Alright! Everybody in the room, and everybody on zoom welcome, and thank you for joining us, for today's by a distinguished lecture for those that don't know me if I introduce myself, my name is Susan Marcus, and I'm the new assistant director Overseeing the biological Sciences director at the Nsap having arrived just about a month. Ago.
From Uc. Berkeley. You can imagine that was a when I found out so Msf.
Director for biological sciences, or bio, as it's called here, supports research at the frontiers of biology.
Across temporal scale. Geographic scales as well as the physics, physical and human infrastructure necessary to conduct that research.
So the Bio Distinguished Lecture series brings in speakers that represents this breath of the biological research in the varied fields within the biological sciences from the molecular level to ecosystems and highlights the value of infrastructure broadening participation in biology specifically and in stem more broadly so that's exactly what we have here today today's
lecture is presented by Bio's broadening participation. Working group is Dr. Jan Matsui.
He's the director and co-founder of the Biology scholars program. Or, as we call it, at Berkeley, the Bsp.
At the University of California, Berkeley, and he's also an assistant Dean of Biology.
John is true truly, from Berkeley he grew up in West Berkley in a low-income household, where he struggled through high school, due to an undiagnosed learning, disability, and it was actually growing up in post-war California as a Japanese American that spurred his awareness and interest in access and diversity in stem so after graduating from high school and spent 3 years in our community
college system, and then John transferred to Uc. Berkeley, where he earned his bachelor's and Master's degree, and then went to another sister campus uc Santa Cruz Santa Barbara.
Sorry, you see, Santa Barbara, where he got his Phd. He then spent several years teaching in the community college system.
Until about, I think 1,992, where he was recruited back to Berkeley to help write a grant that would later launch the biology scholars program which he has really led for the last 30 years.
And as you will hear, it's an incredible program during these last 30 years he has worked with over 4,000 undergraduates, 60% of whom are underrepresented minorities.
70% are women, and 60% are low income backgrounds. And you'll hear about the impact. This program has had.
It's a I, just because I am familiar with it. It's really tremendous. The biology scholars program works side by side with students to access their untapped Allen and create their academic and career blueprints their approach includes student centered mentoring teaching and alliance so you know, John started this well, before this was the normal thing to do and he's been recognised by many
accolades in doing that, and has served as a mentor to help other universities and other places to emulate and do similar things that we're here, and actually is on a trip right now to Virginia, where he's gonna do that so he's won lots of Oaklands I'm just gonna mention too, he won the distinguished Mentor award from sackness and importantly in in 2,015 he won the
Presidential mentoring award from the National Science Foundation. So we're very proud of that. So I'm not gonna take all your time, John, shares his thoughts about how we select and treat Stan talent.
And how equity programs can help address underrepresentation stem. So please join me in welcoming John.
Thank you. Susan.
It is a real pleasure being here to reconnect with people I've met before, some from many, many years ago, when we were graduates, students, and meeting new people as well.
It's really quite an honor. So thank you very much. I told one of my staff members that I was suffering from imposter syndrome, getting ready for this lecture, because, you know, how could I know enough to share with you folks at Nsf and elsewhere and so here I am and the title of my talk is Stem equity good in quotes
mentoring and in quotes the hidden curriculum. And so we're gonna explore all of this.
I think so. Let's do it the old fashioned way, and it's not moving.
This is one of those dreams you have. Yeah, I don't know. What did I do?
Okay, , right? Okay, maybe even locked it. Okay?
So this clicker go.
There. So the lens that we'll be using today is through the lens of my work with the biology scholars program and as you'll hear about students in the program are very atypical for the demographic that succeeds in biology at Berkeley and elsewhere and the gradient has been a very steep gradient in terms of doing battle to try and convince my
colleagues, that students who come from really diverse and different backgrounds are really worth the investment and the data that I'll share with you and and a lot of the things that I talk about today will really underscore the importance of not only diversity but also really rethinking our notion, of what we mean by qualified and our notions about merit and what numbers say about our
potential to do well in science, and so this is a picture of a fraction of the Bsp students that were present at an all student meeting, one semester.
And I want to begin with acknowledgements. I want to thank my students for over the last 30 years, teaching me about really what needs to change at Berkeley and elsewhere in order to create a more inclusive and equitable environment for them, to actually express their passion for biology I also want to thank my the team of co-founders caroline Kane and cory goodman both emeritai
professors from the molecular and cell Biology Department at Berkeley and Cory, Carolina, and I.
Had a dream of vision, of changing biology at Berkeley, such that students such as the students I'll be talking about today could actually succeed and express their potential and go on to do great things in biology.
I also want to thank those students in Dsp. These are all pictures of students who have stepped up. They become study group leaders.
Academic support is one of the cornerstones of Bsp, and these are undergraduates themselves.
Who want to give back to the program by helping their peers succeed as well. And that's a quality that really is consistent throughout the membership of Bsp.
Striving for personal excellence, but also helping others excel as well.
I also want to thank my faculty Advisory Committee Faculty advisory committees are really important.
Nobody. No one person is smart enough to kind of figure out, figure out how to do this work. And so this collective pool of expertise and wisdom and insight and diverse experiences really have helped me not only in terms of strategy in terms of making the program work, but also in terms of navigating the political waters of Berkeley.
I also want to thank my staff, and I want to thank the full-time staff. Dr. Messy Soto Brooke, you, Dr.
