(applause)
-: Alright, so we're gonna start out,
I wanna ask you a question.
We're gonna have a quiz on this,
but I'm gonna give you some time to think about it.
So, I'm Dr. Jean Mohammadi-Aragh.
I want you to think about who this person is,
Mahnas Mohammadi-Aragh, if you're paying attention
early in the morning, you might notice that
we have the same last name, so.
Maybe it's my husband, my aunt,
maybe they're not related to me at all.
I don't know.
Alright, you kinda got a picture in your mind
of who this person is?
Alright, so the quiz, I'm gonna make it a little easy,
'cause, you know, we're not really ready for school yet.
We're gonna have some like, just two choices.
You've got a 50/50 shot on everything,
so everyone's gotta guess, you're gonna need to answer
by raising your hand, alright?
So, the first one, let's talk about male or female.
Who thinks this person is male, raise your hand.
Alright, who thinks this person is female?
Alright, so majority female this time, alright.
Let's talk about what language they speak.
Alright, there's a lot of them.
So, we'll make it a little easy.
Alright, what we're gonna decide is,
is this person a native english speaker
or is their native language,
the first language they learned,
something other than English?
Alright, so who thinks that this
person is a native English speaker?
Alright, who thinks that it's something
other than English?
Alright, so the majority on that was non-English.
The majority on the first one was female,
if you weren't looking around.
Alright, so where is this person from?
Alright, I'll make it easy again.
Let's say that this person is a native Mississippian,
say born right here in this state
or they were born somewhere else, alright?
Okay, so who thinks this person is a native Mississippian?
Alright, who thinks this person was born somewhere else?
Majority have it with the somewhere else.
Alright, guess what?
Surprise, this person is me.
Alright, so I am Mahnas Jean Mohammadi-Aragh,
that is my full name.
I was born right here in Starkville, Mississippi
and of course, the first language I learned was English.
Alright, I know that there's some people
that got 100%, namely 'cause there's some
students of mine in this class today,
but who thinks, who got a 100%, be honest.
Alright, this is like more than has ever happened before,
but I see my students (laughs).
So, what I'll say is when your first going
into your classroom and you're looking at your students
and we value diversity and inclusion here
at Mississippi State.
The first thing you need to do is acknowledge your biases.
You all have them.
Everyone who didn't get that 100%,
you looked at that name and you thought,
"This is a foreigner who can't speak English
"and I don't wanna sign up for their class."
How do I know that?
Because it happens every semester.
We have two sections of Introduction to Circuit Analysis
in Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Everybody signs up for the English faculty member
and they don't sign up for me
and I walk in and I'm like, "Sweet, I have less to grade."
(laughter)
It's wonderful.
Alright, so acknowledge your biases.
You have them, whether it's with international,
where someone's from, it doesn't mean that it's
a harmful thing, it just means that you assume
things when you see someone or see their name
or something like that.
So, don't try to make those assumptions
hurt your students, you acknowledge that you have them
and be very fair with all of your students.
At the same time, keep in mind that all of your students
have biases too.
So, just like you have biases about who I am,
they have biases when they sign up.
You could get angry at it.
Like I said, I have less to grade, it's awesome.
I also like surprising my students
when I come in the first day and speak fluently, English
and they can understand, for the most part,
what I say, I think I might have a Southern accent,
since I am from Mississippi,
so if they're from the North, maybe not, I don't know.
Alright, but one thing you can do
is try to help your students be more comfortable
in your classroom.
So, I know that my last name is a mouthful.
So, somebody wants to call me Dr. Mohammad-Aragh,
that's gonna be challenging, unless maybe you've
met one of my siblings or from, my dad's from Iran,
so, if you're from Iran, you probably know
how to pronounce my name, but, I kind of break it down.
I'm gonna make you feel a little bit more comfortable.
So, Mohammadi-Aragh, it's actually really easy, alright?
So, we've all heard of the boxer, Muhammad Ali,
or maybe the profit Muhammad,
so, we can all say Mohammad, yeah?
Mohammad, alright.
Then there's that i on the end,
messing it all up.
It's just like a d, so Mohammadi, Mohammadi
and then the other part that's a little tricky,
is that gh on the end of Aragh, it's a k sound,
it's kind of like a Loch Ness Monster,
so kind of like a girl stock,
so, I have a picture of Iraq up there
because it's a like a rock you pick
up off the ground, yeah?
So, Mohammadi-Aragh.
-: (audience in unison) Mohammdi-Aragh.
-: This is wonderful, every graduate I see on this campus
can pronounce my name, yeah (laughs).
Alright, it's not that bad,
alright, also the students in my department
call me Dr. Jean, it doesn't bother me.
You know, some people may want to be more formal,
especially as new teachers, you're younger,
you're closer to their age,
so, perhaps, you wanna be more formal
and be Mr. and Mrs. last name,
for me, it doesn't really matter.
You can do little things like that.
Alright, so, what I'm gonna talk about
for the rest of this is these tips
in order to create inclusive, positive,
diverse environments and kind of support everybody.
So, there's these five tips.
The first one is acknowledge biases,
we talked about that ad nauseam.
I want to, these say steps up there,
it's more like strategies, you don't
have to do everything, you can pick one or two,
things that may be more appropriate
for your classroom environment
or that your more comfortable doing,
the acknowledging biases is kind of a big one
because that's a common thing across classrooms,
but maybe some of the other things aren't.
So, we just really wanna make our classrooms
equitable and make sure it's fair
for all of the students coming in.
Alright, so also I'm in engineering,
so a bunch of my examples are gonna come from engineering,
they may be totally inappropriate for your discipline,
so when I'm talking about an under-represented group
member, a lot of my examples are women,
'cause I'm in electrical engineering
and come on, there's like two women faculty
and maybe 10 female students in there.
So, if you're a female and want to major
in electrical engineering, we're recruiting.
No, I'm kidding (laughs).
So, the first is, equip the under-represented group member.
Again, for me, this tends to be female.
It's also African American and other minorities,
but if you are in a major where it may not be female,
it may be male, so just kind of flip it around.
Alright, so in this strategy or tip,
there's an assumption, underlying assumption
that the under-represented group member is deficient.
So, this is kind of a bad assumption to have
unless there is some truth or something to it,
but you have to be really careful using this strategy
because you don't wanna have your biases assume
that there's a deficiency and then go forth,
it needs to be something that really exists.
So, for example, in engineering,
we have spatial visualization and what that is
is, I guess we can look at the clicker.
You have this object.
I'm looking at it from this direction.
I want to know what's on the other side,
so without flipping it, can I sketch the other side?
So, this is kinda symmetrical, it's not that big of a deal,
but, if you have like a bigger shape,
like maybe a gear or something like that,
being able to rotate that in your head
and draw it and like know what that looks like,
women have a harder time doing that than men.
It is proven, I can't tell you why.
There's some theories, like perhaps,
because women play less with Legos and shapes
where they're building things
and maybe that's something that they don't learn.
Maybe it's something that's inherently genetic.
They're not really sure, but I can give
a spatial visualization test and women
will typically perform worse.
That doesn't mean that there are no guys that perform worse.
So, one thing we sometimes do in engineering,
especially for engineering students that are
freshman, first getting in there,
we may have some spatial visualization help,
maybe it's an extra course, maybe it's something
you can do outside the class, just some hints
or maybe it's part of your introduction class.
So, we're trying to equip everyone
to make sure that there's a level playing field.
So, if you're struggling with that,
these like, extra help, may get you there.
Of course, it's not really fair to say all women
need to sign up for this and no one else does.
Okay, 'cause there's guys that have a hard time
with spatial visualization too.
So, one way we can do that in engineering,
is we can give all entering freshman
the spatial visualization test
and if you score less than 70%,
we can can sign you up for a spatial visualization class
to help you out because we're equipping you
with the skills to be successful in engineering.
That sounds more fair to me, yeah?
If you go take the class, there are more women than men,
but we didn't stick you in there just because
you were female, that make sense?
Alright, so, same if you're doing something with shop,
like sometimes minority men might not have had
as much experience or been able to be
in the environments where they're using
these machining tools, so maybe having something
after class where they can come practice that skill
to get a little better.
Alright, so, now, your disciplines are all different.
I don't know what skills you need.
You likely are not sitting next to the same person
in your discipline, but you might be,
but, I want you to turn to the person next to you
and talk about your disciplines and just real quickly,
is there some strategy you might think of
that would be more appropriate for your discipline
or am I totally off the wall crazy up here?
Alright, go.
It should be really loud in here, yeah.
(audience murmuring)
Alright, let's come back together.
You all are way better than freshman (laughs).
Alright, there's always a danger in this,
I don't know if I'll be able to come back, we'll see, okay.
So, does anyone have an example that
they want to share with the group?
(laughter)
No, we do not want to talk in front of this group.
Alright.
Voiceover: So, I am in history,
and one thing I've noticed
is that, I work with international students
in the last school and when you're
dealing with international students
you can't assume some of the basics about
American history that anyone living here would know.
You can't assume that they know President Kennedy
was assassinated or that Abraham Lincoln was
president during the Civil War.
You have to talk to someone like you would
want someone to talk to you if you were going
to China, you probably don't know that much about China.
-: Absolutely, that is a wonderful example.
So, an international student who's taking history
classes may not recognize, your example was
President Kennedy was assassinated,
I could even take that one step further.
When my father came here,
he came here as an undergraduate degree,
he didn't speak English
and when he was in history,
he didn't know that George and Washington were names.
(laughter)
He just knew that those were English words.
So, President Kennedy, is Kennedy a name?
Is that a place, a person, is that a food?
I'm not sure (laughs).
So, of course, he did take some English classes
and picked up on that, but he talks about
history being one thing that he definitely
struggled in because there's so many words
that are names, so yes, something to keep in mind.
Alright, I also really love that example
'cause it's totally different than engineering
and something I hadn't thought about.
Alright, so hopefully, you're able to
come up with maybe something in your discipline.
Again, keep in mind, this is something that
you don't have to employ,
it's just a strategy that if there's something
in your discipline you might be able to.
Again, if you're also teaching a lab,
you may not be able to do this,
'cause they're coming in, they're testing,
it's not like you're able to have lots
of extra time to, you need to be protective of your time
and so you don't have tons of extra time
to teach a second course to help somebody out.
Alright, so maybe the next strategy would work.
This is create equal opportunity.
So, we're talking about when you have a group
and one thing that happens in engineering,
when I was an undergraduate,
I was usually the only female in the class.
That's fine, I actually am kind
of a bold extroverted female,
so I don't think that it really impacted me personally,
but, even though I'm a leader, I'm outspoken,
I don't mind talking in front of 300 people,
I often was given the role of secretary or scribe,
as we call it now to make it sound better,
(laughter)
alright, so, if you have a situation, again,
women, 'cause I'm in electrical engineering,
it's where I see a lot, if you have groups
and you kind of see that happening
where somebody always gets put into this gender role,
or some other role based on who they are,
you might be able to do things to change that.
So, one thing you can do is, like in engineering,
if there were two girls in the class,
you might put both of them on a team,
'cause at least only one of them is gonna
be secretary, no, (laughs) no, you can put
both of them on a team because sometimes
if you're a minority, you don't speak out as much,
because you're kind of letting the group lead,
but if they're both on that team,
now they're not, there still may be three or four guys,
but now there's like someone else kinda
help them feel more comfortable in speaking out.
The other thing you can do is kind of assign group roles.
So, you're gonna be the scribe, 'cause I said so
or you might try and assign roles based off
what somebody's strength is or you might
just rotate roles, so if there's multiple projects,
who's the leader, who's the recorder,
another fancy name for secretary, things like that.
(audience member asking question)
Yep, so the question was, she's been in
creating group environments before,
been in the situation and she's tried to encourage
the minority or under-represented group member
to take the lead or take on some other role
and sometime it's challenging because that's
not in their personality.
So, that's absolutely true.
I'm sure that there are many of you in here
that if I asked you one by one to come up here
and talk to everybody, the anxiety would just,
really be there.
So, it's not necessarily in your personality
to be like this.
So, I guess my advice there is maybe
two different things.
One is that definitely you can't force
somebody to do something, but there are
maybe other ways to encourage them.
Maybe they're never gonna be the leader,
but if you can rotate maybe through some
of the other roles, we might have, someone who's
the recorder of the meeting, the leader,
maybe someone that's taking some lead
on one of the research tasks that we need to go figure out
the weight of a counterbalance to make
the trebuchet shoot the ping-pong ball
some distance, like maybe giving them another
real substantial role could help.
Another thing I do in my groups is,
if I was gonna divide all of you all
into groups, I like to do it really randomly.
So, if you have a group where you let
friends get together, so say there's three
or four people that know each other
and then a fifth person gets put on
'cause you want to fifth, five person team,
those four people already have a relationship
and they're already gonna be communicating
and you're gonna leave someone out,
so especially if that is the unrepresented group member,
that's a terrible situation to be in.
