LED-BIO Town Hall and Think Tank Information 2022

Leveraging, Enhancing, and Developing Biology (LED-BIO): Scientific Societies Shedding Light on Persistent Cultural Challenges is a three year (2022-2025) project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) BIO-LEAPS Research Coordination Network (RCN) grant mechanism. The goal of LED-BIO is to create a network of scholars that will crowdsource solutions to three persistent challenges that scientific societies face as they strive to build inclusive and equitable communities. The three challenges are: 

•  Lack of data to track scientific society membership demographic composition
•  Lack of integration of scientists in transitional stages of their careers into disciplinary CoPs
•  Lack of diversity among highly visible thought leaders, including speakers in scientific programs As...

Each day of the LED-BIO in-person meeting at the MBL will kick off with a videoconference-based Town Hall. There will be a total of three Town Halls, one for each of the challenges the LED-BIO project is aiming to tackle, namely:

• Lack of data to track scientific society membership demographic composition.
• Lack of integration of scientists in transitional career stages.
• Lack of diversity among highly visible thought leaders.

Each of these town halls will open with a short panel presentation to set the stage for the challenge that will be at the center of the discussion on that day. Panelists are scholars with first-hand knowledge of the challenge of interest–either through scholarly or lived experience, or sometimes both. Panelists are recruited from the Think Tank participants. In addition to the Think Tank contributors, Town Halls will convene an additional ~150 stakeholders remotely to engage in small group (7-8 stakeholders each) breakout semi-structured discussions (40 minutes). LED-BIO will use content from these discussions to develop and publish action plans for scientific societies to address the three challenges identified. These small group discussions are cross-institutional, cross-sector, and multidisciplinary conversations to achieve convergence in perspectives on the opportunities to advance inclusivity in STEM disciplines through scientific societies. The content of the discussions will be analyzed for themes, which will be used to develop thought-leadership papers and community recommendations for scientific societies to tackle the three identified persistent challenges they face and that hamper their diversity and inclusion efforts

Once all remote Town Hall participants have been recruited and identified, their demographic information will be shared in a revised version of this thought-leadership paper. One of the goals of the LED-BIO project is to have a diversity of voices represented in the discussions it hosts. By keeping track of our participant demographics we are better positioned to ascertain what voices contribute to these discussions and are ultimately included in LED-BIO’s project deliverables.

On-site (in-person) Think Tanks will follow each of the Town Halls described above. Think Tanks are open to a smaller group of experts to facilitate a deeper-dive into the key issues articulated during the Town Hall. After the LED-BIO meeting concludes, a report will be prepared that highlights the discussions and recommendations. This document will then be shared with event participants. The host for this year's event is the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, MA. The MBL was chosen as the central location for LED-BIO networking activities because it has historically been a premier biological sciences research and education center that can function as a neutral location for identified stakeholders to come together to discuss identified challenges.

• Halleluyah (Lou) Adebiyi: Apprentice scientist in the research laboratory of Dr. David Auerbach at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY.
• Dr. Isaac Burt: Associate Professor in the Department of Counseling, School, and Educational Psychology at the University at Buffalo-SUNY, in Buffalo, NY.
• Dr. Bradley Carl: Co-Director and founder of the Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative (WEC), housed within the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Dr. Ajit Chaudhari: Professor of Physical Therapy, Orthopedics, Mechanical Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering at The Ohio State University (OSU) College of Medicine.
• Deanna Chezzarae Clemmer: Graduate student in the research laboratory of Dr. Harry E. Taylor at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York.
• Dr. Danielle Dickens: Associate Professor of Psychology at Spelman College.
• Dr. Anahid (Ana) Ebrahimi: AAAS Science & Technology Policy fellow with the NIH's Office of Programs to Enhance Neuroscience Workforce Diversity.
• Dr. Jacqueline El-Sayed: Chief Academic Officer at the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and oversees programs, data, research, and academic services.
• Dr. Lucas Hill: Researcher and Evaluator in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
• Dr. Sandra Laursen: Scholar and thought leader who has studied institutional change strategies and processes in higher education around both equity and instructional challenges.
• Dr. Heather Metcalf: Director of Research for the Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN).
• Dr. Adam Simpson: IDEAL Provostial Fellow for Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University, in the School of Engineering Civil and Environmental Engineering Department.
• Jeffrey Allen Steiger: Creative Director of AWED Theater at Florida International University, Artistic Director of The New Theater of Medicine, an Adjunct Instructor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and the founding, former Artistic Director of the CRLT Players.
• AnnaBeth Thomas: Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Chemistry & Technology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Gender:

More than half of Think Tank participants (53.3%) identify as Cis Women, and most of the rest (40.0% of participants) identify as Cis Men. The difference from equal representation of these groups is not statistically significant. No participants identified as transgender. A small number of participants (6.7%) chose to type their own answers.

According to the 2020 US Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey (HPS), though 1.7% of Americans describe their gender identity as something besides men or women (trans or cis), only 0.6% of Americans identify as transgender. Therefore, it is not surprising to find that the representation of this group among our participants is small.

Sexual Orientation:

Most Think Tank participants (73.3%) identified as heterosexual or straight. Most of the remaining participants (20.0%) identified as bisexual, queer, and a small number (6.7%) chose not to answer. No participants chose to type their own answers.

The 2020 HPS indicated that about 16.7% of Americans identify as something other than heterosexual, so we have adequate representation of this group with respect to their representation in the population. However, there is not much representation of the diversity within this group. Given the small size of the Think Tank participants group, this is not unexpected.

Race and Ethnicity:

Think Tank participants were permitted to choose as many racial and ethnic identifiers as necessary to describe themselves from the following categories (modeled after the US Census): White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian or Asian American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, Hispanic or Latino (which is typically treated as an ethnicity for data analysis, not as a race). An additional option of “Prefer not to answer” was provided, along with the opportunity to skip the question altogether. Most participants (93.3%) chose to answer this question. While there were some participants who identified as Hispanic or Latino (7.1%), they did not select a racial identity in addition to this identification. However, most participants (86.7%) chose at least one of the traditional racial identifiers. The breakdown of this subset of participant answers is:

• White alone: 38.5%

• Black or African American alone: 38.5%

• Asian or Asian American alone: 7.7%

• American Indian or Alaska Native alone: 0%

• Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone: 0%

• Two or more races: 15.4%

Although there were no Think Tank participants who identified as American Indian or Alaska Native alone, that group is represented within the group who selected two or more races. The only category not represented at all is Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. During the 2020 US Census, only 1.3% of respondents identified as American Indian or Alaska Native alone and only 0.3% indicated they were Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander alone. It will be challenging to achieve representation of these two groups without specific targeting.

Disability:

33.3% of Think Tank participants reported that they identified as having a disability. None chose not to answer this question, either by skipping it or by selecting “Prefer not to answer”. Almost half of those who reported that they had a disability chose to describe it themselves (eg: chronic illness, acutely ADHD), suggesting that the categories presented were either unclear or did not adequately represent the way participants identify their disabilities.

Education:

The vast majority of participants (93.3%) have completed at least a bachelor’s degree. Most (66.7%) have obtained a PhD. This is reasonable considering we recruited participants from within the academic science community.

First Generation Status:

A significant fraction of Think Tank participants (20%) identified as the first generation in their family to either attend college or earn a bachelor’s degree. Many represent the first generation in their family to earn an advanced degree (26.7%). Many aspiring scientists who are members of underrepresented groups are also the first generation in their family to pursue higher education, and there may be barriers to advancement.