How This Early Career Scientist Hopes to Motivate Diverse Students

[Sam Staples]

In the article, How This Early Career Scientist Hopes to Motivate Diverse Students, Monserrat Orozco shares how she hopes to inspire other early career scientists and pave the way for a more diversity in neuroscience.

Orozco shares how being a "first-generation, low-income, bisexual, and Chicana student" inspires her to create a space for diversity to grow within the neuroscience field. Do you feel the neuroscience field is becoming more diverse as more early career scientists enter the sphere? 

 

 

[Julia Araujo]

Truthfully, I've been going back and forth with this question. Once I've read it - back in August - a million thoughts came into my mind. Accompanied by some exemples and experiences of my own here in Brazil, they were summed up and formulated into a text I'm happy to share with the Community. From the local to the global! Let's bring some diversity with a local context!

Orozco's story is such an exciting narrative, but - I might be totally off - has only become possible in the recent decades. It was after so much struggling and battling of women, latino and many other minority's rights when we were able to have ourselves being represented from politics to PhD programs.

In South America, if it wasn't by affirmative actions, hundreds of Brazilians wouldn't go to college. Surely, it brings us to many discussions - some of which I love to discuss about- nonetheless, I stand by two facts: first, a song, and second, a statistic from one of Brazil's greatest universities. I'll go to them in a second, but before, just let me emphasise on how it's from the college years that we get to the Neuroscience field. Definitely, once you have a diverse group of young people doing their undergrad degrees or there's nowhere else your PhD and Early Career Students will come from.

Back to the data, the first one refers to Brazil in the 1990's, the lyrics of Mc's Racionais (a rap group that has even become content of university admission tests in Brazil) says: "In Brazilian universities, only 2% of the students are black" (non official translation to "Nas universidades brasileiras, apenas 2% dos alunos são negros"). The second one, all the way up to 2020 (30 years later), can be found at a Brazilian government's institute (INEP), and says the 2% have become 52%.

Again, there's a lot to be discussed, but who isn't happy when reality becomes to change and universities become more diverse? Isn't the first step the beginning to cross the line of a marathon? I know there so many miles left. I know I go back and forth into this. Although, perhaps, it shows us how we've achieved something! It's not everything, but Orozco is one of the stars we got to follow. I'm sure she inspired me, at least.

[Mathew Abrams]

Like Julia, I have had to mull this question over for a while before responding. If I use the Annual Meeting as a sample to assess diversity within neuroscience, I can say that on the surface the population at the Annual Meeting is more diverse than it was 20 years ago (in terms of things that can be qualified by looking at an individual: male/female and racial; but one never knows!). At the same time (going to play the Devil's advocate now), there are more people attending the meeting today than 20 years ago which leads me to wonder: can 2 things be true at the same time: neuroscience is more diverse, yet the percentage of underrepresented groups remains the same or has decreased from what it was 20 years ago? 

What Monserrat brings up is very important and something that we as neuroscientists, regardless of our career stage, can do: be attentive and supportive of those who are underrepresented in our immediate communities. I was fortunate to conduct my research in a lab where this was the culture. I was a foreign male in a lab that had more female members than male members (3:1, if memory serves me correctly). I was immediately welcomed professionally, but more importantly socially. They integrated me into the lab as well as society. It wasn't a big gesture; it was the day to day little things that enabled as share or experiences and cultures with each other.