NASC Colloquium: Mitigating Bias in the STEM Community: Strategies and Best Practices

Johnna Frierson, Assistant Dean of Graduate Postdoctoral Diversity & Inclusion, Duke University School of Medicine, will present. While racial and ethnic minorities comprise one-third of the U.S. population, they represent only 10% of life science PhDs—and just 5% of tenure-track faculty in the biological sciences. Women earn more than half of PhD degrees in biomedical sciences, yet women comprise only 38 percent of full-time faculty and 22 percent of tenured faculty. In order to effectively address these disparities and enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion within our academic communities we must increase our awareness of the ways in which systemic and individual bias create barriers to diversity in science and utilize thoughtful approaches to mitigate or eliminate this bias. The goal of this presentation will be to define pertinent terminology and share best practices to create a more inclusive and robust scientific community.