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Professional STEM societies have been identified as an important lever to address STEM diversity, equity, and inclusion. In this "Perspectives" article, we chronicle the highlights of the first Amplifying the Alliance to Catalyze Change for Equity in STEM Success (ACCESS+) convening held in September 2021. Here, we introduce the three-part ACCESS+ approach using a model that entails (i) completion of a DEI self-assessment known as the equity environmental scanning tool, (ii) guided action plan development and iteration, and (iii) sustained participation in a community of practice.

Implicit gender bias is frequently cited as a contributor to the gender disparity that persists in STEM fields, despite continued efforts toward equity. While many bias interventions are aimed at faculty, scientific trainees (graduate students and post-docs) are a powerful group with the potential to enact future change. A graduate level, synchronous online course entitled, "Equity in STEM for all Genders," is presented as a gender bias intervention. Course participants include graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, academic staff, and faculty. The course pairs weekly discussions (synchronous and asynchronous) about gender and gender bias-related topics with experimentally validated video interventions, primary literature, and popular articles. Over three course iterations, we observed increased bias literacy and participant motivation to mitigate gender-related bias within their local STEM contexts. We provide suggestions for making this course more widely available to STEM future faculty.

The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (INCLUDES) program seeks to address challenges of broadening participation in STEM at scale. The NSF INCLUDES Aspire Alliance ("Aspire," or "the Alliance") aims to diversify STEM faculty nationally through professional development (PD) focused on building a more equitable STEM faculty coupled with institutional change to promote systemic policies and practices that support student and faculty success. Central to the Alliance's faculty development efforts is Aspire's Inclusive Professional Framework for Faculty (IPF: Faculty). This research-grounded framework identifies three transferable "conceptual domains" that are foundational to faculty being equitable and inclusive across the multiple student-focused roles of instructor, advisor, and research mentor, as well as institution-focused roles of colleague and leader. To illustrate what the IPF: Faculty can look like in practice, the authors have chosen to narrate a day in the life of "Dr. Smith," an untenured faculty member who uses they/them pronouns. The reader will notice that Dr. Smith takes a mixed programming approach as they address the dimensions of the IPF. While many faculty already take a mixed programming approach to PD, the authors argue for greater intentionality using the lens of the IPF: Faculty to reinforce the holism of the IPF. The authors also believe that engaging in PD over time and applying the holistic lens of the IPF: Faculty will result in more equity, inclusion, and student focus.

The article explore the use of the ISTP, a national initiative designed to advance ability and awareness to promote inclusive STEM learning environments in the U.S. Topics discussed include the need for improvement in inclusive environments in STEM courses, and the learning objectives that raise awareness and built instructor capacity to engage inclusive practices.

This chapter offers an evidence-based approach for training faculty educators in the health professions that includes raising awareness of inequities, facilitating self-reflection about identity, and building skills through applied improvisational techniques to act when bias or microaggressions occur.

Effective communication by science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professionals is crucial to building an informed and scientifically literate public (Holt, 2019). While universities do an excellent job of training scientists in the practices of their discipline, they often fail to produce scientists equally effective at communicating about their work to the public. In addition, although there are many resources available on the mechanics of creating an excellent presentation or poster (American Association for the Advancement of Science, n.d.) there are few resources available to give speakers an opportunity to practice connecting with audiences. The University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison), is working to address this gap in training in two synergistic ways. First, by working directly with young scientists using improvisational theater-based training to build their science communication competence. Second, by training the people who educate scientists at other universities to do this work. The results are highly encouraging, with participants reporting solid gains in both communication confidence and competence that they retain well after completing the practicum.

Designers of professional development activities and programs within higher education generally believe workshop learning outcomes and learner-created materials are what graduate students and postdoctoral scholars value from participating in these activities. We created a new structure for online synchronous workshops that integrates active learning, participant reflection, and skill development. Our design was informed by the hypothesis that participants value the work that they do and the materials they create during our online workshops. In our evaluations we examined students' self-reported behavioral and attitudinal changes and perspectives on professional development. We learned that participants considered their sense of community and opportunities for reflection to be valued elements of the workshops. We found that these workshops added to students' self-reflective practices and skill-building processes. Participants suggested that workshops should integrate active learning and skills application with deliberate reflection and community building to increase the potential for long-term change.

The achievement gap, disparities in the academic achievement of marginalized students (e.g., underrepresented minority, first generation in their family to attend college, and low socio-economic status undergraduate students) relative to their non-minority peers is a pervasive problem in higher education. It impacts student access to the major and discipline, and it ultimately negatively impacts workforce diversity. For many students, in particular those from underrepresented demographics, the current higher educational system is ineffective, unwelcoming, and even hostile or threatening. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, faculty professional development on inclusive teaching has been shown to raise instructor awareness and increase their use of inclusive teaching practices. Madison Teaching and Learning Excellence (MTLE) is a professional development program for early career tenure-track faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison). MTLE aims to improve undergraduate education by supporting faculty to be efficient and effective in teaching from the very beginning. Over the course of a year, each cohort of MTLE faculty fellows follows a curriculum designed to: (a) quickly connect fellows with the many specialized programs across campus that focus on teaching excellence; (b) facilitate the use of learner-centered and inclusive practices that enhance student learning; and (c) foster a cross=campus community of practice that serves them well beyond the fellows' time in MTLE. This focused professional development module presented in this article could be adapted by other institutions as part of a campus-wide approach to address educational inequities.

Over the past decade, the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) and Madison Area Technical College (Madison College) partnered to create an internship pathway for graduate students pursuing careers as future science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) faculty members. Since 2003, 10 doctoral students from the university completed teaching internship appointments with the technical college chemistry department. Interns benefited from a variety of teaching and educational experiences that helped lay the foundations for their future teaching careers. Following completion of their internships, many students secured employment in higher education as new instructors and enthusiastic members of the teaching profession. Intern projects also benefited veteran faculty mentors at Madison College, and the experience provided a rich forum for collaboration that generated curricular and instructional innovations in the classroom. Centered on the three pillars of teaching-as-research, learning community, and learning through diversity, the internship program created at UW-Madison and implemented at Madison College provides a model pathway for preparing future STEM faculty. This approach provides clear benefits not only for the future faculty who are trained, but also for veteran faculty mentors, for the host institution, and for the undergraduate students impacted by the educational innovations. This paper examines the key attributes of this program, with the hope that our experience may be disseminated and replicated to benefit others.

Disparities in academic achievement between students who are under-represented minorities, the first in their families to go to college, and/or low income and their more privileged peers affects students from kindergarten through college. Inequities throughout their education, as well as other causes affect the ability of high school graduates to matriculate at the college or university of their choice; later, talented and bright undergraduates may underperform, especially in the large-enrollment courses that serve as gateways to many majors. Unable to pursue the majors of their choice, many disadvantaged students change paths. This failure to retain them in some majors detracts from the rich variety of ideas and experiences in the classroom, decreases the diversity of graduates in some disciplines, and ultimately reduces workforce diversity. An essential component of any institution's strategy for improving the success rates of minority students is to prepare faculty to teach more inclusively to a diverse student population. This article focuses on a program piloted at the University of Wisconsin Madison that engages both current and future faculty in an evidence-based, practice-oriented discourse about the academic achievement gap.