Diversity Statement

My commitment to promoting diversity in academia is related to my personal experience as a Muslim foreign woman who live in the United States more than 10 years for seeking high degrees in STEM field. From the first day in the US, I observed the diversity and inclusion in the education system, regardless race, ethnicity, color, languages, religions, and gender identity. This observation leads to my current concept and notion of diversity. In my perspective, diversity is related to everyone who has different background will help the community to bring the exploration and incorporation of his/her differences to enrich our learning.

In STEM classrooms, specifically in higher education, diversity and inclusion have main role to enhance the learning process. Everyone brings “a diverse” set of background, experiences, perspectives, and views to the table for approaching and solving problems which lead to improve students critical thinking skills. According to Professor Scott Page in his book “ The Difference”, he showed that when trying to solve complex problems, the ability to see the problem from different views and diverse perspectives is the key to achieve scientific advancement. As a result, when groups of intelligent individuals are working to solve hard problems, the diversity of the problem solvers matters more than their individual ability. Therefore, collaboration between diverse students offers opportunities to grow and expand scholar’s knowledge, so we will have better students and researchers.

As instructors, we want the students to have an equal opportunity to learn and be well educated. However, the students come to the class with different learning styles, abilities, strengths, and weakness. Therefore, our responsibilities rely on providing a healthy diverse environment for students and make sure they are prepared to work and collaborate with the others who have different background and perspective. Thus, I want to create welcoming, respectful, safe environment for all my students. There are variety methods to provide students to share what they know from their own perspectives. For instance, providing the students with a questionnaire on the first day of course in order to assess background knowledge, gather personal information, and allow students to share their thought, fears and motivation in the course. Also, the instructors can use different types of assessment to determine students’ level according to their learning styles and background.

As an international student Muslim woman who came from a completely different background to the US to seek a high degree in Statistics, I can understand the difficulties that students may face trying to engage in different communities and cultures. Also, the language barrier plays a role that students can feel isolated from others. Therefore, designing seminars, workshops, orientation days and planning field trips for the diverse students are very important in education. These events will help them to feel they are welcomed regardless of their diversity.

I’m planning to promote diversity and inclusion in my workplace in different aspects. I want to establish a diversity and inclusion unit. This unit can be the sponsor for female undergraduate and graduate who wants to complete their education in the STEM field. Also, this unit will host speakers and keynotes to give seminars and workshops about diversity and inclusion in the classroom, how diversity is matters in science, etc., and attend these talks are required from the faculties. Lastly, this unit can have a program for planning field trips monthly for diverse students, a program for designing awards for diverse students who engage in community services and research projects.

References:

Kenneth Gibbs, Jr., “Diversity in STEM: What It Is and Why It Matters,” Scientific American (September 2014).

Douglas L. Medin and Carol D. Lee, “Diversity Makes Better Science,” Association for Psychological Science Observer (May-June 2012).

Scott Page, The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2007).