Dear Professor Grossman, Head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering; DMSE Department Committee on Graduate Studies; DMSE Recruitment, Admissions, and Placement Committee; and DMSE Faculty,
More than 130 years after the first Black student set foot in the halls of MIT, the under-representation of and discrimination against Black students remains strikingly prevalent in MIT’s halls today. Science, as a whole, has a racism problem that long predates the events of recent weeks. However, the recent outcry following the horrific murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Manuel Ellis, Derrick Scott, and those that national media has missed has brought this legacy of historical and structural racism to the forefront for many institutions, including MIT.
It is well-recognized, though rarely talked about, that the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) faces a diversity crisis. The department has been unable to effectively recruit and retain students who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), and in writing this letter we hope to bring particular attention to Black students. BIPOC colleagues in our department﹘and Black students in particular﹘face persistent and pervasive discrimination and are forced to operate in a system designed for the success of non-BIPOC students. As is true of much at MIT, efforts towards diversity within DMSE take the form of performative and encouraging platitudes that are rarely backed by action.
Regrettably, there are so few students in DMSE from under-represented racial minorities (URM) that, consequently, this letter does not include enough BIPOC perspectives, or those from Black students in particular. We would like to thank Black graduate students in other departments and DMSE alumni for their input. In response, we sincerely hope this letter can help spearhead diversity initiatives that will augment and amplify BIPOC voices in our community. For too long, the emotional labor to carry this burden has fallen on minority students and staff (for example, by recent DMSE graduate student alumni), to educate, to advocate, and to pave the way towards racial justice and equality at MIT. We thank Professor Grossman for reaching out to express solidarity with the recent protests and for asking the community to move together to tackle these issues in DMSE. Now, we must all step up and turn this momentum into an opportunity for lasting change.
Being active allies to this cause requires efforts on two fronts: 1) listening to the needs of URMs, facilitating open communication, educating our community about norms, values, and change, and 2) actively implementing policies with observable and quantifiable outcomes this year. DMSE can, and must, combat systems and behaviors that perpetuate racism and discrimination within our community and work to proactively expand access to our community. We all come to MIT to make scientific discoveries that help our world become a better place. However, good science needs to be fundamentally fair, equal, and just.
As such, we call on MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering to implement the following actions. These recommendations are not new﹘Black graduate students at MIT have championed these ideas for decades (2015 BGSA recommendations and the recent follow-up, Faculty Policy Committee Statement on Representation of Minorities on the Faculty and in the Graduate Student Body (May 2004), Report on the Initiative for Faculty Race and Diversity (February 2010), A Report on the Status of Women Faculty in the Schools of Science and Engineering (March 2011), Diversity Summit Report (January 2012)).
Take Immediate, Concrete, and Clear Department-Level Action
Tackle Implicit Bias in Graduate Student Admissions
Enact Administrative Procedures to Hold Accountability
Commit to Public and Open Communication to Address Norms, Values, and Culture within the Department
Increase Direct Funding to Underrepresented Minority Groups
Enact Strict Policies Regarding Faculty, Staff, and Postdoctoral Scholar Hiring
On a personal level, we recognize that DMSE faculty are in a unique position of power and financial privilege. We ask that faculty support their students’ right to protest the injustices being faced by the Black community today. We are also heartened by anecdotal examples of faculty support of the Black Lives Matter movement, from raising and donating money to committing to covering their students’ bail if they are arrested in protests. We urge you to communicate your support for the Black Lives Matter movement to your students, facilitate your students’ education on these topics through readings and discussions, and, if you are able, provide financial support to the organizations galvanizing this movement. We ask you to examine the diversity of your collaborators, fellow grant writers, and co-authors, and hold funding agencies and journals accountable for their values. We also urge you to actively work to cite Black and other underrepresented minority scholars in your publications.
The actions above are by no means an exhaustive list, and we urge all members of our DMSE community to consider the initiatives above, be proactive in bringing new ideas to the table, and engage with each other in constructive and open communication.
Isolated and individual-led initiatives have neither sufficient reach nor longevity to affect the necessary cultural and institutional transformations demanded by our collective history and today’s protests. Any serious push for addressing racial disparities in STEM must be integrated within all levels of the department with strong public support from a large majority of faculty and leadership. We call on DMSE leadership and faculty to take these actions seriously and actively work towards creating a more inclusive department.
