A series of incidents of hate and bias on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus has prompted campus officials and my dean in the College of Engineering to send out a letter to faculty stating that the College of Engineering will embark on a multi-year process to provide implicit bias training for students, faculty, and staff. I applaud these efforts. I also recognize that most of the incidents are happening outside of the classroom where I cannot see them. Still, it’s imperative that administrators and professors lead on the issue of diversity and inclusion. Showing our students that we are committed to diversity and inclusion will play an important role in helping students feel welcome and safe on campus.

This is what I try to do for all students, with the intent that it may make more of a difference to marginalized students such as underrepresented minority (URMs), women students, students from disadvantaged backgrounds, or students with disabilities. I recognize that I am not perfect. I am always trying to learn and improve. Feedback is very welcome.

Note about myself: I am a women in engineering who has a lot of experience in diversity and inclusion efforts for women in engineering. When I was a student, I felt like a fraud, I felt marginalized at times, and I felt like I did not always have a voice. But I am not a diversity expert; I’m just a diversity fangirl. I try to do small things with great love and to continually improve what I do. My goal as a professor is to help all my students feel “welcome at the table” so to speak.

What I do in the classroom:

1. I strive to treat all students the same. This means treating each student like an individual and responding to their individual needs. This will be a lifelong challenge because I am human and surely hold on to some stereotypes. I make it a goal to give all students the same opportunities as opposed to trying to “correct” for biases I may have (which can make things worse — see stereotype threat).
2. I give a sense that my course is challenging but doable, with an emphasis on doable. I never only tell students how hard engineering is, because students who are marginalized in any way sometimes get the message that if they find something hard, it means they are inherently bad at it and will not be successful. Instead, I focus on the “doable” part. Recognizing that student abilities are malleable is a positive message that directly combats notions that a student is not welcome or is flawed.
3. I do not use gender or names in any generic classroom examples (no “he” or “she” in classroom examples when referring to an engineer who is solving a problem about simulation).
4. I am careful when “randomly” assigning student groups. I try to ensure that there isn’t only one woman student in a group, for example. I usually let students choose their own group so they are most comfortable.
5. I strive to give all students a voice. I ask students what they think when talking with students doing group work in class. That way, I can “give” everyone a voice, which is particularly important for students from marginalized groups who do not feel like they have a voice.
6. I touch base with students during active learning segments in class, even if they do not ask for help. Students who do not feel “welcome to the table” often do not ask for help because they feel like a fraud. Helping students clear small hurdles in class can build their confidence. Again, I like to focus on how engineering is “doable” and how skills can be learned.
7. I talk about imposter syndrome in the classroom (this is not for everyone).
8. I talk about stereotype threat in the classroom (this is really not for everyone).
9. I give a class of students a positive affirmation before an exam. I remind my students about how much they have learned and how I believe they have come a long way. If they ask if the test is hard (and they always do), I say it’s tough but fair and doable. I keep the messages positive to counteract stereotype threat. In fact, this is one of the most effective ways for teachers to improve the test scores of marginalized students:
   • “One of the most powerful things teachers can do to offset the stereotype threat and bolster student performance is to prompt students to reflect on their talents, beliefs and values. These kinds of “affirmations” remind students of what’s important to them and can build a line of defense against stereotype threat.” [Reference]

What I do outside of the classroom aimed at improving student access to opportunities and achievement. Usually these things take place during office hours and advising:

1. I ask students about their plans for the summer and encourage them to consider internships, co-ops, research experiences for undergraduates (REUs).
2. I invite students to department events (colloquiums, receptions, reunions, etc.)
3. I talk to students about graduate school. This is a big one. Graduate school is not on everyone’s radar, and telling a student they should think about graduate school because they have something to offer is sometimes a life-changing conversation for a marginalized student.
4. I serve as a reference for students (if they ask me) and be even-handed in how I refer to students in the letters (see this word cloud of words used in letters for men and in letters for women).
5. I tell a student that I believe in their abilities and know they will be successful as a future industrial engineer when they stop in for office hours, when the going gets tough, at the department graduation party, etc. Positive affirmations.
6. I congratulate an underrepresented minority (URM) or women student for an achievement (internship, new job, award, etc.) and ensure that awards get publicized in the department and college.
7. I nominate the student for a campus or department award and write a letter of recommendation for the student if one is needed.
8. I publicize department opportunities in the classroom (for department scholarships, etc.) and personally recommend that students apply for a department scholarship award.
9. I try to rid myself of stereotypes and biases I have by reading about biases when I can.

