2021-2022 DIF Projects
AAPI history at Stanford
Participating Department(s): All
Contact: Suzanne Ou, osuzanne@stanford.edu
The project aims to celebrate diversity by highlighting the history of Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage across Stanford. The need for recording the triumphs and challenges of AAPI members arose during the strong anti-Asian sentiments resulting from COVID. The act of remembering is to honor and to live. By updating and maintaining a timeline of AAPI history at Stanford, in parallel with AAPI heritage in the US, AAPI members of Stanford can contextualize our experiences and declare our space in history. This publicly available timeline can be accessed by everyone and used to educate others on the diversity of ethnicities and histories within AAPI communities. Where student presence may be transient, recording institutional memory is important to both current and future AAPI members to know that they come from a proud legacy and empower them that their presence matters.
Better Ally Series
Participating Department(s): All
Contact: Ioana Marin, iamarin@stanford.edu
The goal of the Better Ally Series is to empower trainees (graduate students and postdocs) with the skills and knowledge to have brave conversations for effective allyship to minoritized and marginalized communities. The impetus for this program came from the need for spaces where we can learn collaboratively, practice conversations and create actionable plans for productive allyship. This need became especially apparent from conversations with many trainees who serve as representatives on Departmental DEI committees throughout the University, and who are required to eloquently advocate for their needs and those of their peers. The format of these events is "How to be a Better Ally to __ Community", consisting of monthly lunchtime conversations. We start with small-group discussions of pre-assigned readings and then work to develop written allyship accountability plans.
Certificate in Critical Consciousness and Anti-Oppressive Praxis
Participating Department(s): All
Contact: Eamon Byrne, efxbyrne@stanford.edu
Website: https://med.stanford.edu/diversity/content/certificate-in-critical-consciousness-and-anti-oppressive-praxis.html
As the Black Lives Matter movement grows, Stanford graduate students and postdoctoral scholars are eager to build a more equitable world. However, many feel uncertain about how to direct their focus. We train these burgeoning leaders to build a just future in the academy and throughout their lives. Participants in our certificate program develop a practice of reflection and action (praxis) through a series of workshops, journal clubs, and courses/electives at Stanford. Each trainee also partners with minoritized communities to do a “praxis project” to multiply their impact and make transformative change for the Stanford community.
Communication for Diversity
Participating Department(s): Communication
Contact: Angela Lee, angela8@stanford.edu
Our project will connect current PhD students with HBCUs to host remote recruitment information sessions. Existing diversity programs at Stanford focus on promoting graduate student diversity in a broad sense, but few are tailored to students attending HBCUs. HBCU students are often disadvantaged during PhD applications due to a lack of sufficient information about how to apply to institutions like Stanford. We will pilot our project in the Department of Communication, which is highly interdisciplinary and combines research on sociology, psychology, and political science. We aim to scale our program by recruiting and training students from other Stanford departments.
Diverse Veterinary Applicant Fund (DiVAF)
Participating Department(s): Comparative Medicine
Contact: Alexandria Hicks-Nelson, ahicksne@stanford.edu
The Comparative Medicine Department houses all of the veterinarians on campus tasked with overseeing the health and welfare of research animals. These laboratory animal veterinarians are boarded specialists in their fields and run an illustrious laboratory animal residency. Residents are accepted in pairs as postdoctoral scholars. Eastern and Southern applicants face the challenge of hotel stays and prohibitive cost-of-living differential. This fund would be made available to offset some of the hotel costs incurred by visiting vet student applicants to diversify our residency applicant pool and ensure any resident is able to transition to Bay Area Living if accepted.
Diversity Perspectives: Exploring Pathways to Career Success
Participating Department(s): Chemical Engineering, Earth System Science, Immunology, Materials Science and Engineering, Structural Biology
Contact: Katherine Walwyn-Brown, kwalwynb@stanford.edu
Website:https://www.bioaims.com/diversity-seminar
This event builds on the success of our past Diversity Perspectives events and seminars. We will invite a speaker who has recognized experience and expertise in diversity and inclusion issues (e.g. Dr. Rebecca Calisi Rodriguez, Dr. Mica Estrada, Dr. Sherilynn Black). We will also invite a group of students from local primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs), allowing these students to share their perspectives and gain valuable insight into the graduate school and research experience. This project also aligns with priorities identified in the Stanford Long Range Planning (LRP) process, which acknowledged that Stanford needs to do more to support the success and interests of diverse graduate student and postdoctoral populations, with a particular focus on cultivating ongoing interest in academic careers among trainees from marginalized and underserved backgrounds. The event will include a trainee round table, speaker seminar and small group meetings between PUI students, Stanford trainees and faculty.
