Tag Archives: Community

Community, December 2018, Events for Students

Coffee, Conversation & Intersectionality

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Guest Post by Alyssa DiLeo (Neuro)

If you’ve listened to Beyonce’s self-titled 2014 album, you’ll recognize the definition of a feminist as a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. What this definition misses is the importance of intersectionality, a framework that attempts to identify the intersecting social factors, like race, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, class, and education, that impact marginalized populations. At GWiSE’s November Coffee & Conversation, we welcomed PhD student Molly Hodul, who attended a Harvard event addressing Intersectionality in STEM and discussed what she learned and how to an active ally in the fight for social justice.

Historically, feminism has mainly served white women who centered and upheld their own voices instead of prioritizing experiences of all women and women identifying populations. This can most easily be seen in the history of voting rights in the US. Non-white men and freed male salves were “allowed” to vote in 1870 through the 15th amendment, but Jim Crow and voter suppression laws kept many from exercising their right. The 19th amendment in 1920 gave the right to vote to women, but similar restrictions applied to poor or non-white women. Native Americans weren’t allowed to vote and keep their tribal affiliation until 1924. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the poll tax was prohibited and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 protected voting rights for racial minorities. Here, it’s simple to see how race, gender, and tribal association affected marginalized groups, both separately and together.

Kimberle Crenshaw first coined the term “intersectionality” in 1989 in her paper for the University of Chicago Legal Forum, but many black activists had advocated for intersectional principles. Sojourner Truth made parallels between her abilities and those of men in her speech to the Women’s Convention in Ohio in 1851. Audre Lorde said in a 1981 speech “ I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color remains chained. Nor is anyone of you.”

Around the same time, Shirley Malcom conducted the Double Bind study that showed that discrimination of minority women shifted from race based to gender based as they moved into post college training or graduate school. Over 40 years later, women of color are facing more subtle obstacles and microagressions in academia. Overt racist and sexist laws may not be in place anymore, but academic institutions can make statements through their action or inaction in the face of discrimination. Historically, science has also been used to uphold patriarchal white supremacy, something we’re still seeing as the alt right co-opt genetic studies for their agenda, which causes mistrust among minority populations. The failure of science to credit and teach the work of underrepresented minorities in science also adds to this problem.

So, what can scientists and scientific institutions do to actively be an ally for social justice? For one, we can acknowledge our own biases; Harvard has some great implicit bias tests here. When we are real about our bias, we can begin to unlearn these automatic associations we make about groups of people. Intersectionality must focus on the most vulnerable and others must work to uplift and amplify their voices. Most importantly, we, and by “we” I mean white people, must go into our communities and teach these intersectional principles because that is where the work needs to be done. As the holidays approach, find the courage to speak up to that “old fashioned” grandparent or racist uncle. Be a scientist and fight ignorance with facts.

If you’re interested in getting involved with GWiSE, follow us on Twitter @TuftsGWiSE, like us on Facebook, or email us at tuftsbostongwise@tufts.edu.

articles, Community, December 2018, Events for Students, Mentoring & Outreach

New Initiative on Campus Seeks to Tackle Mental Health Issues among Grad Students

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For a long time, it was a generally accepted trope in academia that graduate students must endure harsh conditions, intellectual and emotional, before they are granted their PhD degrees. This is supposedly meant to build character, and weed out those who are not fit for the rigor and stress one encounters in academic research – a trial by fire of sorts. The ones who survive these conditions and emerge victorious, also internalize such hazing and come to think of it as just the regular pressure of working in academia.

It is therefore not surprising that the mental health of graduate students have not been discussed very much except in the recent years. While it has long been a subject of humor, such as PhD Comics and memes such as Shit Academics Say, it is only recently that the severity of the problem has been brought to light. In 2013, a series of articles regarding graduate students’ mental health was published on the GradHacker blog. In a guest post, Nash Turley, then a PhD candidate in evolutionary ecology at University of Toronto, looked at studies focusing on the major mental health issues graduate students face – anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, going as far back as 1997, and deduced that “mental health issues are the biggest barriers to success among graduate students.”

