This ain’t your grandfather’s STEM

If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat may come along and make a fortuitous life preserver. … I think we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday’s fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

How do we ensure our students are designing life preservers and not piano tops? How do we move past asking them to tell us about density and buoyant forces and instead ask them to just build the darn life preserver? How do we cultivate creativity to move past the status quo? Whose creativity are we missing?

Where have those voices gone, and why? How do we keep those voices in our conversations?

Join us in challenging our culture in the ways in which we teach, mentor and carry out our work. For, as Coretta Scott King said, “If you don’t use your power for positive change, you are, indeed, part of the problem.”

Keywords: inclusion, diversity, wellness, active learning, pedagogy, #MeToo, mentorship, discipline-based education research, interdisciplinarity

Who should attend: movers, shakers and those who want to learn how to move and/or shake

Theme song: “The Times They Are A-Changin’” covered by Brandi Carlile

This track is powered by justice and equity.
(Sponsored by the ASBMB Education and Professional Development Committee)