Diversity & Inclusion

The Scheck Research Group at Tufts is committed to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the academic community, particularly within STEM fields. Our laboratory welcomes students and researchers from all backgrounds, and we believe that a diverse team inspires the best science. We are committed to fostering a welcoming lab environment because we know that every individual brings a distinct set of experiences, preferences, knowledge, ideas, and worldviews that ultimately enrich our scientific endeavor.

Our group has found ‘The danger of a single story’, a TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, to be particularly moving, insightful, and eye-opening. One of our favorite quotes (of many) is: “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.”

We strive to build a lab that is
full of many different stories.

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We strive to build a lab that is full of many different stories.

We recognize that STEM disciplines and, more broadly, academia have a troubling history of systemic exclusion and inequality that continue to persist to this day. We—both individually and as a community—must work harder to condemn racism and racially motivated violence, and to affirm our commitment to working towards greater equity and racial justice through our teaching, research and civic engagement. These goals will not happen without the full engagement of the scientific community. To ensure that our lab is engaged in these critical conversations, we set aside time during group meetings once a month for discussions centered around diversity, equity and inclusion. We are committed to educate ourselves on these important issues and to identify ways to lead change in our own lab, our department, and within the Tufts community.

Members of our lab have also found the following anti-racism resources to be particularly helpful and interesting:

Here are some additional resources on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiatives within the scientific and academic communities:

  • Equity and Inclusion in the Chemical Sciences Requires Actions not Just Words J. Am. Chem. Soc.2020, 142, 26, 11317–11318 This Editorial was also published in ACS Central Science.
  • A Diverse View of Science to Catalyse Change J. Am. Chem. Soc.2020, 142, 34, 14393–14396 This editorial was published across various Publishers.
  • What Comes Next? Simple Practices to Improve Diversity in Science ACS Cent. Sci.2020, 6, 8, 1231–1240
  • Celebrating Women in Organic Chemistry Org. Lett.2020, 22, 4, 1227–1230. This Editorial was also published in JACS, Journal of Organic Chemistry, and Organic Process Research & Development.
  • Toward Intentional Diversity, Equity, and Respect in Chemistry Research and Practice J. Chem. Educ.2020, 97, 8, 2041–2044