Earlier this year, a study published in the journal Nature Biotechnology by , described the mental health issues among graduate students as a “crisis”, highlighting the prevalence of anxiety and depression. After surveying 2,279 graduate students representing 26 countries and 234 institutions, the study found that graduate students are six times more likely to suffer from moderate-to-severe depression compared to the general population. The study also found that female, trans and gender-non conforming (GNC) students were significantly more likely to experience anxiety and depression than their cis male counterparts. Among the students with anxiety and depression, more than half did not felt valued by their mentors and half did not agree that mentors provided emotional support (only a third said yes). The study proposed some short term solutions, such as providing trainings to faculty and administrators by mental health professionals, similar to the NIH’s “train the trainers” program. For a longer term solution, the authors advocated for “a shift of the academic culture to eliminate the stigma and to ensure that students are not reluctant to communicate openly with PIs.” The notion of suffering has been internalized by graduate students to the point that in a latest study conducted among five hundred economics graduate students across eight institutions, the students who scored worse than average on a mental-health assessment tended to think that their mental health was better than average; among those who reported having suicidal thoughts, 26% assumed that their psychological well-being was better than the norm. In both studies, the major driver of such mental health issues seemed to be a combination of financial worries and the professional pressure to publish, both of which are products of the tight budget climate and the “publish or perish” nature that academia has recently taken on.

Alyssa DiLeo, a second-year graduate student in the Neuroscience program, is well aware of mental health issues graduate students face; she has faced them personally as well. “Graduate school is a hard transition for many people and even more difficult when they don’t have a support system. Mental health issues are also highly prevalent in graduate students. Levecque et al. published a study in May of 2017 reporting one in two PhD students experience psychological distress and 1/3 of graduate students are at risk for a psychiatric disorder. An online survey of graduate students in a recent March 2018 study by Evans et al. reported that graduate students are more than six times as likely to experience depression and anxiety compared to the general population. After taking a few years off before entering graduate school, I’ve definitely found myself struggling to transition from an employee to a graduate student and was finding it hard to find the right support.” She became aware of an initiative called Resources for Easing Friction and Stress (REFS) at MIT while attending a Graduate Women in Science & Engineering (GWiSE) event at Harvard, and was inspired to start a REFS program here at Sackler called sREFS (sackler Resources for Easing Friction and Stress).

The goal of the sREFS initiative is “to provide an easily accessible outlet for graduate students to talk about conflicts, issues, or stressors in their lab or personal life.” Currently, there are few options that Sackler students can peruse if they are having mental health issues – the Wellness Center which puts out events for the whole TUSM community, the Student Advisory Council of the Wellness center (which just got a Sackler rep on their board), or their friends and other graduate students at certain social events. Mentoring circles, another peer-based support system started by Sackler students and alumni for networking and career development, could be another option. However, Alyssa noted that while Mentoring Circles provided “a great networking resource with experienced mentors”, “sREFS aims to create a more one on one private conversation between students about mental health in graduate school.” This initiative also hopes to serve as the first contact for first year students who may have questions about the school or its programs, courses, etc. Additionally, sREFS will be trained on mediation and conflict management skills that may prove valuable in their own labs or workplaces post-graduation.

The sREFS initiative is a pilot program, proposed by Alyssa in conjunction with Sharon Snaggs from the Wellness Center, and has gained the support of the Dean’s Office and the Graduate Student Council. The process to become a sREF involves an 8-hour training spread out over 8 weeks, and is modeled after MIT’s REFS program. While the MIT program offers a certification after 40 hours of training provided by professionals, the sREFS initiative has a smaller scope and is more flexible given the student body size and available resources at Sackler. Once trained, sREFS will be expected to hold office hours for one-on-one conversations, and sREFS are also mandatory reporters and are liable to report any cases of harassment or similar incidents to the administration. At the inaugural meeting on Thursday, Nov 29, Alyssa mentioned that the only exclusionary criterion for becoming a sREF is enrollment as a PhD student, since continuity and consistency are important for this initiative to succeed. The sREFS will be allowed to keep anonymized and confidential notes only after getting consent from those who are speaking with them. These notes may also help identify the common issues prevalent among Sackler graduate students and help sREFS recommend programs to administration to tackle such issues. In case of any conflict of interest, sREFS may recuse themselves from certain cases; Alyssa would like to see at least one graduate student from each program volunteer as sREFS to avoid such conflicts. Given that this role incurs emotional stress on the volunteers, sREFS can also take time off from the initiative.

