For all STEM faculty, chairs, administrators, and faculty developers who work to support students’ learning and thriving in STEM – especially those students who have felt unwelcome and unsupported in their past STEM experiences – this book offers sustainable strategies that are now being widely adopted to create inclusive environments in undergraduate STEM classes and programs. Further, this book presents a framework for partnering with students to collaboratively envision how STEM can be a space that fosters a sense of belonging for, and promotes the success of, all individuals in STEM.
This book presents the Being Human in STEM Initiative, or HSTEM, as a model for challenging the assumptions we make, and how we communicate to students, about who belongs and who can thrive in STEM. This work arose out of a time of conflict at Amherst College: A four-day sit-in, protesting in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and bringing attention to related experiences of exclusion and marginalization that minoritized students experienced on campus. What emerged from that conflict has been transformative for the college, its students, and for its faculty and staff. In this book, the authors share how the HSTEM course came into being, offer a course overview, readings, and resources for developing an HSTEM course at your own institution, provide recommendations for evaluating the multi-level impact of inclusive change initiatives, and profile models of how the HSTEM course has been adapted at colleges and universities across the country.
In addition to providing a road map for developing your own HSTEM course, the authors articulate ways that you can make any course or institutional structure more inclusive through active listening and validation, and through reflective practice and partnership, to progressively make incremental and sustainable changes in STEM education. Through listening and reflecting, the model facilitates uncovering the disconnects that can impede inclusivity in our classrooms and laboratories. While the authors offer a proven process and model for change, originally motivated by the urgent need to respond to students’ demands, they recognize that larger institutional culture shifts require the identification and commitment to common values, a shared sense of purpose in the work of change, and the provision of agency and resources to individuals tasked with making change happen. How might we shift institutional STEM culture? The HSTEM model provides one solution: By reflecting on our own lived experiences and identities, engaging with the literature on the factors that enhance and limit full inclusion in STEM, and partnering with students to identify actionable ways to bring about sustainable change in our scientific communities, we can all work towards creating a more inclusive, and human, STEM ecosystem.
Each chapter opens with a set of guiding reflective questions to help you connect these ideas, frameworks, and strategies to your own teaching and institutional context. While each chapter builds on the previous ideas and frameworks, the book can also be used as a resource to identify a just-in-time strategy to address particular questions you may have about making your teaching more inclusive. The appendices offer an array of Facilitator Guides, each of which outlines a student-endorsed exercise, based on the pedagogical literature, that can foster a sense of belonging and inclusion in your classrooms and laboratory spaces.
Sarah Bunnell has been actively involved in scholarship of teaching and learning research, and mentoring others in SoTL, since 2006. She has published multiple articles and chapters in SoTL including in the Journal of Faculty Development, International Journal for Students as Partners, Case Studies in the Environment, Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education, and the edited volume, Threshold Concepts in Problem-Based Learning. She recently completed a three-year Mellon Foundation-funded project examining the impact of interdisciplinary team teaching on student learning across the sciences and the arts/humanities. She served as President of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (2021-2022) and served in elected positions on the ISSOTL Board for 10 consecutive years prior to moving into the presidential position for the Society. As the Associate Director and STEM Specialist for the Amherst College Center for Teaching and Learning, her work focuses on providing faculty with the frameworks and support that they need to impact student learning and a sense of community in their classrooms and laboratories. Sarah received her B.A. degree in Neuroscience from Middlebury College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Developmental and Cognitive Psychology from the University of Kansas.
Sheila received her B.A. in German and Biochemistry from Mills College, where her experiences in women-only classrooms and laboratories provided an opportunity to learn and lead in science settings in the absence of gender-based implicit bias and stereotype threat. While earning her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of California at San Francisco, she co-led a middle school girls’ science club for a year through the NSF-supported “Triad Project” of the UCSF Science Education Partnership. Under the tutelage of Liesl Chatman, Kimberly Tanner and colleagues, she experienced the transformative power of experiential and active learning coupled with metacognitive reflection on the part of the learners and the educators. As a Professor in the Chemistry Department and Program in Biophysics and Biochemistry at Amherst College, she partners with a team of undergraduate researchers to study the interplay between protein stability, dynamics and function using a combined biophysical and computational approach. She has published this work widely, in journals such as
Protein Science and
The Journal of Physical Chemistry. Since co-founding the “Being Human in STEM” (HSTEM) Initiative in 2016, Sheila has coordinateed HSTEM activities at the college and national scale: She co-facilitates the HSTEM course in collaboration with students, staff and faculty colleagues, organizes campus and regional HSTEM events, gives talks and workshops at colleges, universities and conferences nationwide, oversees a growing HSTEM network and collaborators at other institutions, and shares curricular and other HSTEM resources at
www.beinghumaninstem.com.
Megan Lyster has supported students, faculty, and staff in designing and implementing project-based learning experiences since 2007. She taught courses in design, social entrepreneurship, and women in business at Hampshire College, and served as the co-director of the Hampshire College Social Venture Fund and Advisory Network from 2010 – 2013. Megan then transitioned to supporting faculty as the Instructional Designer for Experiential Learning in the Amherst College Center for Community Engagement, where she facilitated community-based and project-based learning initiatives inside and outside the classroom. While at Amherst, she developed and facilitated the Design Thinking Challenge, an intensive program in which small teams of students grappled with and identified potential solutions for campus-based challenges. She also partnered with Sheila (and later, Sarah) to co-develop the Being Human in STEM initiative from its inception in the Spring of 2016, and served as a co-designer and co-instructor for seven iterations of the HSTEM course, with a specialized focus on the development and implementation of student-led projects. In her current role as the Assistant Director in the Wurtele Center for Leadership at Smith College, Megan supports students, faculty, and staff to cultivate the creativity, courage, and collaborative capacity to facilitate positive change in the world. Megan received her B.A. in 2002 from Hampshire College, and her M.A. in 2009 from Prescott College.
Tracie Marcella Addy is Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning at Lafayette College. Dr. Addy directs the Center for the Integration of Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship and serves in other leadership capacities. She enjoys working with instructors across all divisions and ranks to develop and administer programming related to the teacher-scholar model, from classroom teaching to the scholarship of teaching and learning. She has experience teaching at a diverse array of institution types. In addition toher leadership roles she performs scholarship on learner-centered practices including active learning and inclusive teaching. Dr. Addy also publishes educational materials and serves as an associate editor for various journals.