Emily, King Marianne Torres, and Leslie Yan. These are my full, full-timetime staff, and I also want to thank the student staff members.
Stephanie Alvarez Astrid Kayarte. Yeah, Jose Rodriguez, who are students who have occupied the roles of peer advisor as well as student research assistant.
So it takes a village. It takes a village. No one person knows enough or has enough bandwidth to actually do this work.
This is labor, intensive work for those of you who have have participated, or have funded this sort of work.
Staffing is really really critical. And it's not just how many, but who, understanding the backgrounds of our students to help them really fully express their potential to excel.
I also want to thank our funders over the lifetime of Bsp. You see, the funders, including the university.
And presently Berkeley, HI. And the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine Fund, Bsp.
The sermon. Grant is our newest grant, and we're we're trying to help. First time researchers gained the experience in stem cell research and go on to do regenerative medicine careers.
And so what's my vantage? Point number one? I've been doing stem equity work even before Bsp, I didn't know what to call it then.
You know, we used to say, diversity work, but really we're talking about trying to make institutions and disciplines more equitable it is stem equity, work, so I've been doing that for a long time, and that's my history.
My professional history. I went from being a practitioner that is actually doing program to being an educational researcher without the training.
And this seems to be what a number of science-trained Phd. Students are interested in doing nowadays.
I work with so many graduate students at the University who have worked with me as tas in one of the courses that that is required of all Uhsp members, and they gain a real interest because they're they love science, but they want to find a way to make the system better to make science better so I went from practitioner to researcher my lab is my program and in Bsp we do experiments to
Remove behaviors. Excuse me. Remove barriers to undergraduate stem success that's what we do, and we used the literature.
But at first I was flying by the seat of my pants. It was hunch intuition, maybe personal experience.
I really wasn't into the literature at first, but it's really wonderful when you find something in the literature, the evidence that says you're on the right track or also define the terminology to describe what it is that you've been been observing doing.
Right now we're looking at why our efforts have worked if you take a look and I'll show you the list of things that we do in Dsp.
If you take a look at other programs across the country, they're doing basically the same things. And so why is it everybody getting the outcomes that Dsp and other successful programs have gotten the devil is in the implementation?
So what about Dsp, actually makes it in quotes work. And also we're trying to figure out if you know how to adapt and scale what works going from program success to institutional success in terms of making our institutions more equitable at the departmental division and entire institution college levels.
So here's how we're gonna proceed. I'm going to give you a little bit of personal history, first, because I do believe that professional is personal.
And I'll explain what that means shortly. I'll talk a little bit about the biology scholars program.
The success, the structure sort of the philosophy of help, all those sorts of things. Then I'm gonna talk about the hidden curriculum, of the curriculum that if you are aware of the rules of the road that really helps in any system, and if you're not it can really be disastrous talk about mentoring and also do some reflections on bsp the concept of program and also stem equity
work. How what we are learning from program can really affect our overall work in stem equity.
So my personal history.
This state.
Was the date that Pearl Harbor was bombed now I was in Borneo, but this date, as they say, lives in infamy, because this greatly affected my family on both sides.
My mom's side, my dad's side, because once Pearl Harbor was bombed our families were interned.
Everything was taken away. We went off. The concentration camps. Essentially I was in Borneo, but what this did was it created an environment post world War Ii.
My family has moved back to California, but I was raised in a very American way. I spoke. I to this day.
I don't speak Japanese. It took me a long time to learn how to use hushy or chopsticks.
They wanted to raise me in a way that I could really fit in, and that fitting in that fitting in was really important to them, because they experienced extreme discrimination.
And so I've always felt the outsider. You know, the question is, you know, what are you I've always felt the outsider and a lot of the kids that I grew up with in the flats at West Berkeley?
We related, because of that? Not all. We're Asian lot of Latinx, lot of African-american.
Oh, families! But we felt the outsider.
Executive order 9, 0 6 6, was the order that led to the internment, and once again, history is really really important, and our personal histories really inform what we do as professionals professional is personal.
I think that's a really critical thing. If you all think about what it is that you do, how much of what you do is influenced by your life experiences the communities in which you grew up.
Your first language, the types of food you eat, the music, you listen to. All of that is part of who you are, and we can't leave those whole.
Aspects of who we are at the door. When we do science, we bring them with us.
I wrote a paper back in 2,018, called outsiders at the table, and if you have a chance to take a look at it, it really captures up to that point a lot of the experiences.
I and my students have had as outsiders in the Academy.
So let's talk about bsp, the biology scholars program, Cory, Caroline and I established Bsp.
In 1,992. Our first grant was from the Howard Cues Medical Institute, and I really owe them a great debt of gratitude because there's been consistent funding funding for over the last 30 years from I it's an undergraduate stem equity program I mentioned that I used to call Bsp a diversity program.
But that really missed the point. We want to make things more equitable, and that will lead to diversity.
I've worked with over 4,000 Berkeley undergraduates, and here's the breakdown.
You can see for yourself. It's very atypical of who succeeds in biology at Berkeley and elsewhere.
And if you take a look at the ethnic breakdown of Bsp.
You can see that for Latinx students, we have about 50% in California, there are about 38% Latinx residents, and at Berkeley 14%.
So we're really overselecting for Latinx students. And are we in violation of proposition?
299, because, as you'll see, we use a comprehensive review. That doesn't say if you're this particular background, you get to get in.