Interested students are asked to email Alyssa at Alyssa.DiLeo@tufts.edu to receive an application packet. The application deadline is Jan 15, but is also flexible since the initiative would like to be as inclusionary as possible. The sREFS initiative is also looking for volunteers to fill in positions on the executive board to help with logistics and planning. Unsurprisingly, all the current volunteers are female, as emotional labor most often falls on women in this patriarchy, and it would be great to see the male graduate students do their part as well in this timely, community-based initiative.

articles, Mentoring & Outreach, October 2018

Coffee & Conversation with Dr. Laverne Melón

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Written by Alyssa DeLeoNEUR. Coffee & Conversation is a series of informal chats with women faculty on campus, hosted by Tufts GWiSE. 

Our last Coffee & Conversation of the year featured Dr. Laverne Melón, a post-doctoral fellow in the Maguire lab and a TEACRS scholar. She will joining Wesleyan University as a faculty professor in neuroscience in the Fall. Laverne was born in Trinidad and moved to New York when she was 10 years old. In high school, Laverne helped establish the science club, which she insists was the most poppin’ after school extracurricular at the time, and she knew she wanted to work in research before even knowing what that was. The science club gave her and her peers the chance to support each other in the search for research experiences and ultimately lead her to volunteer in a cancer genetics lab at Columbia University. As she reflects on her first experience in science, she also acknowledges that it was also her first exposure to the sexism and racism that exists in scientific institutions. It’s difficult to turn a blind eye to these situations when all you want to do is put your head down and do the work in front of you. But, she didn’t let this taint her passion for the field and her experiences spoke to her resilience, which would be noted by several scientists later in her career.

Laverne went on to earn a BA in neuroscience at Middlebury College, a MS in Behavioral Neuroscience at Binghamton, and a PhD in Addiction Neuroscience at IUPUI after her lab at Binghamton moved. She lost a Binghamton fellowship in the move and had to teach at IUPUI, which she found frustrating as anyone does when they’re forced to do something. However, Laverne began to enjoy the process and her career path in academia became increasing clear. Laverne has been a post-doc in Jamie Maguire’s lab for the last 4 ½ years studying effects of stress on reproductive health and the role of the GABAergic system in alcohol addiction. As she moved into her post-doctoral years, she was really fueled by a research question which she presented to Jamie along with some data to score her current position. Now, she’s fielding multiple offers for faculty positions and learning to navigate this new part of her career.

As always, we chatted about how early life experiences brought our guests to their current positions, how crucial the role of mentors played in this trajectory, and the vital importance of self-advocacy. But, we kept coming back to this idea of producing good, reproducible science and how that is only possible if the field really cared about the people behind the data. It’s no secret that scientific institutions have not been the best advocates for the health of their workforce. Levecque et al. published a study in May of 2017 reporting one in two PhD students experience psychological distress and 1/3 of graduate students are at risk for a psychiatric disorder. An online survey of graduate students in a recent March 2018 study by Evans et al. reports graduate students are more than six times as likely to experience depression and anxiety compared to the general population. SIX times! It’s exceeding clear that health of scientists across fields and levels are struggling in this environment. This begins by hiring scientists that are more than a good researcher, but are inspired teachers, passionate mentors, and expert managers who are in touch the health of their lab.

As Laverne is beginning the next chapter of her career, she’s considering taking on an administrative position as a director of inclusion and diversity in addition to her faculty appointment. She intends to use her status to implement institutional changes to allow for better science through caring, supporting, and mentoring the next generation of scientists. When Laverne started to work in science, she admitted she tried to assimilate as much as possible, but it gets exhausting. It’s difficult to integrate into establishments and systems that have been hostile to the existence of women and minorities in science while trying to stick it out until you can get to a position to make changes. She’s been able to tap into her mentoring network over the years for support and instructed us to be vulnerable in our insecurities to allow these organic mentorships to grow.

