Envisioning STEM Equity in Higher Education
Course participants will investigate STEM equity in higher education from the perspective of our cultures of origin.
Main content
THIS COURSE HAS BEEN CANCELLED
Course leader
Sehoya Cotner
Professor, Department of Biological Sciences (BIO), University of Bergen
Course description
Course participants will investigate STEM equity in higher education from the perspective of our cultures of origin. We will collect data on representation in our disciplines, following the techniques of Wood et al 2020 (https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.0877) but in a cultural-comparative context, and write a final report.
This will be a project-based course where we use our own countries of origin as a starting point for considering challenges to equity within the STEM disciplines. We will draft a final essay in which we present equity as a multi-faceted, culturally variable concept that requires multi-faceted, culturally variable approaches to achieve.
This will be an interactive course where after an initial orientation and discussion of literature, students will find and present data that is relevant to their backgrounds and the class research question, and together we will draft a product for dissemination.
Learning outcomes
Students will be able to
- describe contemporary challenges to STEM equity, from a global perspective
- present and discuss literature related to STEM equity
- conduct, in collaboration with peers, a study on representation within STEM disciplines drawing on their own cultural context
- write a summary report in collaboration with peers and the instructor
Reading list
TBA
Credits
Participation at the BSRS is credited under the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS). Participants submitting an essay, in a form of a publishable manuscript of 10-20 pages, after the end of the summer school will receive 10 ECTS. Deadline for submission will be decided by your course leader.
It is also possible to participate without producing an essay. This will give you 5 ECTS. In order to receive credits, we expect full participation in the course-specific modules, plenary events and roundtables.
Course leader
Sehoya Cotner is the Director of the bioCEED Center for Excellence in Biology Education and a Professor in Biological Sciences at the University of Bergen, an Adjunct Professor at the faculty of Law at the University of Oslo, and the leader of a US-based network, EDU-STEM (Equity and Diversity in Undergraduate STEM).
Sehoya is interested in interdisciplinary collaborative efforts that advance the overarching cause of inclusive STEM education. More specifically, she focuses on the microenvironment of the classroom, and how small instructional choices can have profound impacts on student affect and performance.