We don't have quotas, but you'll see how we do it. African-american students. You can see 15%.
There in California, 7%. And at Uc. Berkeley, 3% coast 209 that prohibits the use of race gender, ethnicity in terms of selection contracting.
You know all those sorts of things really devastated, really, and Berkeley has been trying to come back from that over all these years, and with our recent Supreme Court decision around, using race and ethnicity.
I think a lot can be learned from what Berkeley has done, but it's we've we still have work to do.
We still have work to do, and in terms of native, American, and Alaskan natives you can see the percentages there yourself.
So we have a very atypical demographic profile in terms of ethnicity in Bsp.
Our objective is to develop stem talent in order to diversify stem. Okay, we want to develop talent, and that means that our selection criteria for members, and how we support students may be different than how another program may support students who select in quotes only the best we believe we have the best but our criteria.
Are very different in terms of looking at our students and their potential to excel in step in terms of success.
We've done some comparative studies looking at our students versus students from similar backgrounds outside of the program.
But we measure success in terms of get graduating with a biology degree and a competitive exit. Gpa.
3.0 or higher, so that you can actually do something with your degree, such as graduate school, medical school, you know, whatever it is that you want to do.
We've attained parity. We've attained parity with majority students in the biological sciences.
Our students go on to post grad programs and careers. The Big 3 are health care number one, Research number 2, and education number 3.
That's where our students go.
I think that the most important measure for me personally of success is that really students find their passion and find ways to express their passion for science.
A student can go on to become can do. An Md. Phd. And become an outstanding Nobel Laureate in the biomedical Sciences.
Field. That's great. If that's right. From that student or my student can go and become a first grade.
Science teacher and really helped kids early on really find their passion for science. I consider that as success as well.
In terms of selections. So what am I looking for? We don't use Sats or Gpas.
We don't. What are numbers? Say we can get into that later. We use alternative criteria and there has to be a passion for science I mean, that's a given.
That's that's foundational. But on top of that we look for the following things resilience, persistence, authenticity, willingness to give and get help and willingness to restratize when they fail.
Some of the students that come to Cal have never failed before. I mean, you know, they've aped out of the world.
You know they've got a 5 point O. Gpa. It's just, you know, just never have fallen.
Many of my students have had. They've fallen many times, and they picked themselves up, and they continue to go on because it's in their hearts to reach their goal.
This is what we look for. So we do an online application. And we do of those we do a subset of interviews.
But those are. Those are the lenses that we use.
In terms of treatment. Treatment is really really important. Because if you take a look at the program components right there, it's kind of like what everybody else is doing right?
We have these semester, these all student meetings, which are every semester, we have steady groups.
We have a couple of required courses one of which I'll talk about advising. We have workshops, social events, paid research internships, and we also have a student center which is really really important without geography.
There's no community. That's what one of my students said. There's got to be a space that students can really access and gather gathered to celebrate, gather, to cry, just to gather.
Now consistent throughout the entire. Everything we do is mentoring it's at the core of everything we do, and the 2 things that I'll be talking about is how we advise and counsel.
And also a required course, in interdepartmental studies. 96 course that I teach.
I actually teach both of those courses the molecular and cell biology in the interdepartmental course as well. But mentoring is at the heart of everything we do. And so in terms of treatment, we're talking about help.
And I put that in quotes, because, you know, for some people and for some students, help is a four-letter word you know, I don't need help.
You know I'm among the best and brightest. I did really. Well, I helped other people how we help is really really critical.
One size does not fit all we can't be formulaic and say, You know, here's the Four-year Plan in your one.
You're gonna do this, your 2, this here's when you're gonna do your research. It doesn't fit because students have.
And will talk about this different starting points in life in terms of opportunity and information.
We recommend versus decide. We don't say here's what you're gonna do.
Represent information, talk about opportunities, and we let students make their own decision unless it I mean.
If it's a real critical decision, a life and death decision which students oftentimes think that because they got a a minus instead of an A, it's a life and death, but real life and death situations we won't intervene and be really really directive other programs, do and that's and that's their form of help we we actually have them make the decisions about their lives.
Does that sound interesting? Yeah. And it makes for some very interesting conversations.
We have shared responsibility for success. If a student doesn't do well, then, we look at what we could do better and what they can do better in order to reach whatever it is, whatever goal they've set for themselves, and we also listen listening is not a skill that we learn as academics, oftentimes though we will listen to catch somebody in a mistake that they're making an error we're looking for that
versus listening for patterns, patterns that may reveal context in which the student is operating. We listen, and what students say to us, we take seriously there's a phrase at Berkeley.
Oh, they're just students. No, they're students. And students have actually picked that up I'm just a student.
What do I know? You know a lot. You know things differently than I know things, but if we can kind of put that puzzle together from those different perspectives, maybe we can have a better understanding of what needs to happen for success, and the cost for the program is about $3,000 per student per year, we have 400 members in the program that's the steady state 100 new students and 100 graduate each year okay, and
93% of our of our budget is spent on staffing. Okay, labor, intensive labor, intensive.
And I would say one thing to funders. You need to fund staffing oftentimes I've heard from funds should go directly.
To students. Yes, because if we're working with low-income students, money matters. But staffing matters also.
The relationships that are. And I, we have a study that I'll share with you. The relationship is critical in terms of efficacy.
Identity, really adopting the values of of science, the Science community and persisting.
