All faculty, staff and students are welcome to attend! Reception to follow.

Can the culture of STEM help reproduce inequality? Drawing from several NSF-funded studies, articles, and her recent book Misconceiving Merit, Dr. Cech will explore professional STEM cultures that can have built-in disadvantages for women and other under-represented groups. She will explain why decisions (e.g. admissions, hiring, tenure) that partially rely on assessments of individuals’ “fit” with professional cultures may especially contribute to inequality in these environments.

About Cech
Cech's research examines cultural mechanisms of inequality reproduction--especially through seemingly innocuous cultural beliefs and practices. Her work on inequality in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) professions focuses on the recruitment and retention of women, people of color, and LGBTQ-identifying persons in STEM degree programs and STEM jobs.

Cech’s work is funded by multiple grants from the NSF and has been covered by The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Time, and the news sections of Science and Nature. Cech is the author of two books, The Trouble with Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality (2021) and Misconceiving Merit: Paradoxes of Excellence and Devotion in Academic Science and Engineering (2022).

Presented by the S&T ADVANCE Program and funded by NSF ADVANCE award 2204537