Signed,
More than 130 years after the first Black student set foot in the halls of MIT, the under-representation of and discrimination against Black students remains strikingly prevalent in MIT’s halls today. Science, as a whole, has a racism problem that long predates the events of recent weeks. However, the recent outcry following the horrific murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Manuel Ellis, Derrick Scott, and those that national media has missed has brought this legacy of historical and structural racism to the forefront for many institutions, including MIT.
It is well-recognized, though rarely talked about, that the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) faces a diversity crisis. The department has been unable to effectively recruit and retain students who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), and in writing this letter we hope to bring particular attention to Black students. BIPOC colleagues in our department﹘and Black students in particular﹘face persistent and pervasive discrimination and are forced to operate in a system designed for the success of non-BIPOC students. As is true of much at MIT, efforts towards diversity within DMSE take the form of performative and encouraging platitudes that are rarely backed by action.
Regrettably, there are so few students in DMSE from under-represented racial minorities (URM) that, consequently, this letter does not include enough BIPOC perspectives, or those from Black students in particular. We would like to thank Black graduate students in other departments and DMSE alumni for their input. In response, we sincerely hope this letter can help spearhead diversity initiatives that will augment and amplify BIPOC voices in our community. For too long, the emotional labor to carry this burden has fallen on minority students and staff (for example, by recent DMSE graduate student alumni), to educate, to advocate, and to pave the way towards racial justice and equality at MIT. We thank Professor Grossman for reaching out to express solidarity with the recent protests and for asking the community to move together to tackle these issues in DMSE. Now, we must all step up and turn this momentum into an opportunity for lasting change.
Being active allies to this cause requires efforts on two fronts: 1) listening to the needs of URMs, facilitating open communication, educating our community about norms, values, and change, and 2) actively implementing policies with observable and quantifiable outcomes this year. DMSE can, and must, combat systems and behaviors that perpetuate racism and discrimination within our community and work to proactively expand access to our community. We all come to MIT to make scientific discoveries that help our world become a better place. However, good science needs to be fundamentally fair, equal, and just.
As such, we call on MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering to implement the following actions. These recommendations are not new﹘Black graduate students at MIT have championed these ideas for decades (2015 BGSA recommendations and the recent follow-up, Faculty Policy Committee Statement on Representation of Minorities on the Faculty and in the Graduate Student Body (May 2004), Report on the Initiative for Faculty Race and Diversity (February 2010), A Report on the Status of Women Faculty in the Schools of Science and Engineering (March 2011), Diversity Summit Report (January 2012)).
Take Immediate, Concrete, and Clear Department-Level Action
- Hire and fund a DMSE Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer (DEI Officer) whose role includes coordinating programs within the department, working with Institute-wide initiatives, and actively improving every stage of the DMSE graduate experience to reduce implicit and explicit bias. Many responsibilities that would fall under this role are outlined below, including involvement in undergraduate and graduate student admissions, (pro)actively reaching out to and assisting DMSE students with funding and career opportunities, and building external relations to support the DMSE minority community. A precedent for this position exists in other departments at MIT such as AeroAstro, Media Lab, and Biology/BCS. The creation of this role should recognize and address its historical vulnerability to downsizing and limited opportunities for career advancement.
- Form a DMSE Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee (DEI Committee) including multiple faculty, the DEI Officer, and volunteer graduate and undergraduate students. The DEI Committee will meet monthly to evaluate the efficacy of the DEI initiatives outlined here and report them to the DMSE community. The DEI Committee will be responsible for collecting and reporting statistics, including on graduate student admissions and hiring, and provide oversight and accountability for DMSE’s DEI-related activities. Anyone appointed to this committee should examine available literature on evidence-based institutional change in STEM as well as effective outreach measures, such as those published by the American Institute of Physics. Faculty should be initially allowed to volunteer for the Committee and remaining slots should be filled on rotation of other faculty members. Participation on the Committee should fulfill faculty service requirements. This system should be continually evaluated to ensure broader accountability and prevent its commitment from unduly burdening minority faculty members.