If you’re interested in getting involved with GWiSE, follow us on Twitter @TuftsGWiSE, like us on Facebook, or email us at tuftsbostongwise@tufts.edu. Our next Coffee & Conversation is October 19th, 2018 at 5PM in Jaharis 913.

articles, Community, Events for Students, September 2018

Career development initiatives, curriculum design, & building networks discussed at Sackler Community Meeting

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This past June, around seventy-five graduate students and faculty members joined Dean Dan Jay and Associate Dean Dan Volchok in the DeBlois Auditorium to reflect on the previous year’s progress and endeavors at the Sacker School. Various community leaders briefly presented on topics that reflect the Deans’ new mission of training to career excellence followed by open discussion between all attendees. Following the larger meeting, attendees continued to engage in these topics in smaller groups over lunch to continue pushing these goals forward in the coming year.

Jay opened the meeting by reviewing the results of career development “trial balloons” that the new administration worked towards last year. He celebrated the high interest and positive reactions from trainees for the new short courses, including Introduction to Drug Development (50 attendees), Navigating the Corporate Environment (22 attendees), and the R Programming Workshop (34 attendees). Building on this positive momentum, additional short courses will be offered in the coming year. A ‘science storytelling’ workshop and an entrepreneurship short course have been developed for the fall semester, with a teaching short course planned for the spring. There are also plans to develop the Introduction to Drug Development course into an official Sackler-wide elective for the spring semester. In addition, two career counseling workshops by Sarah Cardozo Duncan will again be offered in the 2018-2019 for students and post-docs who are interested in industry-related careers.

Not all career development endeavours in Sackler last year had such immediate success, however. The initiative to place students who have completed Year 1, Year 2, or their thesis requirements in summer industry internships encountered several difficulties, including reluctance from potential partner companies. That reluctance mainly stemmed from aversion to such a short internship time period (3 months), as several companies in conversation with Sackler administration requested at least a 6-month full-time commitment from students. Meeting attendees generally agreed that this length of time would be difficult for both PIs and students to commit to without serious disruption to research progress. However, there was at least one successful internship negotiation and placement, suggesting that the program may still be developed but not in as broad a manner as originally intended. A case-by-case determination was concluded to be the best approach moving forward, with the requirement for extensive conversations and mutual agreement between student, PI, and hosting company on timeline and degree of commitment being emphasized.

In reiterating his desire to see Sackler become a leader in career training for biomedical graduate students, Jay described his aspiration to develop a tuition-bearing, two-year master’s program in Biomedical Leadership. Matriculating students would have the opportunity to train for various career tracks related to biomedical research, and their curriculum would include current and future career development short courses or electives offered within Sackler. During the group-wide discussion session, the possibility of offering a 4+1-style master’s program in collaboration with the undergraduate branch of Tufts University was put forward and positively received.

Another main topic of the community meeting was the state of graduate research training at Sackler. Opening discussions involved debating the merits of switching from the current program-specific curriculum design to a single core curriculum that all first-year graduate trainees–regardless of program–would take. Across programs, students generally were opposed to a core curriculum in regards to scientific content, emphasizing that most seek a graduate education specifically to specialize in a particular area. They did support the suggestion that any core courses in scientific content should be ‘nanocourses’, instead of full required or elective courses. In contrast, developing a skills-focused core curriculum that included classes such as research methods, quantitative biology & bioinformatics, and statistics seemed to have wide support from both students and faculty.  In addition to curriculum content, the possibility of expanding the MERGE (Medically-Oriented Research in Graduate Education) beyond the Immunology and Molecular Microbiology programs was discussed. The MERGE program trains participants in clinical aspects of their research area during the summer prior to their first graduate year at Sackler. During this time, they are also paired with a clinical mentor who provides them direct contact with patients and clinicians and serves as a thesis committee member during their research training. Given the proximity of Tufts Medical Center, it was advocated for the Sackler School to take advantage of the opportunity to give more PhD students training in regards to the clinical impact of their research. Genetics and Neuroscience were considered as programs which MERGE could expand to, but no specific plans for that expansion were discussed.