Documentary Film Screening & Speaker Series
Participating Department(s): Art and Art History
Contact: Michael Workman, mworkman@stanford.edu
A series of monthly film screenings and discussions geared towards exploring the works of a diverse group of filmmakers. There will be a focus on films by women, people of color, and LGBTQ individuals. We will host screenings and invite guest filmmakers to participate in virtual Q&As and teach master class workshops. The screening and speaker series will be an opportunity for the Documentary Film MFA graduate students to extend their discourse beyond the classroom, but it will also be open to all members of the Stanford community, in hopes of fostering a greater dialogue about documentary film.
Equity and Inclusion Graduate Action Committee for Physics and Applied Physics
Participating Department(s): Applied Physics, Physics
Contact: Anisha Singh, agsingh@stanford.edu
The Graduate Action Committee holds events open to all graduate students in the Physics and Applied Physics departments interested in equity and inclusion issues. Students at each meeting brainstorm around a specific item from the Physics Equity and Inclusion (E&I) Strategic Plan relevant to graduate life, and devise actionable items to help make progress on implementation of the strategic plan. These meetings should increase awareness of equity/inclusion issues and the work being done to address them at the department level, as well as enable a more diverse array of voices to openly discuss these issues and aid in desired actions.
Feminist Fridays
Participating Department(s): All
Contact: Lauren Sukin, lsukin@stanford.edu
For the past three years, this group has served as an opportunity for graduate students to engage with each other and their gender identities through discussions of creative, intersectional feminist works. Every month, students from across the university are invited to examine a different text dealing with pertinent issues impacting primarily non-male individuals in the modern world. The students then assemble over drinks and snacks in a comfortable forum designed to foster (1) positive discussion of identity, (2) a sense of a supportive community for the women, intersex, and trans-individual at Stanford, and (3) a robust inter-departmental intellectual community.
From Black Power to Black Lives Matter: The Black Panther Party, 55 Years Later
Participating Department(s): Art & Art History, Communication, Economics, Education, Epidemiology and Clinical Research, Health Research & Policy, History, Law, Modern Thought and Literature, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, Theater and Performance Studies
Contact: Matt Randolph, mattrph@stanford.edu
For the past three years, this group has served as an opportunity for graduate students to engage with each other and their gender identities through discussions of creative, intersectional feminist works. Every month, students from across the university are invited to examine a different text dealing with pertinent issues impacting primarily non-male individuals in the modern world. The students then assemble over drinks and snacks in a comfortable forum designed to foster positive discussion of identity, a sense of a supportive community for the women, intersex, and trans-individual at Stanford, and a robust inter-departmental intellectual community.
Funding for Undergraduate Research in Materials Science and Engineering
Participating Department(s): Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, Materials Science and Engineering,Mechanical Engineering
Contact: Melody Wang, melodymw@stanford.edu
Currently, there are no formal programs to encourage and fund undergraduate researchers with minimal research experience during the academic school year in the Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) Department. The MSE Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity taskforce is raising funds to establish a paid undergraduate research program to 1) increase and diversify the undergraduate researcher numbers in MSE; 2) reduce financial, social, and academic barriers to research participation; 3) foster community among the undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral populations through mentorship and research education; 4) expose and prepare undergraduates to PhD programs; and 5) encourage students in other fields to explore MSE research for interdisciplinary purposes. We will hold research fairs to facilitate the mentor/mentee pairing process and host luncheons for pairs throughout the quarter to foster their relationships. We hope the availability of this program will expand to all engineering students in the future.
Future Advancers of Science and Technology (FAST)
Participating Department(s): Aeronautics & Astronautics, Applied Physics,Bioengineering, Biology, Biomedical Informatics, Biophysics, Cancer Biology, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Developmental Biology, Earth System Science, Electrical Engineering, Genetics, Immunology, Materials Science and Engineering,Microbiology & Immunology, Molecular & Cellular Physiology, Neurosciences, Pediatrics, Physics, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Psychology, Statistics
Contact: Hannah Rosenblatt, hrosenbl@stanford.edu
Website: https://fast.stanford.edu/
Future Advancers of Science and Technology (FAST) is a partnership between Stanford graduate students, high school students, and teachers at Andrew Hill and James Lick High Schools, two low-income east San Jose schools. FAST aims to increase participation of underrepresented minority students in STEM by mentoring students in self-generated science projects. Mentors meet regularly with students to brainstorm and complete these projects. Many students attend science fairs, and all receive year-long, individualized graduate student mentorship, participate in a Stanford symposium, and participate in free college prep workshops. A DIF grant will allow us to increase student enrollment and expand curriculum.
