Think Big Diversity: Advice for Aspiring #STEM Ph.D. Graduate Students, Postdocs, and Junior Faculty

Read Dr. Andrew Williams’ #ThinkBigDiversity summary of his 2015 PROMISE SSI keynote.

This past weekend, I was honored and humbled to speak of around 180 aspiring #STEM professor’s at Maryland’s National Science Foundation funded PROMISE AGEP #ThinkBigDiversity Summer Success Institute workshop, led by Dr. Renetta Tull. It was so encouraging and heartening to see so many African American, Latino/Latina, and Native American STEM graduate students, postdocs and faculty. As a former Spelman College faculty member and department chair, I was especially delighted to learn about #teamgetitdone, a.k.a. the Sisters in Dissertation House. Speaking to this group was a little nostalgic because in the late 90’s, I had attended an NSF Engineering Education Scholars Program that was led by Denice Denton at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before she left to become an engineering Dean at the University of Washington. This program helped me gain insight into the process of getting a Ph.D., starting a research program, and being a productive faculty member.

As…

View original post 2,600 more words

Published by Renetta Garrison Tull

Dr. Renetta Garrison Tull is the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at the University of California Davis. She previously served as Associate Vice Provost for Strategic Initiatives at The Graduate School at UMBC, and was Professor of the Practice in the College of Engineering & IT. She was Special Assistant to the Sr. Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs & Director of Graduate and Professional Pipeline Development for the University System of Maryland (12 institutions). She is the Founding Director of PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) – http://www.umbc.edu/promise, and Co-PI for the USM LSAMP. Her research on global diversity in STEM continues, and she is an international speaker, covering nearly all continents, for groups and conferences such as the World Engineering Education Forum, the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies, and the Pacific Sciences Congress. Her personal website is: http://renettatull.wordpress.com. Connect with her on Twitter: @Renetta_Tull; https://twitter.com/Renetta_Tull View more posts