Abstract Detail

Conference Wide

Tuominen, L.K. [1].

We are All Plumbers Now: Toolboxes for Building Unconventional STEM Career Pipelines.

Research on the representation in academic science of women, people of color, and people who experience or have experienced disability has shown a pattern of decreasing participation at every career level. This phenomenon, commonly known as the "leaky pipeline" effect, is familiar to most science educators, and multiple structural changes to institutional policies and training processes have been proposed to help improve retention of diverse scientists. In this workshop, we will move beyond the familiar data and common focus on institutional change to discover ways in which early career botanists, especially graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and contingent faculty, can build our own professional and personal toolkits to help identify weak locations in our own parts of the pipeline, consider what factors could reduce our chances of leaving academic science, and/or design personalized "spillways" leading to satisfying non-academic science careers. While we will begin from the assumption that all present at the workshop are facing or have faced at least one challenge that has caused them to wonder, "Am I the Leaky Pipeline?", such challenges need not be disclosed to other participants. The goals of this workshop are to: * Share information about known institutional and professional resources geared towards fostering diversity within STEM fields, * Identify some challenge areas that previously proposed structural or institutional changes within academia have not effectively addressed at this time, * Discuss academic science career pathways that diverge from the "linear pipeline" model, and * Create personalized written plans to help address a challenge each participant faces at their current career stage by using multiple "plumbing tools."

1 - Metropolitan State University, Department of Natural Sciences, 700 East Seventh Street, Saint Paul, MN, 55106, USA

Keywords:
human diversity
leaky pipeline
nonacademic careers
contingent faculty
postdoctoral researchers
professional development.

Presentation Type: Workshop
Session: WS06
Location: Salon 12/The Shaw Conference Centre
Date: Sunday, July 26th, 2015
Time: 10:00 AM
Number: WS06001
Abstract ID:37
Candidate for Awards:None