Recent Posts

Graduate student mentorship as a target for diversifying biology

The quality of student-advisor relationships is one of the top predictors of research progress and sense of belonging in science, yet in most cases the mentoring relationship is simply left to chance. In this preprint, Debray et al. surveyed a cohort of PhD students to understand what mentoring practices…

Building an inclusive botany: A radical dream

Recent years have seen a reevaluation of the history and practice of science, including reconsidering who is recognized and why. Science doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it reflects the culture and values of those that practice it. This article, by Mabry et al., is intended to serve as a conversation starter…

Juneteenth in STEMM and the barriers to equitable science

Recently, the United States designated Juneteenth as a new federal holiday, which celebrates freedom of the last large body of enslaved Black Americans following the American Civil War. However, the impact of chattel slavery persists: Black scientists face many obstacles to attaining an education and…

Running a sustainable, values-drivenresearch group in the next generation

This is a fantastic article to help new, future, and even current lab heads think about their postures, priorities, and practices. It was developed through a workshop held during the Arabidopsis meeting, originally scheduled for 2020 but held online in 2021 and run by several scientists who recently…

Removing systemic barriers to equity, diversity, and inclusion: Report of a 2019 workshop “Inclusivity in the Plant Sciences” (Plant Direct)

In January 2019, a workshop was convened to explore strategies to address inclusivity in the plant sciences, and the recommendations emerging from this workshop are presented in a new report by Henkhaus et al. The authors recognize that this is an expansive challenge and requires action on many fronts,…

Improving Outreach In Plant Science

Improving Outreach In Plant Science- Workshop at ICAR 2021-Virtual Jose Dinneny, Stanford (and former NAASC member) organized this workshop at ICAR 2021-Virtual. The workshop stemmed from his leadership of two NAASC activities on the topic of Outreach in Plant Science that occurred between 2018-2021,…

Promoting inclusive metrics of success and impact to dismantle a discriminatory reward system in science (PLOS Biol)

As scientists, we often measure what we can measure as a proxy for what we want to measure. Critical to this strategy is a good understanding of how well the first represents the second. Currently, advancement in science largely rests upon factors that are easy to measure: number of publications and…

LEAPing ahead? 

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ASPB has submitted a proposal to the NSF (National Science Foundation in response to their recent Dear Colleagues Letter (a DCL is a way to communicate about new or special funding opportunities). The purpose of this DCL was to encourage professional societies to “develop collaborative networks…