Galvanizer - a Stanford-wide female founder community
Participating Department(s): Art & Art History, Bioengineering, Business, Computer Science, Economics, Education, Electrical Engineering, Health Research & Policy, Law, Management Science & Engineering, Medicine
Contact: Soha Yasrebi, syasrebi@stanford.edu
Website: https://www.galvanizer.io/
Galvanizer aims to address the female founder gap by providing a supportive community of peers and advisors to encourage more women to become entrepreneurs. We have built a strong community of 40+ female founders that support each other to start and scale companies. Our initiatives include 1) Gal Groups - accountability circles of ~5 founders, 2) Expert Office Hours - discussions with founders, VCs, and operators, and 3) Community Connections - wider community events to brainstorm ideas and share founder stories. We had an overwhelmingly positive response to our pilot program in Spring and are expanding our community and initiatives.
GradSWE STEM Roundtable Series
Participating Department(s): Aeronautics & Astronautics, Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering, Management Science & Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering
Contact: Juhi Madan, jmadan@stanford.edu
GradSWE seeks to promote engineering, provide professional development, and enhance the diversity of the Stanford Engineering community. We focus primarily on supporting female graduate engineers through community building, mentorship, leadership, and networking. The STEM Roundtable Series will serve as a forum to foster interactions among the diverse student community where students can feel free to present their research or lead discussions on relating to Women/Minorities/STEM. For the 2020-2021 year, we are considering having this event quarterly in a mini symposium format with an opening speaker leading into the research presentations and discussion.
Harmonizing Indigenous STEM Cultural Values
Participating Department(s): Bioengineering, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Computer Science, Earth System Science, East Asian Studies, Education, Management Science & Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Medicine, Neurosciences, Radiology
Contact: Kyle Yoshida, kyle3@stanford.edu
Website:www.honuascholars.org
Our mission is to promote cultural, value-based STEM practices and to increase STEM participation from indigenous communities. We hold workshops, discussions, and seminars with esteemed scholars, students, politicians, and community organizers to highlight the innovative work of indigenous scholars while also inspiring and guiding indigenous students in STEM. Our events help underrepresented individuals navigate academics while promoting systemic change for a diverse and inclusive future. Our events have had broad participation from indigenous communities, other universities, industries, non-profits, and the general public in addition to our Stanford community, which creates a collaborative and lively environment. As we encounter an increasing number of contemporary science and engineering-related indigenous issues ranging from topics surrounding land use, sovereignty, and education, we hope to create an inclusive environment in which all students can become informed of indigenous value-based thinking and to lead new movements as we promote increased diversity and participation in STEM fields.
Inaugural GSBelonging Inclusion Ambassadors Mentorship Program
Participating Department(s): Business
Contact: Josh Yang, joshyang@stanford.edu
The GSBelonging Inclusion Ambassadors Mentorship Program is a mentorship program designed to address the need for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) education and training among MBA students at the GSB. This mentorship program will (1) train MBA2 students to be Inclusion Ambassadors as effective facilitators in engaging with learning across differences and with difficult, unfamiliar, and uncomfortable topics, who will then (2) mentor MBA1 students throughout their first-year at the GSB to establish a common level of understanding around DE&I concepts and frameworks and support students from marginalized communities to help them feel welcomed and included in the GSB community.
Let Me Tell You Something about My Research-Training to shine at conference and interview seminar for postdocs of non-native speakers
Participating Department(s): All
Contact: Yinuo Xu, yinuo@stanford.edu
This program is designed to improve presentation and networking skills at academic conferences for postdocs who are non-native speakers, specifically targeting Chinese and other international postdocs on campus. We emphasize diversity and inclusion as a priority by extending the access of professional development to those who have verbal and cultural obstacles in effective communication in science.