As Susan said, in 2015 Dsp. Was in the White House, and we received the pacemum award, and it was really wonderful that President Obama was President at the time.
, yeah, that was, that was an unforgettable experience, and you should have seen all the social media stuff that was being exchanged among my students.
Everybody was just so proud. So we went to the White House. We went to the White House.
So what is bsp, it's an academic support program. Yeah, it's also a safe space, you know, people call it a home away from home.
People refer to it as family, community.
It's a stem equity program that really tries to identify and fill institutional gaps.
Okay, and make it in the way of success of students who really don't fit the profile of success in people's minds.
And we're outsiders. And what do I mean by outsiders not fitting the profile of those that historically have succeeded?
In stem, where outsiders can learn through good mentoring how to navigate stems, hidden curriculum so we all have an idea what the hidden curriculum is.
But let me just be more explicit here.
Hidden curriculum, the unspoken or implicit rules and values that students learn in school.
And this is in contrast to the official curriculum. The mission statement what said in the instructor's lesson plan, or syllabus?
These are all the things that unless you're on the inside you may not understand. And for first generation college goers, it's a whole new cultural experience in many, many different ways.
But the hidden curriculum is really important. It's a strong. It involves strong messages about the following, the core values of an institution, the attitudes, the norms of behavior.
What's important, what is not the kinds of behavior that are acceptable, what isn't, also who is valued and who is none.
There are hierarchies, and we all know that.
And this remains hidden in plain sight, and goes unquestioned and unchallenged because it's normal.
It's the normal environment. Okay. And people oftentimes, I mean, I'd be in meetings where I hear statements made that my jaw drops, and I feel like sometimes I'm the only person in the room Hussein.
What did you just say? But everybody is going? Yes, and let me give you some examples, using some quotes, and these are quotes that were either said directly to me, or I was in the presence of other faculty or staff, or students have come to me. To share what was said to them.
This was said, to one of my African-american male students, who, on his first day he was really excited to get into research.
Really really excited. You know, we got him. Some funding is low, low income, and as he walks through the door the Pi says, this.
Leave your culture at the door. Welcome to my lab. Now my question is, would he have said that to an Asian or white student?
Probably not. Probably not. So we talked about that, and we talked about how science is not culture-free, that the pi brought his culture into that laboratory, and he sets the tone of that laboratory.
The practices, the norms, the values, and so on.
Here's another quote, I teach science, not students. I was sitting in a in a pedagogy workshop, and we were talking about the changing demographic of our students and the facilitator said, So what are you doing?
What are you doing to address the changing demographic? And this is what the person's the left of me, said.
Science. That's why I'm here. Science is culture free, and I teach it the way I was taught it.
And if they belong they will learn.
College advisor said this to one of my students who got the C in general chemistry and A. C.
In first semester, organic chemistry.
You might may like science, but science is not like you.
Now I know this adviser, and she thinks she's doing the student good because the student needs to know early on so that she does not waste her time.
But she was making a judgment about the rest of the students. Life. Here's an authority figure saying this, you know, to a sophomore send this to a sophomore, making a judgment about what the students should or should not do based on 2 data points that is bad science and she didn't know the story behind that performance 2 Cs first of all that student took the last time.
She took chemistry was in high school in the tenth grade, taught by somebody who read out of the chemistry textbook.
No, that doesn't prepare you for chemistry at Berkeley. But you gotta see she got a C.
That's amazing. She closed that gap between preparation and expectation really quickly. If she had more time she might have done even better.
And that course was curved. Okay, she got a C. And so unless we know the story behind the numbers, how can we make those rash judgments about the future based on 2 data points of that student.
We were in another pedagogy.
Workshop, and we were talking about testing. And here's what a math instructor said. What's a good test?
It's simple. You had a curve.
Tests are meant to discriminate, to decide who goes on rather than being measures of how well you've taught and how well they've learned.
Really interesting. Again, part of the hidden curriculum.
Here's where the former Dean, not our current Dean, a former dean, said what's wrong with competition?
It's natural. It's healthy. Well, ask any undergraduate who's in stem.
You can cut the competition with a knife as you walk into these gateway, intro courses and studies have been done on how off-ting in that first year or first year and a half, these intro courses are.
Contrary, there's good competition. We can compete together to learn the material. We can compete against the material that we're trying to master, or we can compete with one another, such that no, I wasn't in class you can't have my notes.
Or I don't know the answer to that problem. I don't have the time to help you.
So. And last, but not least, here is the solution to the diversity problem. Just admitting better students, just admitting the rights students.
Okay. And this is oftentimes the thinking it's an admissions problem. It's not a treatment problem.
It's not how we're teaching. It's not the culture in our laboratories, but, in fact, if we'd admit better students there wouldn't be a problem.
Okay, so this is all part of the hidden curriculum. This is all part of what's assumed to be true.
And again, it's a very steep gradient to work against this, you know, and it's a marathon.
It's not a sprint. We can't change institutions or cultures overnight.
Mentoring. We all have a basic idea of what mentoring is where we have the mentor who has experience in a particular domain, and the mentee or the protege who's actually trying to learn from that mentor and the expectation is that the protege the mentee will develop professionally under the guidance of this more experienced person.
And here's here's, you know, pulling from the literature. Here's what mentors should help their mentees learn in science, content and process knowledge.
Of course, also skills various skills. This is important efficacy, gaining the confidence to actually feel at home in science.