- Institute annual mandatory Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) trainings for all lab groups in DMSE run by the Institute Discrimination and Harrassment Response (IDHR) Office at MIT or external experts/consultants should IDHR not have the capacity. The trainings must require attendance from all members of the group, including faculty, postdocs, graduate students, research scientists, research supervisors, lab managers, visiting professors, administrators, staff, technicians, and UROPs. Members of the lab must recognize that understanding and acting on personal bias is as important as implementing lab safety procedures; the privilege to work in a lab should be contingent on respecting the policies discussed in this training.
- Hold a recurring Town Hall with mandatory faculty and research supervisor attendance starting next month to discuss the actions in this letter and receive further feedback from the graduate student community. Subsequent Town Halls with the entire DMSE community should be held once per semester to encourage open communication on these issues.
- Prepare and disseminate a report on the Department’s response to the Report of the Initiative for Faculty Race and Diversity from 2010. Ten years ago, this initiative recommended efforts similar to those within this document. Understanding what action was taken after this call and what previous progress may have been made is crucial to understanding how our community can improve. This report should serve as the impetus for explicit, organized record-keeping of diversity metrics within DMSE for future reporting.
- Create an internal webpage portal for the DMSE community for increased transparency about DEI-related progress within the department. This page should include diversity statistics, such as those collected in graduate admissions and postdoc, staff, and faculty hiring processes, and internal survey results. This page should be made in collaboration with MindHandHeart and should provide periodic status updates on how DMSE is actively taking steps towards DEI-related initiatives. This page should also include a scorecard on how DMSE ranks on different DEI-related initiatives. MIT’s Institute Community & Equity Office provides a model for displaying these statistics.
Tackle Implicit Bias in Graduate Student Admissions
- Increase transparency in graduate student admissions by mandating reporting of statistics on the race and gender of candidates who applied to the DMSE graduate program and candidates who were ultimately offered admission to the program.
- Eliminate the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) requirement for graduate student admissions. The GRE is widely known to have limited predictive utility on success in graduate school, and serves as an expensive, inaccessible, and discriminatory barrier to graduate admission (Miller and Stassun, Nature, 2014 among many others). As a precedent: MIT’s largest department, EECS, does not use the GRE test scores in their admissions process.
- Mandate an annual anti-racism bias training for all members of the DMSE Recruitment, Admissions, and Placement (RAP) Committee before review of candidate applications. Mandate the presence and participation of the DEI Officer in admissions reviews to provide oversight and accountability for bias against underrepresented racial and gender minorities. We also urge the DEI Committee and DMSE RAP Committee to conduct an ongoing re-evaluation of application requirements and reviewing methods (e.g. recommendation letters and their emphasis in the admissions process) that can disproportionately affect URMs and people of different socioeconomic statuses. An external review of this admissions process, even by other departments known to be more fair and effective at recruiting URMs, should be conducted.
- Take an active role in recruiting minority students for DMSE, including pushing DMSE faculty to participate in the MIT Summer Research Program. Rotate faculty through these programs to prevent the burden of this participation from falling on minority faculty members. The DEI Officer should apply for funding for increased outreach measures in DMSE, such as after-school programs involving research or tutoring for local high school students, research internships for local college students, as well as summer research programs for both high school and college underrepresented minority students. Funds gained from grants can be used to cover housing and transportation costs for visiting students as well as current MIT graduate and undergraduate student stipends, equivalent to TA employment, or fulfilling degree requirements, similar to the Teaching Minor.
- Create substantial discussions on diversity at admitted graduate student visit weekends and incoming student orientation. Commit to department leadership discussing diversity as a key and serious tenet of DMSE’s values in their opening remarks, of equal weight to curriculum and scientific discussions, and commit to open discussions on MIT’s diversity statistics.
- Cover costs of graduate student visit weekends (e.g. transportation to and from Cambridge) up-front, rather than requiring students to undergo a lengthy reimbursement process. Such upfront costs are often prohibitive to students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds and may hinder their visit partially or entirely.
