Science is for everyone!

Two students, Ashlyn and Melissa, discuss the importance of diversity and inclusion in STEM fields. They share personal experiences of facing challenges and overcoming them with the support of programs like LSAMP and CSAMP. They also discuss the historical contributions of underrepresented groups in science that have often been overlooked or discredited. The conversation highlights the need for equal recognition and opportunities for everyone in science. They also mention the high dropout rates among minority students in STEM and the importance of providing resources and support to help them succeed. Hello, my name is Ashlyn Knight and I'm Melissa Spiegelman and today we're going to present to you why science is for everyone. But first, we thought it would be important for us to tell you a little bit more about ourselves. Ashlyn, would you like to introduce yourself? Absolutely. My name is Ashlyn Knight. I'm a molecular biology senior here at Montclair State University, pronoun she, they, and my research experience has been with Dr. Eli Young-Lee of the chemistry department working into investigating the lipid-membrane-protein interactions, and we actually had a paper published I think a year ago, and in the future I hope to take this research that I've done and carry it over to immunology and to help further investigate vaccine development. That's really awesome. It's so cool to hear about all the different research opportunities we have at the school. For the last five years, I've been working with Dr. Carlos Molina on doing cancer research. So basically, we use the protein ICER as a non-invasive treatment for melanoma, which is the most severe form of skin cancer. More recently, I started a fertility project where I'm trying to use this same protein to actually elevate ovulation in zebrafish models, which is super cool. My pronouns are she slash her, and me and Ashlyn are really excited to be here today and talk to you guys about why science should be for everyone, even though historically that hasn't always been the case. I think it's an important discussion to be had because nowadays we consider science to be quite diverse compared to like 100 years ago, but in those 100 years, we've had probably upwards of thousands of individuals, minorities, and women who've had their important research go unrecognized or be discredited simply for the fact that they are a woman or their race. Yeah, I mean, it's really unfortunate. Back in 2009, three very important African American women were finally recognized for their contributions to NASA in a movie called Hidden Gems, I believe it was called. You learn about Katherine Johnson. Her calculations were what the movie was sort of focusing on. Her calculations assisted John Glenn's 1962 orbital mission, and because of her calculations, she actually made the mission viable and possible. Meanwhile, you have Dorothy Vaughn, who was a retired math teacher. She went on to become the first African American woman to be a female supervisor for NASA in 1949. And finally, you have Mary Johnson. She actually had to petition the court in order to enroll in courses to become an engineer, but she succeeded and became the first female black engineer in 1958. Now, we should certainly be very proud of their accomplishments and their achievements. I think that the reason why we bring them up in particular, though, is because it took over 50 years for them to be recognized in a pop culture setting, even though astronauts like Neil Armstrong are very popular. You don't learn about these women. And going off of that, you have another popular woman, Rosalind Franklin. So everyone knows growing up, you were accredited with Watson and Crick to make the DNA structure. We found it out. However, it's only in more recent years that we discovered it was actually Rosalind Franklin who was the first person to image with X-ray crystallography the DNA structure, only to have her work stolen by Watson and Crick, who didn't credit her until years later. And by that point, she had already passed, so she could not be posthumously accredited with a Nobel Prize. And it's just very unfortunate because the photo that Rosalind Franklin took of the DNA helix using X-ray crystallography was regarded as one of the most important images ever taken. But she was not attributed with the discovery of the double helical structure of DNA. In reading about her life, you find out that she was often mistaken as a secretary, even though her name was known as one of the best X-ray crystallographers. When she actually showed up, they just assumed that she was a secretary, which was very unfortunate. I had a really good biology teacher in high school, but even he only spoke about Watson and Crick and gave such a little mention to Rosalind Franklin. It wasn't until our freshman year of college, I'm not sure if for Ashlyn, but I know that in our class with Dr. Adams, she took time to speak about Rosalind Franklin and her contributions because they were so important, yet not recognized. So now, so we might think that these are in the past and that we don't really have those issues anymore. But even most recently with the mRNA vaccine accredited like for the COVID vaccine, it's popular science. It's considered as one of the best inventions in the 21st century. The main designer of this, Katie Carrico, back in the 1970s, she was discredited. She went through so many hurdles because her work with investigating using viral DNA genetic information to make proteins that the bodies could use to fight off