Newsletter

September 2022 | Issue 3

Would you like to hear more about our meetings? Please visit https://bit.ly/CD3-mm to read our meeting minutes. SUNet ID login to Google.com required.

Faculty Survey and Diversity Engagement Survey Report

Brief Summary

39 Respondents / 91 Immunology Faculty ~ 43% response rate
Quantitative scores paint rosier picture than Qualitative comments

“I don't think online training modules will help. Honestly, I think many of our more senior faculty across the university (not necessarily in immunology) think DEI is a joke and frankly they need to go and we need a new generation with capacity for neural plasticity.”
“I also attend DEI meetings offered by the University… Notably, no male faculty from immunology ever participate in these things.”

“I think that my lab is one of the more diverse ones in the Immunology program, but this may be a happy accident rather than the result of an intense focus on diversity in my hiring. I mainly prioritize finding lab members who are interested in the subject, open-minded, kind and thoughtful toward others, and who enjoy working hard.”

Diversity Engagement Survey Report for the Immunology Program

Brief Summary

A total of 31-40 students, postdocs, staff, and faculty
• 27 were graduate students, approximately half were non-male and less than half were non-white.
8 categories of questions were asked with multiple these included:
• Access to Opportunity, Appreciation of Individual Attributes, Common Purpose, Cultural Competence, Equitable Reward and Recognition, Respect, Sense of Belonging, and Trust.
For this summary we chose to highlight 4 question from 3 of the 8 categories,
• Cultural Competence, Sense of Belonging and Trust within the Immunology program.

We evaluated the aggregated respondent's response to these question based on demographics such as role, whether they were a graduate student or all other merged groups

Conclusions

There is a disconnect between faculty perceived understanding of DEI issues and graduate student overall experiences.
Postdocs feel largely left out of the immunology program [conclusions from the Diversity Engagement Survey].

CD3 Committee Advice

Although CD3 thnks male and senior faculty for participating in the committee, we need more active participation!
Faculty should attend happy hours with post doc and students
Faculty should work to incorporate DEIB efforts in their day-to-day activities.
Faculty should work to create environments of belonging.

Moving Forward: Faculty suggested efforts to improve DEI

“The NexGen symposium has been fantastic.”
“More efforts should be taken to recruit DEIB trainees and faculty. It needs to be a priority of the faculty who are participating in recruitment.”
“Sign up for SSRP [ ADVANCE, REACH or PROPEL] students.”
“Work on diseases of the needy and not diseases of the rich.”
“I think we have good programs for recruiting diverse trainees, but we need to do a better job of creating a nurturing environment, retaining them, and increasing diversity of faculty.”
“Don't let people with obvious prejudices continue to serve on admissions committees.”

Other suggestions from the CDIII committee for faculty participation

Immunology Preview weekend (Sept 27th, 2022)
Annual Immunology Scientific conference discussion (Jan 27th - 29th, 2023)
PROSPER program (First cohort: Fall 2022)
Join CDIII (New faculty recruitment: Fall 2022)
Attend Immunology social events such as happy hours (monthly and quarterly meetings)
Participate in DEIB trainings (more information to come in a follow up email)

Closing Remarks

It's been hard to cultivate a sense of community amidst a pandemic, but I feel that there could be some more interplay between the faculty and students that creates space for this. It would be good to have more candid conversations about shared ideals, missions and ways to support each other along the journey.

In the pursuit of transparency links to the aggregate data from both surveys are provided below. Please log in with your Stanford SUNet ID on Google.com to view.

Diversity Engagement Survey Report

CDIII Faculty Survey Results