M&I Racial and Social Justice Group
Participating Department(s): Microbiology and Immunology
Contact: Mary DeFeo, mdefeo@stanford.edu
Historically, science has been weaponized to promote inequities and support bigotry. Unfortunately, there continue to be many examples of inequities in science and medicine. It is crucial that we learn about the true history of science, medicine, and research, while reflecting on current issues to prevent further discrimination. To do this, we propose to organize a program that will provide structured learning in the form of speaker events and reading and discussing articles on racial and social justice issues pertaining specifically to science, medicine, academia and research. The proposed program aims to enhance the training of scientists at all levels within the M&I department, and to explore our role as scientists, and our individual and departmental contributions, towards a more just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive scientific community.
Mentors-in-Arts (MIA)
Participating Department(s): Theater and Performance Studies
Contact: Anna Kimmel, ajkimmel@stanford.edu
Building upon the Humantist-At-Large fellowship program, but with devoted attention to practice and media within the arts sector, this project will invite practicing professionals to share insights on the intersection of scholarship and artistic practice to better reflect the futures of Stanford’s diverse graduate population. Recognizing the precarious state of the academic job market yet simultaneous stigma for doctoral students to consider the robust and fulfilling opportunities beyond the university setting, Mentor-In-Arts (MIA) develops a cohort of mentors outside of academia to bridge the graduate-postgraduate experiences within arts and academic futures. This program seeks to serve as an incubator for thinking into the futures of the arts and humanities across various sectors – academia, non-profit, commercial, etc. – which is incredibly necessary as we all begin the process of healing and reckoning with the collective traumatic impacts of Covid-19 while envisioning our shared futures.
Network and Chill Roundtable
Participating Department(s): All
Contact: Kimya Loder, kloder@stanford.edu
The Network and Chill Series is dedicated to creating structured and sustained spaces for Black graduate and Undergraduate students to engage in roundtables and activities over the course of the 2020-2021 academic year.
Parents in Biosciences
Participating Department(s): Bioengineering, Biology, Biophysics, Cancer Biology, Chemical and Systems Biology, Microbiology & Immunology, Molecular & Cellular Physiology, Neurobiology, Neurosciences, Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine, Structural Biology
Contact: Lindsey Meservey, lmm5@stanford.edu
Parents are a particularly underserved and underrepresented population on the Stanford campus. Because parents are a minority among bioscience students, our unique needs (childcare, family housing, dependent health insurance, parental leave) are often overlooked, leaving us struggling socially, academically, and financially (see “Universities need to do more to support grad student parents” published in Science). The goals of Parents in Biosciences are to help parents navigate an academic career in the biosciences by (1) building a community of parent trainees through mentorship activities and (2) compiling resources that parent trainees desperately need but are difficult to find. We will accomplish these goals through events such as monthly coffee chats, quarterly family-friendly mentorship outings, quarterly informational seminars, and parent panels. Our group differs from existing parent organizations by including both graduate students and postdocs, by uniquely catering to biologists, and by purposefully building mentorship between established and younger trainees.
Paths to PhD: How to pursue a graduate degree in psychology
Participating Department(s): Psychology
Contact: Lauren Borchers, lrborch@stanford.edu
There is often an imbalance in the distribution of the resources, tools, and information necessary to apply for and attend graduate school such that first-generation and minority students are less likely to have access or be exposed to them. The purpose of this event will be to provide undergraduates and individuals considering pursuit of a PhD from underrepresented and minority (URM) groups with practical information for applying to graduate school in psychology. Participants will learn 1) reasons to pursue graduate education 2) how to choose the right graduate program, and 3) how to craft a compelling application.
Pertenecer
Participating Department(s): Biology, Earth System Science, Earth Systems Program, Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, Geological Sciences, Geophysics
Contact: Shersingh Tumber-Davila, sjg79@stanford.edu
Pertenecer consists of career day events at Stanford and local Bay Area schools where we introduce careers in earth sciences. Most of the events consist of bringing Stanford, where they learn about life on campus, meet earth scientists, and do an interactive science demonstration. Additionally, Pertenecer hosts in-school outreach programs, where we send an earth scientist to an elementary school where students get an in-person introduction to earth sciences. The target communities are the low-income and first-gen communities present in the Bay Area, such as San Francisco, East Palo Alto, Redwood City, and San Jose.
