The Breakdown of Women in STEM | Jess Ellis | TEDxCSM — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:01so I'd like to tell you a story today
2. 0:04during my second year in college I took
3. 0:07a spring break trip to a beautiful
4. 0:10country where I was recommended against
5. 0:12drinking the water and this was my first
6. 0:15international travel without adult
7. 0:17supervision and so I really wanted to
8. 0:19embrace the identity of world traveler
9. 0:21and I didn't want to be that pretentious
10. 0:23American who used bottled water to brush
11. 0:26my teeth so I drink the water inevitably
12. 0:29it became pretty ill and I went to my
13. 0:31university health center and I told them
14. 0:33I had just been in this beautiful
15. 0:34country I drank the water now I'm sick
16. 0:37and they said well what's most likely
17. 0:40happening is you have a stomach flu you
18. 0:42have a bug just go on a liquid diet
19. 0:44you'll be fine and I said no no you
20. 0:46don't understand I was just in this
21. 0:48country I drink the water I'm feeling
22. 0:50really ill they said no going to liquid
23. 0:52diet
24. 0:53so I did and after losing about 15
25. 0:57pounds I realized that that chicken soup
26. 1:01wasn't really soothing my stomach or my
27. 1:03soul and so I went back to that health
28. 1:05center and I asked them to do some more
29. 1:08tests and I'll not share the details of
30. 1:11those tests with you right now but once
31. 1:15I did those tests they gave me the
32. 1:16diagnosis that I knew was there although
33. 1:18I didn't know the word for it at the
34. 1:20time when I heard that word what it did
35. 1:22for me was gave me a confirmation that
36. 1:24what I was feeling that wasn't addressed
37. 1:28with the word stomach flu or stomach bug
38. 1:30something else was there so that word
39. 1:33was Giardia I won't go into details of
40. 1:36what that is um but with that word it
41. 1:39let me feel like there was a word for
42. 1:42this there was a diagnosis and I could
43. 1:44move forward to a solution and so I'm
44. 1:47sharing this talk with you because even
45. 1:49though I'm there not the medical kind of
46. 1:51doctor Ellis I did have the opportunity
47. 1:53this past summer to give a kind of
48. 1:55diagnosis or put words to an experience
49. 1:57that like Giardia is not a good
50. 1:59experience but an experience that many
51. 2:01people across this country have felt so
52. 2:04along with a team of researchers this
53. 2:06past summer we identified that women are
54. 2:0950% more likely to switch out of the
55. 2:12stem pathway
56. 2:13after taking calculus one when
57. 2:15controlling for intended major reports
58. 2:18of instruction previous calculus
59. 2:20experience SAT or a CT scores
60. 2:22school and professor so that means that
61. 2:2650% more of the women who are taking
62. 2:28calc one planning to take calc 2 because
63. 2:30they want to be an engineer they want to
64. 2:32be a chemist or whatever are leaving
65. 2:34that after the experience of calc 1
66. 2:36compared to the men um no this isn't a
67. 2:40groundbreaking finding much like it
68. 2:42wasn't so groundbreaking that I
69. 2:44contracted Giardia after drinking water
70. 2:46in a country for which I hadn't
71. 2:47developed the proper immunity is in my
72. 2:48stomach but like Giardia just by giving
73. 2:53the words to this experience I got to
74. 2:56help diagnose something that many people
75. 2:59were feeling now when I give this talk
76. 3:02or when I talk about these research
77. 3:04findings across the country inevitably
78. 3:07there will be some in the audience that
79. 3:08says well what about race and ethnicity
80. 3:10have you done similar analyses trying to
81. 3:13understand the experience of race and
82. 3:14ethnicity with or without gender so
83. 3:16maybe looking at the intersectional
84. 3:17perspective - and I say well that is a
85. 3:19wonderful question
86. 3:21unfortunately there is such a low
87. 3:23percentage of non-white students in our
88. 3:26sample that we can't run the same
89. 3:28statistical analyses to give the same
90. 3:30strong quantifiable results and then the
91. 3:34person in the audience like some of you
92. 3:35I'm seeing right now nod your head and
93. 3:37understand MIT um the person feels good
94. 3:40because they ask the right question I
95. 3:41feel good because I gave the right
96. 3:43answer and then we move on so this has
