Today ProCURE hosted an undergraduate research panel featuring 6 awesome panelists. The panel was a great success with a lot of positive feedback from attendees! After some discussion ProCURE has decided to make this an annual event.
Today we met with Professor Munira Khalil, the head of the Department of Chemistry, and Diana Knight, the Chemistry Departments Advancement & Communications Manager, to discuss the results of our survey and brainstorm solutions.
In the past our group has faced resistance to many of our suggestions for improving department culture surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion. I’m happy to say that today we believe we made a lot of progress and have some very good ideas on how to improve things moving forward! Some of these ideas include reworking the department’s website on undergraduate research, potentially partnering with Free Radicals (an undergraduate chemistry club at the university) to form an undergraduate research network, and (perhaps most excitingly) the department is looking at piloting funding a limited number of undergrad students for research experience! We are strongly encouraging the department to direct this funding towards communities who traditionally have trouble obtaining paid research positions, such as underrepresented minorities, international, socioeconomically disadvantaged, or first-generation students. We have also offered to help in any organizing or application review for this program. Munira and Diana say that more details are forthcoming, but they anticipate these funds will become available to students in summer 2022. We hope this is a sign of good will and continued partnership between our group and department leadership! Whenever you’re trying to fight for a cause, it’s easy to get caught up in the fight and forget about the people you’re trying to help. That’s why it’s so important to hear the thoughts and opinions of those most impacted by your work. We gave undergraduate students an opportunity to voice their opinions in our recent survey, and we thought it might be beneficial for anyone questioning why we should be working to improve undergraduate research equity to hear the undergraduate perspective: I just keep applying but don’t hear anything back. I am having a hard time finding of opportunities. I wish there was an easier way to apply and get notified when a position is opened. The hardest part is finding a position and applying for it. Students are not told how to apply or where they can get notified when positions are available. The URP Database is severely outdated every time I have checked it. I have reached out to professors individually and not received more information about their research or opportunities to get involved. Hopefully this is just due to COVID but no one in my family has any STEM experience so it feels as though I am just taking shots in the dark to try and find an opportunity. I find it hard to commit myself to a research position, even though I really need the experience, during the school year because I feel like it would interfere with my family responsibilities as well as affect my ability to make income through my usual means, which I do in my free time due to my current commitment to school. I am financially strained and it is unfeasible to take 10 hours out of the week to do unpaid work in addition to school and a paid job. ProCURE surveyed undergraduate chemistry students in 100- and 200-level courses. The purpose of this survey was to identify barriers undergraduate students in the department might be encountering when trying to access research experiences. Our hope was that by identifying these barriers, ProCURE could work with the department and undergraduates to develop solutions. Major takeaways:
Race and gender played an impact as well. Female students are more likely to express feelings of inadequacy (78% report “feeling unqualified”) than male students (56% report “feeling unqualified”). Female students are also more likely to report financial difficulties posing a barrier to performing undergraduate research, with 31% of female students listing “money” as a barrier compared to only 10% of male students. Under represented minorities (84%) and Asian students (75%) are both more likely than white students (60%) to express that they are “unsure how to apply” for research positions. Unsurprisingly, students who report less financial security/lower economic status more frequently report that the unpaid nature of research positions poses a significant barrier to access. Figure 1. Percent (y-axis) refers to the percentage of students within a given self-reported financial group. The three groups (“Not a barrier”, “Somewhat a barrier”, and “Poses a significant barrier” come from the survey question, “Undergraduate research positions are generally unpaid positions that require an average of 10 hours per week of volunteer work. Does the fact that this position is typically unpaid limit your ability to participate as an undergraduate researcher? A correlation between financial security and race/ethnicity is observed. Underrepresented minorities are more likely to self-report lower levels of financial security, particularly when compared to white students. Figure 2. URMs were pooled for this analysis due to the relatively low numbers of URM students who participated in the survey. Collectively, these results suggest that:
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ProCURE Blog PostsFrom time-to-time we will share updates here involving any progress we have made on our various initiatives and/or events that we hold. Categories
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