later. It was seen as radical. It was seen as testing the waters in a way that was too expensive, that they didn't want to cross. And if males did this, it would be considered like, this is his right, like this is important. But her work, it would only be afterwards with more researchers later on, I think in like the 2010s. Yeah. It took a long time for her very groundbreaking mRNA research to be respected. I mean, she would walk around Temple University and advertise to everyone that she was willing to work with them. But because she was working with mRNA, it's historically viewed as a very unstable genetic- Very finicky to work with. Very difficult to work with. So a lot of people just kind of ignored her and said, what you're doing is too difficult. It's too costly. It doesn't make sense. She was demoted multiple times. She was ridiculed and she was laughed at, but she never gave up. And today, her contributions led to the coronavirus vaccine. So, you know, we can celebrate her accomplishments now. I just wish that her accomplishments had always been celebrated. Why don't these voices be silent? Because think of all the contributions that we could have had at this point, had we taken care to look at every single person, regardless of their race, regardless of their gender. Yeah. And I mean, we can even link that to some of our own personal experiences. I mean, I'm sure the people who are listening to this podcast, just as me and Ashlyn have experienced moments in our lives where we've been told that we can't do it, or we've been told that, you know, we should become smaller. We shouldn't try to become more. I remember I had a math teacher in high school who told me that my dreams of becoming a biologist were unreasonable because he believed I couldn't handle complex math. But I mean, here I am, graduating with a degree in molecular biology with honors. And you know, it was difficult for me. It was hard being a first-generation college student. But I didn't let his words affect me, even though it was really difficult to separate myself and say, okay, Melissa, you know, you can do math. You can do this. It was difficult for me. But I pushed myself forward. I looked for support from my friends. I went to tutoring. And I just used every resource that was available to me at Montclair State in order to accomplish my goals. Ashlyn, have you had experiences similar to that here? Not necessarily with teachers. All the teachers I've found have been quite supportive of me. But the most obstacles were with my classmates, my peers who are expected to engage in those discussions to help further each other. There is a guy in one of my classes, multiple times where my comments, my thoughts, he would ask me questions but my answers would be dismissed, which would later turn out to be correct even though his were wrong. And it's simply for the fact that my words were not considered important enough. Even though another male classmate would say the exact same thing verbatim, but that would be considered as, oh, yeah, that's the right answer. No, it is definitely unfortunate because, you know, going to a school like Montclair State, the largest HSI in New Jersey, I have received immense amounts of support from the faculty and from the students. But there are some bad eggs out there, you know, who feel like they might be the smartest person in the room and might not want to have a collaborative scientific experience. Because, you know, science is collaborative. We do have to work together. It's not competitive at all. It's not competitive at all. And I think that's something that, you know, me and Ashlyn are really happy to have found each other so early on in our academic career because we've always been a support system for each other. Ashlyn, can you tell us a little bit about your background? So I am a biracial student. So my father is African-American, my mother is a white immigrant who immigrated, I think, at the age of like 12. And so they hadn't gone to college. So I was a first-generation student. And so, like, my brother had actually dropped out of college, too, due to his own difficulties. So I was going into a field that I was relatively unsure about because it's like, back in high school, chemistry was not my strong suit at all. Biology, I was only interested in genetics for. So I was very insecure about my place as a molecular biology major. I wasn't even sure I could actually do it. However, having Melissa as a friend, like having other friends who helped provide a support system for me. So when I was feeling, like, weak in those moments, I would go to them and receive that confidence again. And it wasn't until I started working with Dr. Eli Young-Lee where I started to feel confident in my place within the STEM community, where I remember I had to read a research paper and I had to go to attend to some seminars. I think it was like the, it's the one where they design projects for, like, ecology. Oh, yes. Yes. And I was talking to Dr. Lee about it and so it's like, wow, you're like really meant to be a researcher because you can read these papers, you can go to these seminars and spot it perfectly and introduce new ideas for it. And I remember feeling so proud in that moment because up until that point, I thought I was like a farce. I thought I was not, I thought I wouldn't succeed at all. I thought he would just, you know, fire me for my mistakes. And that's a really, that's a feeling that I, definitely a lot of students have shared that they feel that same way with me, that when they first enter research, they