Queer Latin American Voices: Revisiting the Past, Reading the Present, Writing the Future
Participating Department(s): Anthropology, Comparative Literature, Computer Science, English, Iberian & Latin American Cultures, Modern Thought and Literature, Religious Studies
Contact: Alberto Quintero, albertoq@stanford.edu
Three central problems have gone unnoticed in contemporary Latin America Studies: lack of representation of Queer voices, lack of spaces to debate their significance, and lack of theoretical frameworks that would allow these voices to be heard. This project brings together graduate students and faculty in the Humanities and Sciences to recover and highlight often-overlooked Latin American queer texts, and their contributions to build inclusive techno-social futurities. Our goal is to construct a diverse, open, and cross-disciplinary academic platform where we will study, debate, and produce scholarship to reflect the artistic, techno-social, and environmental potency of queer Latin American texts.
Queer Perspectives Speaker Series
Participating Department(s): All
Contact: Lucy Wang, lwang8@stanford.edu
Queer Perspectives is a speaker series that empowers queer Stanford students (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral) to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by hosting successful queer academics and professionals from those fields to talk about their experience and the intersection of their identity and career. The Queer Perspectives Speaker Series (QPSS) is coordinated by the Stanford Chapter of Out in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (oSTEM@Stanford) and provides an opportunity for networking, community building, and professional development between students and openly queer individuals advanced in their careers.
Religion and Identity Politics Group
Participating Department(s): Anthropology, Classics, Education, History, Linguistics, Philosophy, Political Science, Religious Studies, Sociology
Contact: Hannah Kober, hannahko@stanford.edu
The Religion and Identity Politics group will meet twice a quarter to address intersections of religion and religious identity with politics and the public sphere. Through readings and invited speakers, we hope to offer a critical and interdisciplinary platform to discuss how religion and politics impact each other, with attention to minorities, race, gender, and class issues.
SERI (Stanford Engineering Research Introductions)
Participating Department(s): Aeronautics & Astronautics, Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Management Science & Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering
Contact: Sebastian Fernandez, msf321@stanford.edu
Many talented underrepresented minority undergraduate engineering students do not participate in activities that prepare them for an academic setting (e.g., research) which then results in even larger underrepresentation at the graduate level. SERI aims to introduce college underclassmen to the exciting nature of graduate engineering research at Stanford as well as to other underrepresented individuals including Masters, Ph.D., Postdoctoral, and Faculty minority scholars. The goal for these students is to show how a graduate engineering degree is a viable pathway upon graduation from college and how to prepare themselves to gain admission to selective engineering graduate programs in the United States. Through research seminars given from URM faculty/postdocs, graduate student panels, lab tours, and presentations from the VPGE office regarding funding and diversity initiatives, these students will gain insight at how to leverage their remaining undergraduate years to succeed in gaining admission to prestigious engineering graduate programs resulting in diversification.
Someone Like Me
Participating Department(s): All
Contact: Bradley Tolar, btolar1@stanford.edu
Website: http://www.surpas.org/someone-like-me
The Someone Like Me (SLM) mentoring program aims to provide an inclusive space for graduate students and postdocs to share their research and life experiences, as well as provide and receive professional training from peers. This program particularly welcomes members from underrepresented backgrounds, who often struggle to find relatable role models in academic settings. While many PhD programs hold structured advising events for early PhD students (year 1-3), advanced students often receive less structured professional guidance outside of their PhD labs. Additionally, the first couple years of postdoc life are often isolating, as postdocs arrive at Stanford at different times and lack a cohort community for support (unlike PhD students who start their program together). The program addresses these mentoring gaps by bringing postdocs and advanced graduate students in small groups (“cohorts”) and providing monthly themed events with discussions on topics chosen based on surveyed attendees’ interests.
Stanford BIPOC Mentorship Program
Participating Department(s): All
Contact: Preeti Srinivasan, preeti23@stanford.edu
This project aims to increase the diversity of the graduate applicant pipeline. Across Stanford, departments wish to see a greater increase in diversity – yet we know that graduate school (and its prerequisites) seem opaque unless one has a support system and a mental model of success. The literature shows that mentorship programs often fall victim to unconscious bias, so those with majority identities are more likely to be chosen as mentees. We hope to create a Stanford BIPOC Mentorship Program, where BIPOC undergraduates will have the ability to choose mentors from a repository of available Stanford graduate students.
