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[prytania3]

Age discrimination. People over 50 are the group most discriminated against in the US, and everyone just turns a blind eye.

[molly_per]

The take away messages that I originally posted about are the learning goals and outcomes for the retreats.  As per stated in the diversity training literature, to effectively design a series of diversity training retreats, the facilitator must have clear learning goals articulated.  I do not expect to walk into the training sessions and hand participants the list of learning goals and expect them to be there.  Discussions of diversity are all about process.  But, in order to properly engage participants in the process of diversity, a facilitator must know where she wants them to end up.  Same in the courses you teach.  You would never go in to a course (hopefully) without a set of clearly articulated goals (or topics) that you wish your students learn by the end of the course.

Did you read the DvF post where he mentions that having a productive dialog means that you cannot have predetermined end points?  When I plan for a class where the point is discussion, I prepare topics and then start things off.  However, my list of outcomes is things like "Each student will be able to list three good arguments for both sides of the issue."  I certainly don't have "Each student will be able to state conclusively that the polar bears will die off in ten years without intervention".

I do plan to cover more than race, though race will be the topic we go in depth on since it is my specialty and the reason I was hired.  But, as we all know, diversity encompasses a wide range of topics and it is impossible to justly cover all of them in the time I have.  It would be like assuming that one could cover the breadth of engineering specialties in 20 hours.

Yes, it's true that you have to select your topics carefully.  However, by choosing to focus primarily on race, you have chosen one of the least important aspects of diversity as your main idea.

I do like the idea of discussing what makes an effective interdisciplinary team- will add that to my list.  Thanks.

You're welcome, but if you are drawing from the same field and primarily grad students, I don't think that that topic will be particularly productive.

[postdoc_at_r1]

My PhD is in engineering and my doctoral work examined how white male engineering faculty form their racial identities and how those identities inform their views on diversity and how they contribute to diversity within the STEM disciplines.

Sorry, but can you elaborate?  What branch of Engineering is this?  This does not have the ring of truth.

Ouch.  I am an Industrial and Systems (ISyE) Engineer. 

*sigh*  Of course, you are.  Say no more.

What are you implying here?

Do you really need me to state how other engineering disciplines view even the traditional areas of ISyE?

Please do not generalize to all engineering disciplines, as I am sure you do not know how all engineers think.  Rather, you are commenting on how YOU view ISyE.  Also please recognize that you are using a power tactic to position your discipline (whatever it may be) above my discipline, thus rendering my thoughts as insignificant.  This common tactic is seen quite often when entering into conversations of diversity, in particular discussions of whiteness, as a way to discredit someone when they challenge a normalized system. 

But regardless of how you feel about ISyE, the research that I have done and am doing is done by many others in social sciences, education, sociology, etc (which technically are classified by the NSF as STEM fields to address an earlier comment by a different poster).

[daniel_von_flanagan]

social sciences, education, sociology, etc (which technically are classified by the NSF as STEM fields to address an earlier comment by a different poster).

No they are not.  Here is the list of STEM fields.  If you mean to be persuasive to scientists, you should at the very least drop assertions that are obviously and verifiably wrong. - DvF

[molly_per]

 
No, all you are observing is that the conversations do not have the flavor or the outcome of conversations that you want to have. 

 I highly doubt that white faculty sit with other white faculty and talk about their white identities and how it influences their worldview on higher education.  Most discussions about diversity center on people of color and leave whites as the unspoken normal to which others are compared.

I put these quotations in close proximity for a reason.  Can you see what that reason is?  I hate to break this to you, but if one group vastly outnumbers the other in an activity and have for decades, then they do indeed represent the norm.  Discrimination based on race is wrong, but making people focus intensely on race the way that you want them to focus will not win you friends.

You are defining discrimination as individual acts, not as a systematic issue of policies and procedures embedded at the institutional level.  So if the norm is defined as one group vastly outnumbering another group, then how do you explain the patriarchical nature of the U.S. and maleness being defined as the norm in many STEM fields?  For many years (and still today) women have been compared to men with men set up as the norm, but are roughly equal in population to men.  Maybe it is something other than numbers that defines the norm, such as power/privilege and conferred dominance (again, please see literature on critical white theory, gender studies, ethnic studies, etc)?

*Sigh*  Do you even know how you sound to those of us who fall into basically all the categories you want to hold up as being unprivileged?  Do you know how you sound to those of us who are not conditioned in the pseudoscientific ways of the fields that you cite and so still have critical thinking facilities?

Yes, keep having your diversity retreats and seminars.  The rest of us will work on things that will actually result in diverse populations of educated people.

If I wanted to win friends, I would not have chosen to focus my research on whiteness in STEM at a historically white research institution.

That's true.  If you wanted to win friends, you would have actually studied the valuable parts of engineering and become a productive member of society.

[on preview]  Hey, I am again oppressing the ...newbie from my position of privilege.  Do I get a prize for the third one this month? 