feel like they're at a disadvantage. And it definitely comes back to imposter syndrome, which is defined as the condition of feeling anxious and sort of feeling anxious in your major, feeling anxious in your choices, feeling like you don't belong in that setting, even though you might be high performing in that space. I think imposter syndrome is probably one of the most common conversations that I've had with my classmates in my experience, something that I felt, you know, almost my entire life. I remember I was given, I was chosen to represent the biology department for the Mario M. Casabona Future Research Contest. And after I gave my five-minute oral presentation, one of the deans, Dr. Kite, came up to me and he told me, you know, you did an amazing job. And I went to the bathroom and I just started crying because I, in my mind, I was like, wow, I did such a bad job that he felt that he had to lie to me to make me feel better. When in reality, I ended up winning second place, audience choice award. I had so many people telling me that I did an amazing job. It was a brilliant presentation. Thank you so much. But within myself, I just didn't feel like I belonged. You're a harshest critic. You are your own harshest critic. And it's something that I think LSAMP, the Lewis-Strokes Alliance Minority Partnership, has really helped me. I agree. Right. The LSAMP club is available for all minority students who are pursuing any STEM degree. And it creates this community. And we do have a lot of conversations about imposter syndrome because you'd be surprised. People who are at the top of their class still feel like they don't belong. I remember Dr. Gint. So I think it was my end of my junior year, I was doing two research, one with Dr. Lee and one with Dr. Lili of the biology department, who's now retiring. I was working with her in endospores. And I remember doing this. And I had to present two projects on the same exact day. Very stressful. And then Dr. Gint came up to me. At this point, I was feeling insecure because I thought I was doing something wrong. Like I wasn't doing enough compared to a lot of the research I found. But she told me I was very ambitious. And in a good way. And it's a way that I hadn't actually stopped to think about that this is impressive. And not a lot of students would be able to do multiple researches. And I was paying the same amount of attention to both. But I kind of realized that how other people view me is not how I view myself. I view myself as like, again, the harshest critic. I think myself way worse than I actually am doing. And without LSAMP, I don't think I would have been as strong of a STEM student as I am today. Yeah. I mean, having Dr. Gint as our fearless leader of LSAMP. She's been very great at, you know, pushing students. Because oftentimes when you come from a background, when you're a first generation college student. Like myself. I mean, I'm a first generation college student. I'm Latina. My mom immigrated from Colombia when she was around 23, 24. Around that time. She didn't speak English. She did not speak much English. And even by the time she had me, she wasn't speaking much English. So there were a lot of times where miscommunication really impacted our relationship. And when I decided to go into biology, I realized that it was so difficult for me to actually explain what I was doing every day. The challenges I had to go through. It's isolating. It is isolating. And I leaned on Dr. Gint and the LSAMP community. And also, you know, others of my teachers. I leaned on my friends as well. Because you need that support system. And without that support system, I don't think I would have made it this far. Or at least have been this successful. Even financially, I remember a lot of my worries were alleviated simply because I was getting paid for the work I was doing. She's a big advocate on not doing unpaid work. So it's more accessible for students who may not be able to do research simply because of unfunded research. Because they might need to pay for college. But tuition. I relied on that funds I got at the end of the semester. And it helped me stay, even though my parents were in an unfortunate financial place. Yeah, but I mean, that is something that we are very thankful to have at Montclair. We have a very strong LSAMP community. But unfortunately, across the country, unpaid research work is inaccessible for non-traditional students. Or, you know, students who have jobs. I remember as a freshman, and even as a high school student, I was volunteering with Dr. Molina. So I was not getting paid. So I was working multiple jobs in order to support myself. And that was really difficult. That was really challenging. Thankfully, you know, I found Dr. Dent. I found LSAMP. I was able to receive funding. I've also, you know, garnered some of my own funds through external scholarships geared towards Latina students. But, you know, those opportunities are not available to every student in America, unfortunately. Even CSAMP provides, I know, like yearly scholarships. Yeah. Not just for minorities. Just for any STEM student willing to do research. Especially, I remember my greatest experience was over the summer. And it, like, you could do so much research than you could do in the semester-long research projects. And I think that was one of the most, like, exciting things I've done here. Yeah. And I mean, even if we look at the numbers, we talk about the discrimination when it comes to the retention rate across the country. STEM is hard. STEM is hard. Let's start off