Stanford Conference on Disability in Healthcare and Medicine
Participating Department(s): Bioengineering, Biomedical Informatics, Epidemiology and Clinical Research, Health Research & Policy, Medicine, Ophthalmology, Otolaryngology (Head and Neck Surgery), Pediatrics,Surgery
Contact: Zainub Dhanani, zdhanani@stanford.edu
Website: http://med.stanford.edu/smac/events/disability-conference/2020-disability-conference.html
This project works to improve awareness and provide understanding of the role of disability and ableism in medicine, and the impact it has on providers and patients alike.
Stanford Science Penpals
Participating Department(s): Aeronautics & Astronautics, Applied Physics, Biochemistry, Bioengineering, Biology, Biomedical Informatics, Biophysics, Cancer Biology, Chemical and Systems Biology, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Computer Science, Developmental Biology, Earth System Science, Electrical Engineering, Genetics,Geophysics, Immunology, Materials Science and Engineering, Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, Medical Scientist Training Program, Medicine, Microbiology & Immunology, Molecular & Cellular Physiology, Neurobiology, Neurology & Neurological Sciences, Neurosciences, Neurosurgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatrics, Physics, Statistics, Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine, Structural Biology
Contact: Stephen Bates, stephen6@stanford.edu
Website: https://www.stanfordsciencepenpals.com
Stanford Science Penpals was established by Stanford graduate students to: 1. Engage more Stanford members in science outreach by providing flexible and impactful outreach opportunities. 2. Provide science role models for 6th-12th graders in disadvantaged schools across the U.S. and expose them to scientific careers. Stanford graduate students and postdocs working in science-related fields write letters to students in different states. These letters introduce young students to academic and career options in sciences and inspire them to pursue their dreams. In turn, Stanford members hone their science communication and mentorship skills while learning about different cultures and perspectives.
Stanford Women Association of Physician Scientists (SWAPS) Career Development Initiative
Participating Department(s): Medicine
Contact: Olivia Zhou, oyzhou@stanford.edu
Website: https://med.stanford.edu/mstp/SWAPShomepage.html
The Stanford Women Association of Physician-Scientists (SWAPS) was founded in direct response to student feedback that our community needed an organization to provide structured mentorship, camaraderie, and education surrounding issues that women face in pursuing physician scientist careers. This is achieved through the establishment of 1. quarterly networking events with faculty and residents, 2. career development workshops and 3. formation and funding of small mentorship families composed of Stanford MSTP students at each stage of training and a female physician-scientist faculty member. We hope SWAPS advances diversity by enriching the experiences of women as we launch into physician-scientist roles.
Stanford Women in Math Mentoring (SWIMM)
Participating Department(s): Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics
Contact: Mackenzie Simper, msimper@stanford.edu
Website: http://swimm.stanford.edu/
SWIMM’s goal is to reduce the gender gap in the mathematical sciences through mentoring and community events. Interested undergraduates are paired with graduate mentors from mathematics, statistics, and ICME. Through their mentor, participants gain access to advice about academic and career possibilities from someone personally invested in their success. Mentors provide encouragement and talk to their mentees about experiences unique to the math community. Program-wide events create a sense of community across multiple departments, increase the visibility of underrepresented groups in math, and give undergraduates a chance to interact with graduate students and faculty in an informal setting.
Students of Color in Political Science (SCPS).
Participating Department(s): Political Science
Contact: Cesar Vargas Nunez, cdvargas@stanford.edu
This project seeks to create connections between students-of-color at different levels in the department of political science. In its initial 'lunch seminar series,' this project will connect undergraduate and graduate students-of-color to facilitate conversations about navigating academia and applying to graduate school. This program intends to foster conversations between students-of-color that can help undergraduate students navigate college and succeed in applying to graduate school.
The 6th Annual Stanford Minorities and Philosophy Conference
Participating Department(s): African Studies, Comparative Literature, East Asian Languages and Cultures, East Asian Studies, Education, Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, Mathematics, Philosophy, Political Science, Public Policy, Sociology, Symbolic Systems
Contact: Sally Tilton, stilto01@stanford.edu
The goal of this project is to highlight and critically engage with questions of what philosophy can be and what philosophers can do considering questions involving diversity that have been traditionally overlooked at both the professional level and within the subject matter of philosophy. This conference provides graduate students with an opportunity to learn from and interact with a diverse group of faculties from various institutions in philosophy of feminism, philosophy of race, Latin American philosophy, and Eastern philosophy. It also provides an opportunity for the diverse group of undergraduate philosophy majors to hear others’ experiences pursuing careers in philosophy.
