientists, Cell, Volume 184, Issue 3, 2021, Pages 561-565, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2021.01.011. (Spring 2021)
    
3. Matters, M.E., Brightman, A.O., Buzzanell, P.M. et al. Inclusive Teaching in Isolating Situations: Impact of COVID-19 on Efforts Toward Increasing Diversity in BME. Biomed Eng Education 1, 73–77 (2021).  https://doi.org/10.1007/s43683-020-00012-1. (Fall 2021)
    
4. Dworkin, J.D., Linn, K.A., Teich, E.G. et al. The extent and drivers of gender imbalance in neuroscience reference lists. Nat Neurosci 23, 918–926 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-020-0658-y (Spring 2022)

The GWBME Book Club

The GWBME book club reads 3 books a year focused on the themes of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM. All the books are selected based on suggestions from book club members that can be memoirs, novels, non-fiction, or fiction books. We meet to discuss the books to share our thoughts, interesting things we've learned, and how we can apply the key takeaways from the books to our lives.

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Our Spring 2021 selection is Can We All Be Feminists? edited by June Eric-Udorie.

Past Book Club Selections Include:

1. The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still A Boys' Club by Eileen Pollack
2. Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine
3. Breaking and Entering: The Extraordinary Story of a Hacker Called "Alien" by Jeremy N. Smith
4. Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenbery
5. Tell Me Who You Are: Sharing Our Stories of Race, Culture, & Identity by Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi
6. Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II By Liza Mundy
7. How to Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
8. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington