University of Waterloo
200 University Avenue West
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
Phone: (519) 888-4567 ext 32215
Fax: (519) 746-8115
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.
The University of Waterloo acknowledges that much of our work takes place on the traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishinaabeg and Haudenosaunee peoples. Our main campus is situated on the Haldimand Tract, the land granted to the Six Nations that includes six miles on each side of the Grand River. Our active work toward reconciliation takes place across our campuses through research, learning, teaching, and community building, and is centralized within our Office of Indigenous Relations.