What I do with my colleagues:

1. Add items to related to diversity and inclusion to the meeting agendas.
2. Bring up issues of diversity and inclusion when discusses new classes, especially those for freshmen where inclusion should be a goal.
3. Encourage inviting speakers from underrepresented groups to give department colloquiums.
4. Ask colloquium speakers, especially those from underrepresented groups, to speak to graduate students when they visit.
5. Encourage colleagues to ask candidates from underrepresented groups to apply for faculty positions (and do so myself).

I want to reiterate that I am not an expert. These tips are things that work for me, and I know I am leaving some top tips out. This list from Vanderbilt contains some additional recommendations and suggestions for learning more. What do you do in and out of the classroom? Help me improve.

Articles on bias:

• Silent technical privilege by Philip Guo.
• The False Promise of Meritocracy
• Thin Ice: Stereotype Threat and Black College Students

XKCD comic called “How it works” because this is absolutely not how it should work.

Edits on 4/27 to include my tweets about this post:

Update on 7/15/16. I discovered this paper from PLoS called “Peer-Led Team Learning Helps Minority Students Succeed”

Peer-Led Team Learning and active learning has been shown to reduce grade disparities between underrepresented minority students and students from more white and privileged backgrounds. Lecturing has the highest level of disparity. Other research out there done by education experts suggest that if you care about diversity, you should replace lecturing with active learning. I have some work to do, but it’s great to know how to target my teaching efforts.

Update on 3/29/18

Francis Edward Su wrote an article entitled “Mathematical Microaggressions” about creating a growth mindset in class to help a diverse set of students reach their potential.

Markus Brauer at UW-Madison has a handout with some suggestions for teaching in a diverse classroom. Here are some of his suggestions based on published evidence in the literature.

1. Insist on the “utility value” of the material you are teaching in class. Explain clearly how the students will be able to use the knowledge they learn in your class later in life. Some studies suggest that this is beneficial for all students, but particularly for students from historically underrepresented populations.
2. Ask all students to express what they value and why these values are important for them.
3. Specify in your syllabus what tasks students will have to fulfill in your class and post your website ahead of time. This way, students can see if certain disabilities prevent them from having a positive learning experience in the class.
4. Communicate that most students feel in the first semesters that they do not “belong” but that most of them tend to overcome these difficulties and end up feeling quite connected in later semesters.
5. Build some flexibility in your assignment schedule. For example, allows students to have in 1 assignment up to 48 hours late with no penalty. This is essential for students with certain types of disabilities, such as mental illness.
6. Be aware that you don’t have to call on the first student who raises their hand. Take the time to call on students who rarely talk in class to encourage everyone to give verbal and non-verbal feedback.
7. When presenting empirical results, show pictures of the scientists who conducted the research. Do so especially when the researcher is a woman or a URM.
8. Consider doing “low impact testing,” where students can take the quiz multiple times until they get all the answers right. These types of activities should account for <10% of the final grade. This type of activity tends to help pull up students with the lowest grades.
9. Do not grade according to a curve. Instead, use an a priori grading scheme.
10. When talking about groups, emphasize the groups’ heterogeneity and discuss the large within-group differences. Making salient that a stigmatized group is heterogeneous creates more positive feelings toward this group.

A few years ago, researchers Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa released a book called “Academically Adrift” that claims that many students don’t leave college with new knowledge and new skills [Link to an article in the Chronicle]: Here is what they found:

Growing numbers of students are sent to college at increasingly higher costs, but for a large proportion of them the gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and written communication are either exceedingly small or empirically nonexistent. At least 45 percent of students in our sample did not demonstrate any statistically significant improvement in Collegiate Learning Assessment [CLA] performance during the first two years of college. [Further study has indicated that 36 percent of students did not show any significant improvement over four years.]

The CLA is a proxy measure for what students learned during college. This suggests that more than a third of college students do not demonstrate any improvement in critical thinking during college. This is a tragedy. College is expensive.

