Creating STEM department cultures that support diversity

I hear it all the time: ‘to improve the recruitment and advancement of women and minorities in STEM, we need to change department culture. But I’m not hearing people discuss what department culture actually is. How can we assess, improve, or navigate a thing we don’t know? In this talk, I share a schema for mapping the elements of department culture that can help departments support diversity and help diverse department members navigate their workplace.

Dr. Carla Fehr is the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at the University of Waterloo. As an expert in Philosophy and Feminist Science Studies, Fehr develops critiques of the biological accounts of sex differences in human cognition and in the divisions of labour that are often used to justify the under-representation of women in STEM.  Dr. Fehr is a founder of the American Philosophical Association, Committee on the Status of Women, and the Site Visit Program: a resource to improve the climate for women philosophers.