- Bring attention to application fee waivers and other URM-specific resources on the DMSE admissions website. The DMSE admissions webpage should highlight application fee waivers provided by the Office of Graduate Education (OGE) and the OGE Diversity Initiative, the latter of which is designed to encourage underrepresented minorities to apply to graduate school at MIT. The webpage should further highlight the OGE GradCatalyst program and link to fellowships available to URM applicants.
- Provide support to URM graduate student applicants by instituting a DMSE Graduate Application Assistance Program (GAAP). This graduate student volunteer program can be managed by the DEI Officer in order to assist applications from URM students by providing graduate student guidance. Examples of these programs in other MIT departments can be found here. A document with the proposed best practices was distributed to DMSE administration earlier this year.
Enact Administrative Procedures to Hold Accountability
- Publish a diversity statement on the DMSE website reinforcing the Department’s commitment to a diverse and inclusive community, including the specific actions it has taken and resources available to students. Examples of such statements are found on the AeroAstro, ChemE, and CEE websites. Representatives from all groups, including faculty, postdocs, graduate students, research supervisors, administrators, staff, and undergraduates should be involved to collectively write and endorse this statement.
- Mandate public value statements and advising philosophies on each faculty member’s website, which explicitly discuss a commitment to diversity (e.g. as is found on the Hammond lab website). Each faculty member should be held accountable for writing their own statement of values and advising philosophy on their website.
Commit to Public and Open Communication to Address Norms, Values, and Culture within the Department
- Start a conversation series within DMSE, focused on critical discussions of subjects outside of science, particularly related to diversity and inclusion. Bring a DEI-related speaker once per month for DMSE seminars and create opportunities for open discussion afterward. Invited speakers should educate the community towards constructive and open communication on uncomfortable topics. A precedent for this series exists in CEE.
- Commit that a minimum of twenty percent of invited scientific speakers to DMSE will be from an under-represented minority background each year, as determined by the DEI Committee and DEI Officer.
- Increase transparency in graduate school milestones, such as the Thesis Area Exam, by providing feedback and categorized scoring to students in a timely manner. Decisions on student success are often made by faculty behind closed doors with students only receiving a “pass/fail” afterwards, raising questions of bias and accountability in these settings. Involve the DEI Officer in observing Thesis Area Exams to mitigate bias in decision-making.
Increase Direct Funding to Underrepresented Minority Groups
- Provide department-level support for underrepresented minorities to attend academic conferences, including covering costs for travel and lodging up-front rather than by reimbursement. Financial stress is already a concern for graduate students, and this issue is particularly prominent for many underrepresented students given the documented racial wealth inequalities in the US. Establishing and publicizing such support systems helps to ensure students and applicants that the department is committed to investing in their success, both within DMSE and beyond.
- Fund several prestigious department-level fellowships for current and incoming graduate students from underrepresented minorities. Clearly advertise these opportunities to incoming graduate students through personal outreach. An example of one such fellowship can be found here.
Enact Strict Policies Regarding Faculty, Staff, and Postdoctoral Scholar Hiring
- Increase transparency in faculty, staff, and postdoc hiring by reporting statistics of race and gender for candidates who applied to each position, candidates that were interviewed for each position, and candidates that ultimately received the position.
- Commit to a thorough review of hiring practices, including understanding the adverse role of informal networks and referrals in the hiring process. This review should be led by the DEI Committee and DEI Officer in consultation with other departments at MIT and the Institute Community & Equity Office.
- Require that at least 20% of applicants interviewed for a faculty position represent an underrepresented minority, as determined by the DEI Officer and DEI Committee, including targeted recruiting for faculty.
- Mandate an annual implicit bias training for all faculty involved in hiring new faculty members. Include the DEI Officer in faculty and staff interviews to identify and remediate bias in the hiring process.
- Hold faculty accountable for postdoc diversity. Currently, hiring of postdocs is left solely to the PI's discretion. Require all PIs to go through the DEI Officer and committee in justifying new postdoc candidate hires, upholding equitable hiring practices, and complying with diversity standards. A precedent for this exists in CEE, which has postdoc fellowships funded by the department specifically for Black and Hispanic people.
- Uphold DMSE’s diversity aims in faculty and staff promotions. Include diversity initiatives and progress as part of the criteria for promotion.