Feeling like you belong, and that you're able to do the work also, seeing themselves persisting, the identity.
Yeah, I see myself. I am a scientist. That is a hard thing for students to say. No. The scientists in front of the classroom teaching. I'm just the student.
And there's much more, of course, but you know these are sort of the ballpark, the ballpark goals that we have for successful mentoring.
I said that mentoring was pervasive throughout Dsp. And Professor Mika Estrada, who said, You see, San Francisco who's a social psychologist, she and I have been working together on Bsp.
And Meika does other work. Also. She's done work for Nsf. And to evaluate programs.
But we did a study on really sort of the question of What about Bsp, makes it work? And I think it comes down to relationships, relationships in here.
And here is sort of the high-level summary of our findings. We actually actually asked students about their relationships in the program.
And we found the following, we call this the Gifted Ford study, because, you know, time is one of the most valuable commodities to students and the students in in in in Bsp are really stretched for time, as are all students, but many of our students have responsibilities back home they have all sorts of challenges and issues.
And so to really help them understand the value of this survey or the study. We said that what you say will benefit students in the future.
So you're gifting it forward and that really did tap into their sort of communal thinking.
And the idea of giving back to the program through future students.
What they said was positive interactions with the staff peers, the social events, etc, helped them acquire the following, there was an increased sense of confidence in their ability to do science.
That's the efficacy piece. They're increased perception of themselves as scientists. The identity piece and the affirmation of scientific community values values piece.
And also this idea it helped them maintain their intentions to pursue a biology, related career. And so this is the persistence piece.
And all of these are heavily, heavily correlated with long-term persistence. So this study kind of justified it made me feel good that we were investing 93% of our budget in in quality staff and by quality.
I'm talking about staff that could actually work with this population with an understanding of giving the type of help that I've just described.
And so selection of staff is also important. But we see the outcomes here.
Now I was walking through the area where where the advisors are in in our college and I was going to visit an advisor, and I saw the following sticker on the advisors, cubicle advice is teaching, and it got me to thinking this whole idea about advising teaching and mentoring what's the relationship for me and I said how similar and how different are mentoring advising and teaching and I thought
it'd be sort of interesting to create a scale, and I would have you think about these 3 things.
Are they more similar to one another than different? Are they more different to one another than they are similar? Or is it someplace in between?
And I would just have you think about that, because for me, if I were to take this little survey, I would be over here, because clearly I see the 3 being soaked, you know, as I advise, I'm mentoring as I'm teaching, I'm mentoring as I'm teaching.
I'm also advising in many ways about how to think about the choices they're making. And so I would just have you think about that for yourselves.
And so Bsp cross-cutting, mentoring stance. Here's here's I've kind of boiled it down, you know, some of my staff and some of my students are watching on the zoom, and they can talk to me.
About this or not, this is true. So what I made this up, okay, so our in terms of mentoring, we want to develop versus skim talent.
We're kind of like the Oakland A's Billy Bean moneyball. Yeah, right? Where Billy Bean has, because baseball is an unfair game, because there's no salary cap in baseball so the Yankees can spend millions and millions of dollars.
You know, on the salary of one player and the A's had really was, you know, really low book and so what Billy Bean did was look for undervalued talent that he could get for a dollar and develop that talent.
Dsp. Is like the Oakland days. We develop talent. We're not skimming.
We're not the New York Yankees. Okay, even though we are, even though we are getting really highly qualified students.
But that talent is yet to be expressed.
Achievement versus aptitude. We look at what students do and how they move along. You know their starting point, and how far they move along.
We look at that versus saying, there's something that you're born with, you know, an aptitude.
Remember the scholastic aptitude test versus the scholastic achievement test. Very, very different. Because how can you improve your aptitude simply by getting coached and studying?
No, that's a achievement, because you're learning to take tests. You're learning. You know how to.
You know, pattern recognition of the answer. That's most likely to be correct. You know all those sorts of things.
So we look at achievement versus aptitude, opportunity, and access versus ability. Oftentimes ability is situated in an individual opportunity, and access is more contextual.
In what environment did you grow up? How much opportunity, how much access, how much information did you have? And what did you make of that?
Okay, growth. Mindset Versus fixed mindset. Yeah, people can actually get better if given the proper environment. I think Bsp is one of those proper environments at Berkeley.
And we have evidence, right? Strength, base versus deficit-based. Nobody wants to be viewed as this bundle of deficits.
Oh, poor! You! You don't have 1, 2, 3, 4, and let me keep going. We look for the strengths in students, and we build on those strengths we acknowledge the fact that there is a preparation expectation.
Gap. But we build on the strengths rather than focus on. In quotes the deficits. It's flipping the script.
It's really changing how we work with students. We don't fix students. Okay, we coach students starting.
Point and distance travel because life is not fair. We start off in different points in terms of opportunity, access, and information, and some of us have a longer distance to travel.
Therefore it may take us longer to express our fullest potential in stem. Yeah, life is not fair, and we know that.
Different clock, versus normative time.
Students always say I'm falling behind behind. What the arbitrary for your plan, if you're entering freshmen, or the arbitrary two-year plan, if you're a transfer student falling behind focus on quality and not speed focus on graduating well, and not fast that's really really important so this different clock thing, is a real hard thing, to talk to students about because they want to be normal
they want to graduate with the people they came in with. You know, and time is money, because oftentimes parents are looking over their shoulders saying, so when are you going to get a job meaning get out of school, and get a job?
