Exit Slip 05/10/23

I think the importance of representation in the sciences is definitely underestimated among the scientific community. It's obvious that showcasing people from minority groups who have been successful in the sciences tells other people from these groups that a career in the sciences is possible for them, which is important in its own right, but I think it also has other benefits that people don't really think about as much.

Showing that success in the sciences is not limited to people who look a certain way can help show students that they can pursue any field they want. If anyone can be successful in the sciences, there's no reason to think this isn't true for other career paths as well. For many years, science was a discipline that was mostly practiced by white men, or at least that's what people were led to believe, and letting people see that anyone can pursue science shows people that they don't have to fit the stereotypes of a scientist in order to become one. Similarly, seeing the increasing diversity of people working in the sciences tells young boys that they can pursue female-dominated fields like nursing and childcare if they want to. More generally, seeing increased diversity in one field lets people know that diversity is possible in other fields as well, so they should pursue what they want.

Something else I've been thinking about is how many of the common phrases we wrote about math and physics classes are centred around perceived intelligence barriers to doing well in these subjects. I think that encouraging everyone regardless of race, gender, etc. to pursue math and science if they want to is helpful in breaking these barriers and letting students know that you don't have to be a genius to be a scientist and that hard work will pay off in your math class. Intelligence is often associated with white men in Western society (let me clarify that I don't think this association is accurate but in Western society, most people would draw a picture of a white man if you ask them to draw a genius), so when the only scientists you see are white men that fit your image of what a genius looks like, you start to believe that you have to be a genius to be successful in the sciences. Talking about successful scientists who don't fit this description helps students realize that anyone can pursue the sciences if they have a passion for it because it's more about your drive to be successful than it is about fitting the stereotype of what you think a scientist should look like.

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