97. 3:46happened for years I've been presenting
98. 3:47on this data for years and been giving
99. 3:50these answers for years and it's been
100. 3:52fine and it struck me that it was
101. 3:54similar to when I went to the health
102. 3:56center and said I'm having these
103. 3:58symptoms and they said most likely you
104. 4:00just have a stomach flu here's a remedy
105. 4:02and that remedy had no bearing it didn't
106. 4:05help me at all because it wasn't what I
107. 4:06was experiencing that by not actually
108. 4:09looking at the experiences of these
109. 4:12students of color in our calculus
110. 4:14classes even though they're a smaller
111. 4:15percentage that were making their
112. 4:17experiences invisible much like the
113. 4:19doctors made my journey invisible by not
114. 4:21testing for it and so what we're doing
115. 4:23is not understanding the actual
116. 4:24experiences of these students in the
117. 4:26same way that we can in order to provide
118. 4:29a solution so we have two problems here
119. 4:35we have the problem of diversity and
120. 4:37stem that we're all well aware of it's
121. 4:39being published all over and talked
122. 4:41about in the news but we also have the
123. 4:42problem among researchers that when we
124. 4:44write these findings when we talk about
125. 4:47them when we answer these questions
126. 4:49we're not really looking deeper into
127. 4:51what's happening with our answers so
128. 4:53although my answer has been accepted as
129. 4:56correct it is correct it's expect or
130. 4:59accepted by the research community it
131. 5:01doesn't tell the full story and so I was
132. 5:04recommended to not just come up here and
133. 5:06tell you some problems but also try to
134. 5:08understand some solutions now certainly
135. 5:10the problem of diversity and stem and
136. 5:13representation of women and students of
137. 5:15color and persistence is not so easy to
138. 5:18solve as the pill that they gave me to
139. 5:20solve merger Ardea but we can think
140. 5:25about ways to go about it by just trying
141. 5:27to actually understand what's happening
142. 5:29so here we are we're at Colorado School
143. 5:31of Mines many of you are students and
144. 5:33and so I understand that you probably
145. 5:35get the situation that's going on here
146. 5:36but I'm just going to share some numbers
147. 5:37really quick so Colorado School of Mines
148. 5:39is almost entirely a stem school there's
149. 5:42some economics majors but we'll just
150. 5:44group them into stem for now in 2014
151. 5:47there were about 900 students graduated
152. 5:49with stem degrees of those 900 students
153. 5:52around 25 percent were earned by women
154. 5:55on less than 10 percent were earned by
155. 5:57Hispanic and Latino students and less
156. 5:59than 1% were earned by black or
157. 6:01african-american students so I imagined
158. 6:04that the classes here at Colorado School
159. 6:05of Mines the calculus classes which are
160. 6:07feeding into these stem majors look
161. 6:09fairly similar if not even more
162. 6:11homogeneous than this sample that I
163. 6:13looked at in my study and so what can
164. 6:17you do as students as faculty as parents
165. 6:19whatever your relationship is to this
166. 6:21University as students I want you to be
167. 6:24asking more questions I recommend that
168. 6:26you think about why do your classes look
169. 6:28the way that they do or if you read
170. 6:29research try to understand why is there
171. 6:31too few students to be able to do a
172. 6:33similar analysis what's put in the
173. 6:36footnote of multiple of my studies right
174. 6:37now
175. 6:38and if you're in the position
176. 6:39be giving answers to people which is a
177. 6:42wonderful place to be in I want you to
178. 6:44question those answers that you're
179. 6:45really comfortable giving because
180. 6:47although they might be right that night
181. 6:49might not be the full story so we need
182. 6:51to do better at looking into what's
183. 6:52actually going on so for me this talk is
184. 6:55a public coming out and acknowledging
185. 6:57that when I gave that answer so many
186. 6:59times that I was missing the whole story
187. 7:01and I'm asking of you today to be
188. 7:05curious like we just heard in the past
189. 7:07talk and ask more of those questions and
190. 7:09question the answers that you're
191. 7:10speaking thank you