with that. STEM is hard. I'm not saying that, you know, everybody who enters the STEM field is going to graduate. That's not really a realistic goal. But currently, these numbers are kind of scary. So, Sage Journal published an article, Does STEM Stand Out? Examining Racial-Ethnic Groups in Persistence Across Post-Secondary Fields. So, the article kind of explored that 13 percent of white peers, right, compared to 26 percent of black STEM majors are actually more likely to drop out of college. Right? So, you have 13 percent of people who identify as white, 26 percent who identify as black, and 20 percent of people identifying as Latino actually end up dropping college altogether at some point after trying to pursue a STEM degree. So, that's over double the rate compared to the white students. It is. Yeah. It is double the rate for black students, which is extreme. Now, let's talk about how many students just switch out. Right? Even if you don't drop out. Even if you don't drop out, there's still a high rate of students who are just leaving STEM altogether. 40 percent of black students will leave STEM. 37 percent of Latino students will leave STEM. And that is compared to the 29 percent of white students who switch out of STEM majors. So, obviously, there is a disparity there. There is a disparity there. I know multiple of my old friends who switched out to kind of associated majors, but left STEM altogether simply because those introductory classes were so difficult. Yes. And we were actually reading an article that spoke about how the introductory classes, the sophomore year classes, are where you're going to see that high drop-off. Courses like Organic Chemistry, where students are told, I mean, I remember I was told, Orgo is the hardest class you're going to have to do. It is the weed-out class. You know, if you can't pass Orgo, you can't move on. And that's true. And you literally cannot progress if you do not pass Orgo. But they don't talk about how difficult the introductory class is, like that first freshman semester. Right. Because that's less correlated with the teacher, your fellow freshman teacher, but your history, like your background, so what you were taught in high school, what you were taught in middle school. And minorities tend to have different resources given to their high school. So they, compared to the white peers who might have more access to tutors, to stronger teachers, more understanding of these fields compared to their black or Hispanic or Asian counterparts. And so when you come into college, where it's all combined now, you're realizing you're facing a higher disparity in your education that sometimes your teacher, sometimes tutoring can't help supplement. And it creates this strong insecurity. Like, I'm not really ready for this at all. And even if you might have succeeded had you had more help, more support systems, you kind of lose that confidence in yourself and quickly drop out or switch. Yeah, and that's really unfortunate because, you know, schools do provide tutoring. They do provide mentorship. I just think that the students who are able to take advantage in those programs sometimes are, of course, the students who are not working a second job or a third job or a fourth job. I've heard students at Montclair working four jobs. Yeah. You know, it gets extreme. But when you look at the numbers from Montclair State, now remember, if you were to add up the national averages, you have 66% of black students either leaving STEM or dropping out altogether. 57% of Hispanic students leave STEM or drop out altogether. Meanwhile, 42% of white students leave STEM or just drop out of the major. So these are pretty high numbers. These are pretty inflated numbers. But when you look at Montclair State, it's very interesting because, in general, there is a higher retention rate among students a part of the Education Opportunity Fund, the EOF Scholars. 65% of those students were retained to the fourth year, while the general student population had a 65% retention rate. So clearly, you know, if you're providing those resources, if you're providing financial funding, you know, these students can succeed. These students can survive. And that's not even talking about the nontraditional students who might take a little bit longer. In six years, eight years, we even have a higher number of students who managed to be retained and graduate. And it's clear that Montclair putting resources into their students is paying off because we have more minority students who are graduating than ever. And it's just really important. I think we really have to point to the reasons why Montclair is so successful at keeping students. One of those reasons, I have to say, definitely is LSAMP. Yes. Another one could be AWIS. AWIS is the Association of Women in STEM. And it's so important to just have a group, whether you are a minority, you know, Black, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, Native American, or Native Alaskan, you know, you have that community there. But with AWIS, you also have a community for women in STEM because there have been classes where I've been one of two girls. Yes. And that felt very uncomfortable for me. It is very uncomfortable because even though I'm not, I'm definitely not a shy person at all. I mean, I will always be raising my hand, asking questions, answering things. I just feel like I get dirty looks at times. So it's really great to know that at Montclair, I do have this support system of powerful women of STEM, of powerful people who are minorities who are pursuing