Summer STEM Series: Promoting Equity and Inclusion in Labs and Classrooms

This session is part of the Equity and inclusion in action: Summer STEM series. You can find out more about this series here.

Are you faculty, staff, post-doc or a graduate student leading an EDI initiative in the STEM field? This summer, join our virtual, informal, themed, community-of-practice sessions to help you create action within your unit.

Themes will range from supporting graduate student well-being to inclusive assessments and disaggregated data collection to support equity and inclusion. This series has been developed specifically for EDI champions within STEM fields (e.g. Faculty of Sciences, Faculty of Applied Science, Land and Food System, Forestry, Pharmacy and Medicine) who already have some competencies in these topics.

Key Questions explored in this workshop:

1. What are strategies to enhance inclusion in your labs and classes?
2. What are specific barriers to inclusion in labs?
3. What are the structural or systemic changes that can help to create more inclusive learning environments in classes and labs?

Session structure

Prior to each weekly session, you will receive a short reading or a video clip to orient you to some of the discussion topics for the session. Each session will begin with a 10-15 minute presentation introducing some of the themes related to the topic as well as some facilitated interactive exercises. The remaining time will consist of break-out sessions with questions to discuss and opportunities for participants to bring specific challenges that they face with respect to EDI in their units to the facilitators and participants in order to learn and share resources. The sessions will be primarily facilitated by Maï Yasué (Equity Strategist for the Faculty of Science) and Greg Lockwood (Equity Strategist for the Faculty of Applied Sciences) with other staff from the Equity Office, Skylight and CTLT as well as faculty and staff from STEM units.

Goals of the sessions:

1. Build a sense of community across STEM for people working on EDI within their units.
2. Enhance a sense of self-efficacy through sharing of resources, knowledge, and expertise. 
3. Through exchanges of ideas, develop a deeper understanding of some of the systemic barriers to EDI within STEM in order to coordinate action across different units.