Okay.
Pathway b versus plan b some advisors have said to my students, who you want to be a doctor, but you got to see in general in organic chemistry.
Have you considered another career? That's plan B, we say so. You want to be a doctor. Let's understand.
You know what experiences you've had that really inform that career choice. And let's find a way, if that is, in fact, what you want to do a pathway be.
And it takes some of our students longer, maybe a post-back program, maybe some time out of school, then returning until conditions are right for them to really be competitively eligible, taking courses at a community college those sorts of things.
Advising is really, really critical, advising. You know, it's advising slash counseling, and you know it's not just academics, but it's about life matters.
And I think that's really really important, because for many of our students, life is happening in a very big way, very, very big way.
All sorts of challenges.
So Bsp. Members have reported the following approach to advising by advisors outside of Bsp, typically, the conversation starts off with a performance to date.
So the transcript is brought up on the screen talking about Gpa. Major career goals. It's then followed by, so you know what I school did you go to, or community college?
And that's the reason why you haven't been getting enough sleep. Are you hungry? Do you need to go to the food pantry?
Okay, what's happening back home. Also, you have to go back to Fresno. You know, every other weekend, because there are family issues.
All of that matters. That's the context need to consider contact. It's all it's important. Then we talk about preparation and history.
And then we talk about how all of that comes together to yield the academic outcome that they're there to talk to you about.
Okay. And then we ask them what they're gonna say, no to, because they don't have enough time.
Say no is one of the hardest things for our students. Right? Because, look, these are Cal students, and you should be able to do 20 different things and volunteer at the emergency room and Highland hospital and all those sorts of things.
And still have a 4 Gpa. And so there's a whole should be should be able to mindset.
And that's what drives a lot of our students. And once again our students want to be normal students.
And the hidden curriculum, or the messages that they're receiving is that it's okay to hurt.
It's okay. It's okay, you know, if you're not. If you're only getting 2 h of sleep and night, you should be able to do that. If you don't, then maybe you don't belong.
Teaching. Let me go through this. There's a course that I teach called studying the biological sciences it's an interdepartmental course that's listed in plant and molecular biology, molecular cell biology and integrated biology and it's an introduction to the culture of the university and university science it helps students, navigate the university hey, provides them with a map skills
sort of conceptual frameworks to help them understand what they're experiencing. This is based upon students frequently asked questions and experiences.
This is about listening once again, and really kind of formulating a plan based on what they're saying, what they're experiencing.
And it makes explicit the hidden curriculum at Berkeley in the culture of biology at Berkeley, and provides reality checks because in a situation where there's a power dynamic.
If a student is told they're wrong, they're they're wrong. Okay, especially if if they are questioning whether or not they belong at Berkeley.
These, these these aggressions really kind of build up.
And for me teaching is mentoring. And here's an interesting study that we did in in the course.
I asked students about safe spaces based upon their own personal experience. The safe spaces on campus. I wanted them to rate spaces from a scale of one very safe to 4 very unsafe, based upon their experiences, and then I gave them a list.
Oh, different offices on campus. Okay? And I ask them, what makes us safe space and what makes a space unsafe for you?
And so I compiled the unsafe and very unsafe space list. And here's the here's the the continuum.
The Eop office was the sameest space that the 56 students, in the course that had experienced, you know, had gone to the up office.
None of them saw this as either safe or unsafe.
The Student Learning Center 11 out of the 60. Now, this is a small, we can't. We can't come to any conclusions.
Okay, this is a small sample. And this may have been a problem with small sample size 11 out of the 60 said that they had had unsafe or very unsafe experience.
Let's go up the unsafe run department advising it goes up.
Next, the Financial Aid office, 60% of my students are on financial aid and they're going to an office that's supposed to be there to help them.
And they experienced. Their experience was that they were wrong. They didn't know they should have known the rules and Regs and they felt very unsafe in that space.
But a rock and a hard place, you know, to have to go get the money that they need not feeling safe.
Here we go stem office hours. Okay? Now again, small sample size we can't rush to judgment here, but I just wanted to show you I'm tapping into what they were thinking and what they were experiencing.
I was listening to them. Stem discussion, section.
And last but not least, stem research labs of the 15 students who were doing research in that class of 60 62 students, 10 out of 15 felt that their experience in the lab was unsafe, and we could go into that later.
Mika once again, and I along with Allegra at Uc Santa Cruz, wrote up a paper on Kindness and Stem.
Those are 2 words that you don't usually hear spoken in the same sentence, but Mika and I were sitting in my office, and we were.
This is one of those back of the envelopes. Sort of, you know. Moments we were saying. Let's figure out how to describe to the world what students are experienced or what we're all experiencing.
And we said, Let's assume that there were 3 different types of institutional environments, prejudiced, ambiguous, and inclusive. Okay?
And let's talk about aggressions and affirmations. Micro and macro. Okay, so in a prejudiced institutional environment, you get high macro and high microaggression, it is so clear that you're not wanted.
There. Okay, writ large on the poster board is like we don't want you in interactions in the classroom, in the laboratory.
I don't want to be your lab partner. We don't want you. Okay, that's a prejudiced environment.
What about at the opposite end of the continuum the inclusive institutional environment? We see the reverse.
Hi, Macroaffirmation, high micro affirmation. In other words, the public headline and the in private interactions are consistent with one another.