On a personal level, we recognize that DMSE faculty are in a unique position of power and financial privilege. We ask that faculty support their students’ right to protest the injustices being faced by the Black community today. We are also heartened by anecdotal examples of faculty support of the Black Lives Matter movement, from raising and donating money to committing to covering their students’ bail if they are arrested in protests. We urge you to communicate your support for the Black Lives Matter movement to your students, facilitate your students’ education on these topics through readings and discussions, and, if you are able, provide financial support to the organizations galvanizing this movement. We ask you to examine the diversity of your collaborators, fellow grant writers, and co-authors, and hold funding agencies and journals accountable for their values. We also urge you to actively work to cite Black and other underrepresented minority scholars in your publications.
The actions above are by no means an exhaustive list, and we urge all members of our DMSE community to consider the initiatives above, be proactive in bringing new ideas to the table, and engage with each other in constructive and open communication.
Isolated and individual-led initiatives have neither sufficient reach nor longevity to affect the necessary cultural and institutional transformations demanded by our collective history and today’s protests. Any serious push for addressing racial disparities in STEM must be integrated within all levels of the department with strong public support from a large majority of faculty and leadership. We call on DMSE leadership and faculty to take these actions seriously and actively work towards creating a more inclusive department.
Signed,
Current and Former DMSE Graduate Students
DMSE Community Members
- Ty Christoff-Tempesta
- Eveline Postelnicu
- Kate Reidy
- Tunahan Aytas
- Katherine Mizrahi Rodriguez
- Margaret Lee
- Sara Sand
- Eesha Khare
- George Varnavides
- John Ryter
- Sara Sheffels
- Jatin Patil
- Josh Kubiak
- Willis O'Leary
- Jackson Joseph Bauer
- Maria Ronchi
- Max L'Etoile
- Jackie Cho
- Shayna Hilburg
- Andres Badel
- Skye Ngo
- Caspar Stinn
- Sarah Av-Ron
- Elad Deiss-Yehiely
- Nina Andrejevic
- James Damewood
- Zach Jensen
- Ethan Benderley-Kremen
- Michael Stolberg
- Akash Bajaj
- Daniel Suzuki
- Tushar Sanjay Karnik
- Sabrina Shen
- Basuhi Ravi
- Ki-Jana Carter
- Philipp Simons
- Jaclyn Lunger
- Pierre Colombe
- Cécile Chazot
- Alexander E. Kossak
- David Woohyun Chae
- Vrindaa Somjit
- Sarah Antilla
- Haoxue Yan
- Hugo Uvegi
- Skylar Deckoff-Jones
- Xueying Wilson
- Drew Weninger
- Sophia Mittman
- Leonardo Z. Zornberg
- Kevin Ye
- Katherine Stoll
- Pablo Leon
- Jonathan Paras
- Brian Traynor
- Gillian Micale
- Jacqueline Baidoo
- Yukio Cho
- Isabel Crystal
- Amina Matt
- Asmita Jana
- Daniel Koda
- Emiko Zumbro
- Jaclyn Lunger
- Edward Pang
- Seong Soon Jo
- Karen Sugano
- Peter Su, Alum ('20)
- William Lindemann, Alum ('20)
- Jérôme Michon, Alum ('19)
- Sarah Goodman, Alum ('20)
- Michelle Sing, Alum ('17)
- Alan Ransil, Alum ('18)
- Sema Ermez, Alum ('16)
- Alexandra Toumar, Alum ('17)
- Alvin Tan, Alum ('20)
- Dina Yuryev, Alum ('17)