Strengthening the Sackler community was also a significant theme of the meeting. During a discussion about building diversity and inclusion at Sackler, students expressed the need for more structured support from the school. They expressed that while student-led initiatives such as SPINES (Students Promoting Inclusive Excellence at Sackler) provide excellent resources and opportunities for underrepresented minority (URM) students, the responsibility of delivering such support should not fall so heavily on the trainees themselves. Through this discussion, it was emphasized that bringing more URM junior faculty–from Tufts or other institutions–to speak at graduate seminars could help build networks for students to rely on. In addition, hosting a greater number of Sackler-wide events during the year, especially during recruitment, could foster a greater sense of community and provide more school-directed opportunities for URM individuals to connect across programs. Another discussion about community building focused on developing stronger alumni networks. The career development short courses were one way in which the Dean’s Office started on this initiative already. Various alumni contributed their expertise and their time to the courses’ development and operation, which was key to their success; this arrangement also provided a structured environment in which students could take the opportunity to develop professional connections with alumni in their career areas of interest. Given the positive outcomes from this year using this approach, there are plans to build on this foundation for similar endeavours in the future. Dean Jay also discussed his efforts over the last year in reaching out to Sackler alumni for fundraising, which he had done in collaboration with Roxanne Beal from the School of Medicine’s Office of Advancement and Alumni Relations. To broaden this effort, faculty were encouraged to reach out to their former trainees, and the group supported the idea of current students reaching out to alumni for an annual fund.

Overall, the morning and lunchtime discussions provided great insight into the past year’s success as well as highlighted what aspects of graduate training at Sackler still need to be strengthened, and the dialogue between students, faculty, and staff generated actionable items for the administration to take on in the coming academic year.

articles, Community, September 2017

Greentown Labs is at the Forefront Boston’s Cleantech Industry

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In the wake of hurricanes Harvey and Irma, I feel compelled to understand what cleantech strategies are currently available to tackle climate change. California’s cleantech industry was an obvious thought that came to mind. Over the past decade, California’s institutions and companies have been leaders in the U.S. market for producing clean energy and biodegradable materials. This past summer, the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) in the Bay Area received federal funding for innovation in biofuels and bioproducts. Since its inception, JBEI has yielded several startups that are committed to engineering microbes and crops to convert sugars into high-value renewable fuels. But where does Massachusetts stand in the cleantech industry? Fortunately, we’re not too far behind.

The nation’s largest cleantech startup incubator actually exists right here in Massachusetts. The Somerville incubator Greentown Labs hosts more than 100 startup companies and has raised over $200 million in investor funding since its founding. There is an emphasis on solar, wind, and wastewater technology in this incubator that is very unique. For example, the startup WrightGrid has developed a single solar-panel-based charger for robust cell phone charging in rural areas. Furthermore, SolChroma has developed full-color reflective digital billboards that reduce light pollution and energy costs in big cities. The company Sistine Solar can come to your home and design personalized solar panels in all aesthetic shapes and colors, enticing homeowners to switch to solar energy. One company that piqued my interest was Spyce, a startup intersecting food and technology. The company has developed a robotic kitchen that can serve meals with fresh ingredients in less than five minutes. The robotic kitchen is compact and reduces the amount of space and manpower that is typically needed at restaurants to prepare meals.

For the global market, Greentown Labs hosts Promethean Power Systems, a company that manufacturers rural refrigeration systems in off-grid and partially electrified areas of developing countries. In the same vein, Ivys Energy Solutions provides renewable hydrogen fuel cells to the international market. For the agrigulture sector, Raptor Maps fuses drone-based imaging technology to detect pest and weed infestation so to reduce water usage and nutrient management. Multisensor Scientific has also developed imaging capabilities to visualize and quantify in real-time methane leaks from natural gas infrastructures, thus reducing harmful methane emissions that are driving climate change. In the materials sector, Alkemy Environmental recycles industrial waste into lightweight concrete. For water management, Aquafresco is reinventing how we do laundry through a wastewater recycling invention that reduces the amount of water we use by 95%

Just a week ago, Tufts University collaborated with Greentown Labs to support cleantech solutions. The agreement between the parties will allow them to share their expertise, resources, and networks. The collaboration is also exciting because it allows for startups run by Tufts affiliates to directly become members of Greentown Labs. Currently Greentown Labs is tight on space but they are opening up a new building in Somerville next month to host more startups. The expansion of Greentown Labs is very promising for the future of cleantech in the Boston area. Just like Kendall is synonymous with biotech, in the next few years Somerville will be synonymous with yuppies, hipsters, and, perhaps, cleantech.