They're both affirming. What is Berkeley? Well, according to my students, over the many, many years I've been doing.
Dsp, we are here. We're in an ambiguous institutional environment, high macroaffirmation, excellence, and diversity isn't that our isn't that our our motto, Excellence and diversity?
But in choosing a lab partner in being asked or not asked to join a study group aggression at the student.
Individual micro level, and that is confusing as hell, and that hurts. Aren't you supposed to welcome? Isn't this?
Why you're at Berkeley. How come? I can't join?
So consider this statement. Effective mentoring is obvious. When you see it and experience it. But less obvious is how to mentor somebody who comes from a very different background than you.
Okay, that's a challenge.
How do we go from describing to practicing good mentoring? So from concept? The practice? Here are some recommendations, cultural humility versus cultural competence.
Listen and learn versus, assume and generalize cultural competence. There's a problem with that competence implies that there's an end point that if you learn everything on the list that you've arrived, that if I have a list about you, Sally, and I learned all those traits all those background, characteristics.
I all know you. No, that's impossible. Cultural humility says there's always more to learn. So let me listen first.
Before I act.
Growth, mindset talent, development, versus this notion of inborn brilliance. Okay, competition.
Like, I say, all competition isn't bad. If it's a we win versus I win sort of situation.
We can do communal competition and master the concepts. And we have to have space and time. There's a cost.
Here's the cost, space and time to develop talent, to help students develop an identity. Academic identity.
That is, that aligns with their personal identity. Oftentimes these 2 identities are in conflict with one another, we're asked to give up who we are.
We're asked to leave our culture at the door in order to join science and also to identify a career that's intrinsically interesting where you can make a living and have a positive impact on the world.
Those are some things that we can do to be good mentors.
So what is bsp, it's all those things, and there's room for one more.
Dsp. Is an institutional workaround. It's a free pass for a Berkeley and other institutions with programs to maintain the status quo.
Let me quickly talk about this, how we respond in a crisis is very telling. Okay, you know, if there's an earthquake, a hurricane, a flood, you really, you really see ourselves and others in a new light, a lot comes out.
So, how institutionally we respond to crisis is really, really telling in Flint, Michigan, when there was lead in the drinking water.
What was the response? Bottled water. Okay, it wasn't about. Okay. We need to.
We need to get more money in here. We need to change the whole infrastructure to make sure that the water source and the pipes and everything didn't produce this cilitaries effect differentially, impacting the African American community bottle water for those of you in California you know, this we were having lots.
Of wildfires and Pacific gas and electric Pg. And E. In Northern California. They said, whenever there's high winds, what was their response to the crisis?
Turn off the electricity, turn off the where there was deferred maintenance on power lines.
They weren't burying power lines. All these sorts of things. It was a bottle water approach, and II claim that our response to the pipeline problem and this is a this is when Dan Kochlin was editor of science.
And this was the same year that Bsp was started. Our response to the pipeline problem is the bottle water response where we are using programs as the bottle of water to address a really important problem.
And I call this approach program one where programs are workarounds for outsiders. And I've already defined what outsiders is to succeed in a system not designed with them in mind.
So we need to transition, because I believe right now we have one foot on the terra firma of program.
One. But the future is moving away and we're caught in between. That's where we are right now.
That's where we are, and we need to think really, really different. Now, we do this in other areas. That's the thing.
We do this in other areas always. But there seems to be stasis in terms of how we're dealing with equity and inclusion.
So back in the day some of you are old enough to recognize what I'm about to show you. What are these?
What are these? These are actually 8 track teams, 8 track tapes. So back in the day we used to play our music on these things.
And today we have that. And this is, in fact, old school, because it's got wires. Okay, so we need to get out of an eight-track mindset around E.
And I work, and so updated E and I, thinking underrepresentation and achievement gaps are not the problem.
In fact, they're symptoms of the problem. And the problem is that a system that leads to underrepresentation and achievement gaps the way our policies are set up.
The way the attitudes we have, what we say to students, you know, advising sessions, and when they enter our laboratories and so on.
So the solution is the fix our institutions and not our students. And we've begun to do that.
And so at Nsf. The advanced program for many years. The includes program also for Nih, the build and the Nrmn program are all about institutional change at Hmi inclusive excellence and also driving change.
Okay. However, there, me also needs to be a change in how we think about programs. And I call this program 2 point O, we need to think beyond supersizing programs that is making a program like Bsp, have instead of 400 students.
1,000 students that doesn't fix the problem. That's bottled water, okay? Or franchising, creating a Bsp at other institutions.
No, that's bottled water we're exporting. Instead, we need to think about our programs as incubators and labs to develop approaches that close equity gaps.
Things that we can actually adapt and scale. Yes, institution-wide. So this helps. This will help institutions be the program.
Instead of having to have programs where the best program practices are adapted and scaled so that all students are supported, not just those in the program.
Now it's not as simple as it's not as simple as as that. Many things need to happen.
This needs to be data-driven. And Sally and I've been talking about this. There needs to be institutional selfics, self-assessment.
Institutional data are hard to get, because they're often times in different repositories on campus than the databases don't talk to each other.
We also have to disaggregate our data in terms of what works, for whom and under what conditions.
And we also need to use qualitative along with quantitative data. That's really really important, because it's the story, the qualitative data behind the numbers.
We need to know the stories that really lead to these outcomes.
So the data are necessary, but not sufficient. In order to scale what works we have to align. Our efforts with campus initiatives.
