Diversity Workshop Overview

Diversity Workshop (10/6/2016)

The Diversity workshop started out with peering into our own implicit biases (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html) using the Harvard Implicit Bias Test. Here we looked at the tendency to relate gender with academic disciplines. After seeing the results of the test, which interestingly deviated quite a bit from the national norm of associating male-gendered words with the sciences, and female-gendered words with arts and humanities (The Test Explained).

We next spent some time discussing the origin of bias, and how bias taken to an extreme leads to stereotypes. Transitioning to thinking about diversity in the workplace, groups were formed that looked at some short popular press articles on the following topics:

• Threats to diversity: Article

• Benefits of diversity: Article

• Strategies for enhancing diversity: Article