References:

http://www.xconomy.com/san-diego/2017/06/19/synthetic-genomics-breakthrough-algae-produces-twice-as-much-oil/#

 

https://now.tufts.edu/news-releases/tufts-university-collaborates-somervilles-greentown-labs-support-inventive-clean

 

https://www.wheretraveler.com/boston/eat/boston-food-tech-future-just-got-delicious

 

https://www.greentownlabs.com/about/

 

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2017/07/17/doe-renews-jbei-funding/

Community, Events for Students, May 2017, Mentoring & Outreach

Introducing SPINES

As scientists who come from underrepresented backgrounds, we have had many informal discussions about the climate at Sackler and advocating for diversity in the graduate programs at Sackler. While Tufts Sackler supports various pipeline initiatives (PREP, P2P, BDBS) we feel that it does not have mechanisms in place that intentionally create a space for minority scientists who are training at Sacker. We met in March and had an open discussion about our interests relevant to the group, the immediate needs of the community, and long term goals.

Mission:
Programs aimed at diversifying the STEM academy have successfully increased recruitment of undergraduate and graduate students from groups traditionally underrepresented in careers in the sciences. An emphasis on recruitment may help to update the narrow image of what a scientist looks like, but additional action is needed to evolve the full picture of who scientists are. We are Scientists Promoting INclusive Excellence at Sackler (SPINES).

Inclusive excellence is a model first proposed by the American Academy for Colleges and Universities and recognizes that efforts of diversity can result in meaningful, measurable improvements in the excellence of an institution when that institution creates an environment that welcomes the cultural diversity of those included. For the STEM academy to benefit from a diversity of contributors, the culture and atmosphere of the STEM academy must update to include that of the new participants. It is this dissonance that may be responsible for the ever discussed “leaky pipeline” or disappearance of diverse bodies from the STEM career path as their career trajectory progresses. As problematic as the “pipeline” analogy is (we can unpack that for days), anyone concerned with progress in the sciences should recognize that this progress requires sustained conversations around social justice issues and retention of minority scientists.

SPINES believes we can help each other achieve inclusive excellence in the sciences by building a community of scientists at Sackler who recognize and celebrate each other’s diversity of ability, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious affiliation and gender identity. We formally describe our mission below, but loosely we want to build spaces where we feel free to discuss all aspects of our lives as developing scientists. We will offer each other support even if this means giving technical advice as someone works through frustrating equipment errors in the lab or offering a shoulder to lean on as one struggles with the pain and helpless feeling from viewing the latest videotaped example of injustice on the nightly news.

Below we list some short-term goals for the group; however, we would like to highlight that our organizational model relies on horizontal leadership and community-based decision-making. We recognize that the needs and priorities of a community can change over time and therefore we encourage all members to take active roles in developing and implementing their ideas with the knowledge that the entire group will support them.

Short-term goals
• Enhance the diversity of speakers that are invited to give program seminar talks
• Learn about active bystander, anti-oppression, intersectionality, and privilege via reading books, articles, and invited  speakers
• Connect incoming underrepresented graduate students with a peer mentor
• Build professional connections with biotech/industry to address the lack of diversity in these sectors
• Provide networking opportunities

Our priority is to establish a welcoming community at Sackler where people of all backgrounds and identities feel nurtured and supported in achieving their scientific, personal, and intellectual goals.

Look out for our upcoming events and for more information see: https://tuftsspines.wixsite.com/tuftsspines

Written by: Camila Barrios-Camacho, Chris Bartolome, Janel Cabrera, Laverne Melón, and Vanessa Yanez

arts & culture, Community, Events for Students, September 2016

Feature: Humans of Sackler

Do you have fun and interesting hobbies?  Have you traveled to fascinating places?  Held unusual and challenging jobs?  Do you use cutting-edge technology to conduct biomedical research of earth-shattering importance?  Are you a human?  If you answered “yes” to any of these, you could be the next Human of Sackler!

Humans of Sackler is a monthly blog featuring individual Sackler students’ firsthand accounts of their path to the Graduate Biomedical program.  Inspired by Brandon Stanton’s “Humans of New York” blog, the aims of this project are to highlight the Sackler School’s rich diversity of backgrounds, interests, and personalities, and to engage with the public by revealing the human side of scientists.

