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STEM Tea | Continuing the DEI journey in STEM


In this episode of STEM Tea, AJ chats with Chrystal Starbird and Aileen Fernandez about how institutions can make meaningful diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) improvements. They talk about the needs of DEI and how this should be incorporated into the classroom from schools to undergraduate and postgraduate studies and beyond.

Chrystal (left) is a faculty member at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (NC, USA) in the biochemistry and biophysics department and is a structural biologist studying cell surface receptors.

Aileen (right) is a postdoc at Yale School of Medicine (CT, USA) in the department of pathology and studies translational oncology and is passionate about cancer health disparities.

Contents:

  • Introduction 00:00 – 05:55
  • Future career goals 05:55 – 11:08
  • What is DEI to you? 11:08 – 16:35
  • How well do you think academia and industry are doing with integrating real DEI change? 16:35 – 23:31
  • What can leaders focus on to create authentic DEI change at their institution? 23:31 – 32:29
  • How do we monitor an institution’s performance towards DEI? 32:29 – 48:18
  • What do you think the future of DEI will look like? 48:18 – 50:23
  • Discussion about the importance of mentoring in DEI DEI 50:23 – 55:50
  • Should proof of DEI be required for grant mechanisms? 55:50 – 1:04:24
  • What’s the tea? 1:04:24 – 01:12:25