Now there are a few things to note. Most obviously, these results are averaged across all students in all majors at all universities. Your mileage may vary. I share this information with my students on the first day of class. I challenge my students, but I think they will get their money’s worth from my class and will leave with tangible improvements in critical thinking and complex reasoning (and sometimes written communication, but I could do more with writing).

Students who did the best didn’t always go to the best universities (but that helps). Students with high levels of learning:

• studied alone (yeah for introverts!)
• had professors with high academic expectations
• studied traditional liberal arts and sciences (as compared to business, education and communications).

This suggests the only thing I can do as a professor is to have high expectations for students (and to give assignments that raise these expectations).

I realize that in the big picture, some programs are quite competitive and attract the types of students who like being challenged and as a result, are challenged. But I realize it’s more complicated than this: there is a push and pull between professors and students about expectations (see this article about a teaching assistant at Columbia who inflated grades because so many students complained and it’s been widely reported that college students study much less than they used to). In general, these researchers found that professors do not expect much of the students and assign almost no homework.

A follow up report is out [Link] called “Aspiring Adults Adrift.” The authors found that the same students who didn’t learn much in college continue to struggle with employment afterward. What they find is really interesting. The same students that didn’t do well on the CLA were more likely to be unemployed, under employed, employed in a job with low skill requirements, and laid off. In other words, employers are good at recognizing who developed more skills in college and who didn’t.

The research suggests that some students don’t want to be challenged or to learn; they just want a degree. It’s not fun to “teach” students who don’t want to learn anything.

Interestingly, the students themselves cannot tell if they’ve learned a lot in college. They all assume they’ve learned a lot! This is not good. It implies that students are not good consumers when it comes to investing in their educations, and don’t see implications of taking blow off courses or choosing easy programs. (Side note: this is a reason why students should not estimate how much they’ve learned in end of the semester teaching evaluations.) The article ends with an important point:

Yet those same students continue to believe they got a great education, even after two years of struggle [after graduation]. This suggests a fundamental failure in the higher education market — while employers can tell the difference between those who learned in college and those who were left academically adrift, the students themselves cannot.

Finally, correction at the end of the NY Times article made me cringe:

“An earlier version of this article incorrectly used a male courtesy title for Josipa Roksa. She is a woman.”

I am curious about how you challenge students in tough classes. I’ve been given a lot of teaching advice of the years, and most of it hasn’t been very useful or practical (“Just be an extroverted man with CEO hair and you’ll do great!”). Teaching is definitely all about managing expectations, and I’d like to do that without caving and giving everyone an A (I don’t!). I’m sure I have a lot to learn from my readers who I know teach a lot of “hard” courses.

https://twitter.com/lauramclay/status/390156734490087424

I am teaching an undergraduate simulation course in the spring to industrial engineering students. I have plenty of lecture notes from colleagues, but I am missing simple classroom demos (like an Excel spreadsheet), classroom modeling activities, and case studies. This is a bleg for additional material to enhance my teaching. Please email me with any material or post a link. Thank you in advance!

Today was my last class of the semester before the final. In most of my courses, I give a fun talk about what professors really do outside of the classroom. I also go over my one (or seven) things that I want students to learn from me every semester. At the end of the talk, I tell students that while our world is becoming more complex and quantitative, math is often underused. Math is a superpower.

I once heard that the world runs on eighth grade math. I don’t think that is true for many industries (especially the ones that hire operations research graduates!), but a study compiled in a Northeastern University study shows that few Americans use advanced mathematics on the job [Link to the Jordan Weissman article in The Atlantic].

I remain optimistic about the need for advanced math. First, it’s possible that few workers use math because few workers are proficient in math. In fact, “Upper Blue Collar” workers are the most likely to use math. This should motivate us to teach math better, not to conclude that it isn’t needed. Second, it’s worth noting that the Northeastern study data is summarized across the workers surveyed (not across industries or companies). It’s certainly possible that nearly all companies perform statistics but that relatively few workers actually do the statistics (22% of upper white collar workers in the figure above) and that the average worker isn’t always aware of it.

The bottom line is that the survey suggests that relatively few workers do the hard number crunching, so there is a competitive advantage for those who are willing and able to do it. Math may not really be a super power, but it’s something that most workers do not get to enjoy on a regular basis.