[kedves]

Is this where I admit that although it is not my field, one of my qualifying exams was in sociology of knowledge, and where I point out that in this field, too, there is diversity of thought?

And...

...
 the research that I have done and am doing is done by many others in social sciences, education, sociology, etc (which technically are classified by the NSF as STEM fields to address an earlier comment by a different poster).

No!  Are you kidding me?  As if I don't have enough problems, now I have to step up and be a scientist too?  I can't do it, I tell you!
     <flees>

On preview:  Thank you, DvF.  My hero!

[molly_per]

Do you really need me to state how other engineering disciplines view even the traditional areas of ISyE?

Please do not generalize to all engineering disciplines, as I am sure you do not know how all engineers think.  Rather, you are commenting on how YOU view ISyE.  Also please recognize that you are using a power tactic to position your discipline (whatever it may be) above my discipline, thus rendering my thoughts as insignificant. 

I find this hilarious since if you read my post, I merely asked the question.  I did not in any way indicate anything negative about your field.  You expected me to have a bad impression.  Why is that?

This common tactic is seen quite often when entering into conversations of diversity, in particular discussions of whiteness, as a way to discredit someone when they challenge a normalized system. 

As is the cry of "white privilege" as soon as someone says "I don't agree with your assessment of the diversity situation".

But regardless of how you feel about ISyE, the research that I have done and am doing is done by many others in social sciences, education, sociology, etc (which technically are classified by the NSF as STEM fields to address an earlier comment by a different poster).

Yes, but did any scientists validate your research?

[daniel_von_flanagan]

Molly_per, sometimes you're such a 19th century white German male! - DvF

[the_honey_badger]

Wow, education is classified as a STEM field?  That might be the most interesting thing I've learned in a while. 

My confusion here, and I'm not in the target group for this retreat is why and how if the OPs research at that doctoral stage concentrates on "whiteness" (and so, one would assume, the theoretical literature that addresses systems of power that reinforce "norms") that the lessons learned there would not be transferable to other categories that fall under minority definitions. If this sort of thing is your research area, why is it difficult to figure out what is needed to pull together an educational retreat?

No "snark" just a question.

[molly_per]

Molly_per, sometimes you're such a 19th century white German male! - DvF

Are you saying that my indoctrination into the oppressor class finally took after just a few short weekend retreats where I studied hard, memorized the proper verbiage, and really nailed the stated outcomes?

Excellent!

[helpful]

If the OP is white, then I suggest using Peggy McIntosh's work. Also take a look at Adams, Teaching for Social Justice which has some good workshop formats on all aspects of diversity and 'isms'.

Also, Becoming an Ally is a good reference.

OP, do you fit my categorization of you?

[scheherazade]

Please do not generalize to all engineering disciplines, as I am sure you do not know how all engineers think.  Rather, you are commenting on how YOU view ISyE.  Also please recognize that you are using a power tactic to position your discipline (whatever it may be) above my discipline, thus rendering my thoughts as insignificant.  This common tactic is seen quite often when entering into conversations of diversity, in particular discussions of whiteness, as a way to discredit someone when they challenge a normalized system. 

Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!

[sciencephd]

I'm hoping my Shamanism and Telekenesis work count as science, as their methods development are both part of specific aim #1 in my next RO1.

I miss the old arguments about Navajo astronomy.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

Also please recognize that you are using a power tactic to position your discipline (whatever it may be) above my discipline, thus rendering my thoughts as insignificant. 

This is precisely what you are doing when you dismiss the ongoing efforts of science departments to consider the issue as "shallow", and assert that they are too embedded in the norm to even recognize the real cause of the whatever problems there are. 

When somebody from one field walks into another and says "Ur doing it wrong!", that is arrogant and provocative.  For all that they might snicker about the social sciences, physicists and chemists rarely walk into a social science department and tell the people there directly that they are ignorant and should go on a reeducation retreat in quantum chromodynamics.  Yet the sciences get this crap all the time, from Education departments and from busybodies in HR and EO offices.

You say you want to "help them learn and practice a diversity skill set in which to use in classroom/research situations".  When I asked for a classroom-specific example, you replied with vague abstractions ("diverse groups reach more solutions, more creative solutions, than non-diverse groups,  2) the presence of diversity has a positive impact on complex thinking,...").  Let me try again.  On day one of the semester I walk into my class in stochastic modeling, and as usual see a diverse group of students representing both sexes and several ethnicities.  I start to write down the definition of a sigma-algebra, but then I remember my diversity training.  What do I do instead? - DvF

[jackalope]

Please do not generalize to all engineering disciplines, as I am sure you do not know how all engineers think.  Rather, you are commenting on how YOU view ISyE.  Also please recognize that you are using a power tactic to position your discipline (whatever it may be) above my discipline, thus rendering my thoughts as insignificant.  This common tactic is seen quite often when entering into conversations of diversity, in particular discussions of whiteness, as a way to discredit someone when they challenge a normalized system. 

Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!

You need to link it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o76WQzVJ434