The Critical Orientations to Race and Ethnicity (CORE) Workshop
Participating Department(s): African Studies, Anthropology, Art & Art History, Biology, Classics, Communication, Comparative Literature, Comparative Medicine, East Asian Languages and Cultures, East Asian Studies, Economics, Education, Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, English, Epidemiology and Clinical Research, French and Italian, Genetics, German Studies, Health Research & Policy, History, Iberian & Latin American Cultures, Immunology, Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, International Policy Studies, Latin American Studies, Law, Linguistics, Master of Liberal Arts, Medicine, Modern Thought and Literature, Music, Neurobiology, Neurology & Neurological Sciences, Neurosciences, Neurosurgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology ,Philosophy, Political Science, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Psychology, Public Policy, Religious Studies, Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, Slavic Languages and Literature, Sociology, Stanford Global Studies, Statistics, Theater and Performance Studies
Contact: Vannessa Velez, vvelez07@stanford.edu
The CORE Workshop will bring together graduate students across disciplines, from history to medicine, to discuss recent scholarship on race and ethnicity. The workshop aims to host three types of events: writing workshops, reading groups, and symposiums. Taken together these events will strengthen Stanford’s growing network of scholars dedicated to studying race and ethnicity and serve as a space for broader campus discussions on race, ethnicity, and inequality.
The Equity Lab
Participating Department(s): All
Contact: Ayinwi Muma, ayinwi@stanford.edu
The Equity Lab is a collaborative effort to end institutional racism and prejudice at the "local level" - i.e. within our labs, working groups, departments, and schools. Specifically, we identify, create and share small, everyday practices that grad students and faculty can implement now to create a more equitable and diverse academic community. By creating a online/offline space for experimenting, creating, and learning together across typically siloed academic communities at Stanford, we hope to bring about a ground-up culture change. We hope to push ourselves and lab communities from a status quo of institutional injustice to institutional equity.
UnEarthing the Hidden Curriculum
Participating Department(s): Geological Sciences
Contact: Nicole Travis, ntravis@stanford.edu
The UnEarthing the Hidden Curriculum project aims to gather the “hidden curriculum” learned outside the classroom that aids students in their Geoscience careers, with the ultimate goal of making this information accessible to all students. Students from diverse backgrounds are often at a disadvantage when it comes to navigating a career in Geoscience when not all the information needed to be successful is taught in the standard classroom setting. This unofficial yet critical information, called the “hidden curriculum,” is important to the success of prospective geoscientists and needs to be equitably accessed. Hidden curricula encompasses many things, like knowing that office hours aren’t just for if you are struggling, or learning that typical geoscience graduate students are paid a stipend. We plan to survey graduate students and professors in the geosciences to crowdsource hidden curriculum, disseminate information in classrooms, and make the information broadly available online through social media.
WiAA Faculty Lunches
Participating Department(s): Aeronautics & Astronautics, Bioengineering, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering
Contact: Efaine Chang, efaine@stanford.edu
The Women in AeroAstro group has historically put together small group faculty lunches for our members to learn more about potential career paths, research interests and to hear about the journeys of our distinguished faculty throughout the school of engineering. The purpose of these lunches is to foster a safe and inclusive environment to encourage members to be more vocal about any concerns or questions they may have as an up-and-coming professing in the field of engineering for both industry and academia alike. Information is typically advertised through our listserv which is predominantly graduate students in the SoE.
Women in Earth Science
Participating Department(s): Computational Geosciences, Earth System Science, Earth Systems Program, Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, Energy Resources, Engineering, Geological Sciences, Geophysics
Contact: Courtney Payne, cmpayne@stanford.edu
Website: https://wes.stanford.edu/
We aim to promote gender diversity in scientific fields of study related to the Earth, empower women in earth science at Stanford, build networks within and outside of Stanford, and cultivate a safe, supportive community across the School of Earth. Our target audience is current Stanford undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows.
Writer's Black
Participating Department(s): All
Contact: Danielle Greene, dmgreene@stanford.edu
Writer’s Black is a student group aiming to foster intellectual community amongst graduate students from across the African Diaspora through opportunities to engage in writing groups/workshops. Given that Black/African American students are only 2% of the graduate student population and there are few graduate level AAAS or Black Studies courses offered, Writer’s Black will provide an space for graduate students to come together to share ideas, commune across departments, give and receive critical feedback, support each other’s academic journeys, and write in community. This group is interdisciplinary by nature and students from all departments and schools are encouraged to participate.