- William Woodford, Alum ('13)
- Erica Lai, Alum ('20)
- Rachel Kurchin, Alum ('19)
- Corentin Monmeyran, Alum ('16)
- Paul Gabrys, Alum ('20)
- Jeremy Pointdexter, Alum ('18)
- Rishabh Jain, Alum ('15)
- Qingyang Du, Alum ('18)
- Carolyn Joseph, Alum ('17)
- Lucas Caretta, Alum ('19)
- Jayce Cheng, Alum ('16)
- Michael Gibson, Alum ('16)
- Katherine Hartman, Alum ('14)
- Amalia Lee, Alum ('19)
- Scott Grindy, Alum ('17)
- Christopher Heidelberger, Alum ('17)
- Seth Cazzell, Alum ('20)
DMSE Community Members
- Anuradha M. Agarwal, PI, Materials Research Laboratory
- Lionel Kimerling, Faculty
- Lorna Gibson, Faculty
- Mike Tarkanian, Senior Lecturer
- Tara Fadenrecht, Lecturer
- Molly Kruko, Staff
- Laura M. von Bosau, Staff
- John Ohrenberger, Staff
- Dominique Rey S. Altarejos, Staff
- Andre Obin, DMSE HR
- Gregory Sands, Staff
- Johanna Wilcox, Staff
- Magdalena Rieb, Administrative Officer
- Pamela Slavsky, Staff
- Mikhail Shalaginov, Postdoc
- Carlos A. Rios Ocampo, Postdoc
- Juan Carlos Gonzalez-Rosillo, Postdoc
- Angela Wittmann, Postdoc
- Alice Perrin, Postdoc
- Kevin J. May, Postdoc
- Dimitrios Papageorgiou, Postdoc
- Thang Pham, Postdoc
- Jeffrey Lopez, Postdoc
- Chuhyon John Eom, Postdoc
- Samuel Serna, Former Postdoc, Current Visiting Professor
- Alby Joseph, Undergrad
- Alana Chandler, Undergrad
- Adira Balzac, Undergrad
- Clio Batali, Undergrad
- Nick Ignacio, Undergrad
- Eryn Gillam, Undergrad
- Lauren Cooper, Undergrad
- Danielle Grey-Stewart, Undergrad
- Jeremy Dudo, Undergrad
- Mollie Wilkinson, Undergrad
- Ella Richards, Undergrad
- Chris Eschler, Undergrad
- Ava Waitz, Undergrad
- Nagisa Tadjfar, Undergrad
- Zoe Fisher, Undergrad
- Avery Nguyen, Undergrad
- Kierstin Torres, Undergrad
- Jocelyn Ting, Undergrad
- Kyle Markland, Undergrad
- Neosha Narayanan, Undergrad
- Kathryn Tso, Undergrad
- Emily Thai, Undergrad
- Kiera Tai, Undergrad
- Joyce An, Undergrad
- Udo Eze, Undergrad
- Alex Evenchik, Undergrad
- Richard Colwell, Undergrad
- Jess Cohen, Undergrad
- Heidi Li, Undergrad
- Carolina Gutierrez, Undergrad
- Steven Ngo, Undergrad
- Gabi Ogata, Undergrad
- Autumn Geil, Undergrad
- Gabi Goldsmith, Undergrad
- Samuel Song, Undergrad
- James Philips, Undergrad
- Allison Kaczmarek, Undergrad
- Caroline Walsh, Undergrad Alum
- Madison Sutula, Undergrad Alum
- Shannon Francis, Undergrad Alum
- Rebecca Gallivan, Undergrad Alum
- Jennie Glerum, Undergrad Alum
- Jessica Sun, Undergrad Alum
- David Wang, Undergrad Alum
- Emma Vargo, Undergrad Alum
- Valerie Chris Sacha, Undergrad Alum
- Jessica Sun, Undergrad Alum
- Rachael Skye, Undergrad Alum
- Caitlin Sample, Undergrad Alum
- Christina Tringides, Undergrad Alum
- Marol Escajeda, Undergrad Alum
- Pooja Reddy, Undergrad Alum
- Ester Lomelí Bentley, Undergrad Alum
- Amelie Kharey, Undergrad Alum
- Mindy Wu, Undergrad Alum
- Abdullah Alsalloum, Undergrad Alum
- Reva Butensky, Undergrad Alum
- Katheryn Scott, Undergrad Alum
- Jordan Ladd, Undergrad Alum
- Melody Wang, Undergrad Alum
- Maya Berlinger, Undergrad Alum
- Joseph Valle, Undergrad Alum
- Maranda Johnston, Undergrad Alum
- Michael Dornu Kitcher, Undergrad Alum
- Mina Healey, Undergrad Alum
- Claire Halloran, Undergrad Alum
- Amnahir Pena-Alcantara, Undergrad Alum