We have to have champions. Champions are really important on campus people with the cred, with the street, cred with administrators, with other faculty, with staff.
Carrots and sticks. There has to be a payoff. What's in it for me to change?
That's the with them. What's in it for me. So there have to be reward structures.
Maybe career advancement that have to be tied to this work. And this is the marathon, and not a sprint, which means that we just can't do this in a single iteration that we have to hand the baton off to the next generation in terms of relevant models a suggestion the Americans with disabilities act the ada brilliant in its conception brilliant because it didn't
say, well, let's consider what happens to people in wheelchairs with the hearing impaired. With this, with that it said that all of our institutions need to be accessible period.
Science needs to be accessible to anybody who wants to access science and universal design. Curve cuts, right curb cuts, work for all of us, don't they?
Whether or not we are in a chair, or have a stroller, or have a bike curb cuts.
Cbpr community based participatory research. We do things with communities, not 2 communities. Listen to our students. Listen to our faculty, listen to our administrators because they're all stakeholders in the change.
Cbpr. Is a whole disciplinary specialty, and I think we need to involve those social scientists that are experts in this field to bring them in and to work collaboratively with them, and which stem equity models to scale first of all they must be inclusive not just for a small fraction or slice of the student population they need to be really inclusive students who are really well prepared students who
come! With this huge expectation, preparation, gap generalizable. Not all institutions are equally well-resourced.
Not all institutions have the same level of selectivity in terms of admissions. The model needs to be generalizable, cost-effective.
Some programs cost a whole lot $3,000 for Bsp. Per student per year. That sounds like a lot. Some programs cost a whole lot more.
And sustainable, and gotta put in a plug such as Bsp.
So let let me move on from here because I won't have time. So this work is challenging.
This work. Sometimes I go home, really, really deflated. And what keeps me going? Are my students?
It keeps me going. Are my students, their stories, their backgrounds, their courage. And so I want to end on a high note here and I'm gonna bring in the poet. Dr.
Maya Angelou, who said the following, I've learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel, and I wanna paraphrase and borrow from her.
Poem continue, and I want to dedicate this to my Bsp. Students.
My wish for Bsp members past President, future is to continue to be who and how they are to astonish a mean world with their acts of kindness for them to continue to remind the people that each as as good as the other, and that no one is beneath nor above them for our members to continue to let gratitude be the pillow upon which they kneel and finally for bsp members to continue to dare to
love deeply and risk everything for the good thing, and by doing so they and their work will be able to continue eternally.
Thank you very much.
Well, thank you, I we have time for questions and all. How does this work here? If John has time to answer, people have open real conversations with students about power, privilege, racism, sexism, ableism.
In the Academy, and how to fight it. Not just navigate it. So the question is, do I have real conversations about racism, power, differentials?
Yeah, institutional bias. All those things in in the history of this country. Yes, and we do this in another course that I didn't talk about.
It's called Mcb. 15, electron cell biology 15. The public engagement with science and many of our students are first generation students, and they are the bridge between the university and back home.
And so, as they talk about as they try to explain what they're learning at the university, there are so many things that get in the way they are the ambassadors they are the emissaries.
They are the people who are going to actually make be the British. And so we talk about those barriers in terms of all the things that you've just mentioned.
Yeah, we talk about stereotype threat. We talk about implicit bias. We talk about hidden figures in science and why and about credit.
In science. We talk about all those sorts of things, and we talk about the use and abuse and the responsible conduct of research.
We talk about those things.
Questions from the room. I can take the privilege of asking the last question. Then I it really struck me that the least safe spaces are that I mean you do a great job in the rest of the campus.
Is not intentionally, but creating an unsafe space such as an office hours and you didn't ask about the actual instruction classroom.
But I bet that's worse, and it always comes down to the people who ask questions don't actually have a question.
They want to show you how smart they are, and and I spent the whole time thinking, Well, how could I change that? What can I do?
Different. And I realize I probably when I get excited when they ask a question that takes it to the next step.
And I'm like, that's a fantastic question rather than the person who asked me the question, which showed they didn't understand anything I said.
And so how can we change that? And how can we create a an avenue to make sure the rest of the world and all those things that you don't do become more inclusive such as office hours?
Because that was really striking to me. Sure, I think data help, you know. I mean, I think there was a study done.
Institution wide. That that showed how students disaggregated disaggregated data, how students from different ethnic backgrounds experience different spaces on campus like departmental advising classroom, and so on.
So data are our starting point. But you know we aren't data driven in terms of a lot of decisions that we make.
We aren't evidence-based, you know the sort of a belief system, and if you believe that's the cream will rise to the top and the office hour is part of that rising so that students can show you who's better than you may want to recruit that student into your lab if that is the understanding of a successful office hour and the practice will continue I think we have to
be really clear about what we mean by success, what the function is, I mean, we're a land-grant institution, and we're committed to serve the residents of California, and they are paying our spins are paying our salaries right they're the consumer.
And how can we not make accessible our office hours? So I think data. I also think that the change has to happen at the departmental level, that the chairs have to set the tone that during departmental meetings often you know there needs to be trainings that are that happen.
Maybe Zoom and slack have helped those kids so we're at time. Is that right, Jared?
So I just I'm incredibly proud for the Nsf. For you, for Berkeley, and thank you so much for coming in, thanks to the working group for inviting John.
Thank you. Thank you.