If you are interested in contributing to or nominating someone for the Humans of Sackler blog, contact Andrew Hooper (andrew.hooper@tufts.edu, Subject: Humans of Sackler) to set up a brief interview at your convenience.  We look forward to hearing your story!

Read the first issue here: Humans of Sackler, 25 July 2016

April 2016, articles, Community

Implicit Bias: A Conscious Discussion of Unconscious Actions

It is no secret that unconscious biases penetrate various realms of society; from hiring decisions (Lebowitz, 2015) to medical care (Blair, Steiner, and Havranek, 2011) and even foul calls in the NBA (Schwarz, 2007).

But what about implicit bias in our everyday lives? Does it really play a role in who we form relationships with, or the way we interact with others, or even the way we perceive a stranger?

Implicit bias refers to attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions and decisions in an unconscious manner, according to the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, which publishes an annual Implicit Bias Review . Unlike explicit bias, which reflects the attitudes or beliefs that one endorses at a conscious level, implicit bias is judgment and/or behavior that results from subtle cognitive processes that often operate at a level below conscious awareness and without intentional control.

Recent claims of overt and covert discrimination on college campuses and in policing raise the question: How does someone’s unconscious reaction to people of a different race, religion or sexuality influence their judgment and behavior? Psychologists and social scientists working within this field do not have a concise answer to explain how implicit bias manifests in everyday life, as it is hard to rule out alternative explanations.
In other words, implicit bias can and does happen, but it is complicated to prove.

“Some biases seem obviously pilogowrong, like treating equally qualified people differently when hiring or promoting,” said Calvin Lai, director of research for Harvard’s Project Implicit. “Every day biases are hard to wrap our heads around because they’re so much more personal, and you can point to other reasons.”

Similarly, structural factors beyond your control might come into play. If most of your friends look like you, or you tend to date people of the same race as you, it could largely be just a reflection of the demographics in your community.

However, research shows that those relationships, along with the interactions and experiences that come from them, are key contributors of implicit biases. These biases begin forming at a young age and are easily reinforced into adulthood through social settings and mass media.

“When you think backwards, what you think is normal is really cultural pressure that pushes you into bias, implicit and conscious,” said sociologist Charles Gallagher, chairman of the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at LaSalle University in Philadelphia.

Hanging out with friends that look like you isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if they’re nice people! However, research suggests that implicit biases and stereotypes, both positive and negative, are maintained through persistent lack of contact with others beyond your “in-group,” that is people who share certain characteristics.

The good news? We are not helpless to combat implicit bias. It can be mitigated through intervention strategies, starting with recognizing where it might exist in your life and seeking exposure to people and experiences beyond your regular circles.
Psychologists and social scientist who study implicit bias are working to gather more data with the goal of making people more aware of their unconscious decision-making and its consequences.
Harvard’s Project Implicit features a battery of “implicit association tests” where participants can measure levels of implicit bias around certain topics based on the strength of associations between concepts and evaluations.

“The goal of the organization is to educate the public about hidden biases and to provide a ‘virtual laboratory’ for collecting data on the Internet.”

If you’re interested in measuring your levels of implicit bias (almost everyone displays bias in some way, according to the experts!), here are a few tests you can take:
Understanding Prejudice: Implicit Association

Test Look Different: Bias Cleanse

 

References
2015 State of the Science: Implicit Bias Review. (2015). Retrieved from; http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/my-product/2015-state-of-the-science-implicit-bias-review/
Blair, I. V., Steiner, J. F., & Havranek, E. P. (2011). Unconscious (Implicit) Bias and Health Disparities: Where Do We Go from Here? The Permanente Journal, 15(2), 71–78.
Grinberg, E. (2015). 4 ways you might display hidden bias every day – CNN.com. Retrieved from; http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/24/living/implicit-bias-tests-feat/
Lebowitz, S., Jul. 17, 2015, 9, 022, & 2. (2015). 3 unconscious biases that affect whether you get hired. Retrieved from; http://www.businessinsider.com/unconscious-biases-in-hiring-decisions-2015-7
Schwarz, A. (2007, May 2). Study of N.B.A. Sees Racial Bias in Calling Fouls. The New York Times. Retrieved from; http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/sports/basketball/02refs.html