New Book by Pullias Researcher Examines Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Efforts Across Graduate STEM Education

Julie Posselt’s “Equity in Science: Representation, Culture, and the Dynamics of Change in Graduate Education” reveals the subtle ways that exclusion and power operate in scientific organizations.

“It is no revelation that culture change of some sort is needed in science, and so widespread is this awareness that more and more people want to be associated with contributing to positive cultural changes,” highlights Posselt.  “The trouble is, few within science have been socialized to recognize the cultures in their midst, much less what changing them entails.”

Through this book Dr. Posselt, Pullias Center faculty member and Associate Professor of Higher Education at the University of Southern California, calls on academia to think about how we might recognize and reward faculty and staff for their expertise and place equal value on those who do the work of cultural translation.  Cultural translators, Posselt found, draw upon the language and sensibilities of a culture to improve understanding across boundaries– be they disciplinary, gender, racial, and more. Equity in Science: Representation, Culture, and the Dynamics of Change in Graduate Education argues that understanding how field-specific cultures in STEM disciplines develop is a crucial step in making real change. Dr. Posselt examines organizations’ implicit and structural barriers by looking at existing equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts in the fields of astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, and psychology.

“The purposes of this book are to understand the possibilities and limits of equity efforts in science, and to inform future efforts toward this end,” notes Posselt.  “By learning from outlier organizations that have pursued change, readers will see a balance of positive and negative lessons.”  Dr. Posselt outlines why accelerating inclusion in science requires coordination, reconfiguring power relations, and the facilitation of collaboration across boundaries — social and natural sciences, faculty-student-administrator roles, and race/gender/social identities, to name a few — that typically keep people and scholars separated.

The book is in some ways a continuation of the conversation about graduate admissions started in her 2016 book,  Inside Graduate Admissions: Merit, Diversity, and Faculty Gatekeeping. To learn more about equity and inclusion in graduate education, visit the Equity in Graduate Education section of the Pullias Center website.