STEM and who are doing amazing. It's been great. Because when you're the only one in the room, you tend to notice that. You tend to feel isolated because it's you against them. I've noticed when I've gone to other colleges that are more predominantly white, where it's I feel othered. Even if that's not the intention, you notice it and it affects your behavior, affects your confidence in yourself. Whereas Montclair, I like seeing people who look like me, who relate to experiences I've had because it makes me feel more capable in myself and help in general success. It's been a very nice experience at Montclair. I will say that. And the point that we're really trying to make throughout this presentation is yes, we understand that it is difficult. Throughout history, women and other minorities have been discriminated against in the STEM field and across history, but in the STEM field in particular. Even today, we're still seeing examples of that discrimination towards women or people of color in STEM. But diversity in STEM is incredibly important. Diversity in the doctors, diversity in academia and research is so important, not only to provide role models for future students, but also to make sure that everyone is getting the same quality of care. We need more health equity in America. Now, my boyfriend's mom came to me and she shared that she was going to be prescribed statin drugs due to having high cholesterol. Now, when she did her research, she discovered that women had been excluded from the drug trials when they were actually testing these statin drugs. And later on, it was discovered that, yeah, statins work in females too, but even though the cholesterol is lowering, you see an increase in triglycerides. Now, she was prediabetic in the past, so obviously she's concerned about taking statin drugs because she doesn't want to raise her triglycerides up to that point again where she would be considered prediabetic. And her doctor didn't tell her this? And her doctor did not tell her this. This was her own external research that she performed. Yeah. So, you know, hearing that as a young research scientist, as somebody who would like to get their PhD, it appalled me. You know, but if you're not in that room, if you don't have a seat at the table, and if you're not advocating for inclusion in those research trials, nothing can be done. You know, we really have to be the change that we want to see so that future generations have an easier time going to college, have an easier time being prescribed medications and not seeing these strange adverse side effects. We want to see the inclusivity and diversity in these medical trials. And we have to be the ones to implement that. Because racism and sexism and all that stuff, that doesn't, it's not just words. It's in every, it's societal. So in order to stop it, you have to be at that table. You have to, at every single level, call out the discrimination, the biases for white females, for white males. And I mean, it's true. It's 100% true. We have to advocate for ourselves. For me, it's been very helpful. Recently, I was awarded the Hispanic Serving Institute Scholarship by the American Heart Association. Congratulations. Thank you. This scholarship is for students of Hispanic descent, yeah, Hispanic descent, who would like to pursue either to become a doctor, maybe a health equity career, or a healthcare disparities career, or me as a biomedical researcher. So they provided us funding. But they also provided us a lot of leadership and professional development seminars where they taught us about the importance of health equity, and why it is so important that when we get to a position of power, after we finish our degrees, right, when we get to a point where we might be the head of a company, or we might be like a very important, influential doctor, or even the Surgeon General, who knows, right? We have to use our power and use our privilege in that moment to look at those systemic health equity issues. Now, we're going to be talking about health equity as a whole in more detail in a later podcast. But we do think it is so important to have that community. The AHA provided me, the American Heart Association provided me with a group of very great scholars, very smart, very driven, very motivated Hispanic scholars that I hope to be in touch with for the rest of my life. Because we have to remember, right, if you have a seat at the table, you have to make sure that you bring other people who look like you, who think like you, to that table. If there's not a seat, you add a seat, or you make a new table. Couldn't say it better. Couldn't say it better. Thank you, thank you. But I think really, just to end the segment, I think I want to just point out that, you know, I believe in you. We are the future of medicine. We are the future of research. Please do not doubt yourself. And even if you do, you know, you can always come back and just remember that I believe in you. There are professors, there are researchers, there are people all across this university who believe in you, who want to see you thrive, who want to see you succeed. Even if you're not going into any of those fields, it doesn't mean that we don't believe in you, because if you're passed, you have to have the confidence for yourself to make it your own. Yeah, yeah. And you know, I think just to end the segment, we want to say thank you for listening to us today, and we hope you guys listen to our next podcast, talking about disparities in healthcare, and what we can do about these disparities. Thank you.