So, when I do my first year engineering design
projects with students, we have to have some
programming and MATLAB, so those type skills
maybe we also need team skills, so someone
who's worked on a project before or something.
So, I can do this, I can say, "Who in here
"has ever programmed in MATLAB, raise your hand.
"Alright, who in here has every programmed
"in any language like C++, Perl, maybe even HTML, alright.
"Who in here has worked on a design team before?"
So, the hands are going up, okay, alright,
and I'll go through a few more questions
and at the end when I'm trying to make sure
I got everybody, I might have some sneaky
things that I do, but okay, so we've done this so far.
So, you see, we have some skills that are distributed
among this class and so I'll say,
"Okay, if you've programmed in MATLAB before,
"y'all don't do this right now, but if you've
"programmed in MATLAB before, come line up,
"starting right here around the room."
So, all the MATLAB people come down,
'cause that's a big skill 'cause you're gonna
be using MATLAB.
Now, all the MATLAB people are there,
so anyone up here who said that they had programmed,
I want you to keep lining up around the wall.
So, now the people that have programmed,
'cause that's similar to MATLAB,
so that's another good skill.
Maybe you've been on a design team before,
so you have some teaming experience,
maybe in high school, so you're lining up around the room
and I line everybody up and then I'm getting to the end,
nobody's admitting to knowing anything at this point.
So, I'm like, okay, so if you're from Starkville
and you're still sitting up there,
come line up and if you're from anywhere else,
come line up.
So, now I got everybody lined up around the class
and it would be zigzagged all through the auditorium
if we were doing it in here
and I'm like okay, I know how many students I have,
I have 100 students, I want teams of five,
so that means I'm gonna have 20 teams
and I start counting.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
nine, ten, eleven, twelve, up to twenty.
One, two, three, four, five, six, up to twenty
and now what happened is, I have the first 20 people
are people that knew something about programming,
so every team has a programmer on it.
Every team has someone who's been on a team before,
so they can provide some experience
and it doesn't quite work out,
if we only had seven programmers and had 20 teams,
but at least I spread it out,
so you don't have one team where everybody's
done MATLAB and they're gonna be way up here.
The other thing that happens is,
I just randomly put you up there
and if you went up there with your programmer friend
and stood beside him, like yeah, we're gonna
be a team together, I'd just put you on different teams.
So, what happens is, you would see, as the students,
that it was just really random.
I didn't show any preferential treatment to anybody.
You would also see that all the skills
were kind spread out as well
and then, you're not with your friends.
So, that's another strategy you might be able to use to help
'cause if I'm down here and I'm like,
well, I don't know how to program,
but I know that there's someone else that can on my team,
maybe that will empower me a little bit too.
Alright, so if this doesn't work,
maybe you're not doing teams,
maybe there's not some way that you need to create
equal opportunity, maybe you can use this strategy,
which is value differences and this one, I'll admit,
I am the worst about, okay?
So, this is just pointing out that under-represented
group members have a lot to contribute,
so the great example, again, we'll go back to being
female in electrical engineering,
when I'm talking about engineering managers,
the names that I naturally use are Bob, Tyler,
John, let's list them out.
So, all these male names and I was giving a lecture one time
and it was actually Dr. Bruce who was observing me
as a new instructor, kind of giving me some feedback
and guidance and he said, "Jean, when you talk about
"engineering managers, you never use a female name
"in your word problems, never."
Because, I guess it's like something I didn't really see,
but at the same time,
if you are a female in my class,
luckily you would say,
"Well, she's female, so maybe I can succeed in engineering,"
but if I'm always just talking about males,
maybe you start to think that this isn't the place for you.
Also, there's the important thing of
when we're different, we see things differently.
So, if you come from a different country,
you've learned differently and you may
have a perspective that's very valuable to the team.
So, I don't necessarily have an example for the classroom,
but I could talk about my husband and I
and how we see things differently
and we were climbing this trail up to the waterfall
in Yosemite Park and at the very end of it,
if you've ever been out there,
you're like climbing along the edge of a cliff
and the path is like this wide
and this is a cliff and this is a drop down,
and I am not okay with that
and they had this railing and you touched the railing
and it shakes like this,
and I'm like, oh my god, I'm not even touching
that railing, I don't wanna be on that side at all,
it's so shaky but, on the other hand,
my husband was walking along the side where the wall is,
there's lots of rocks and things that have collected,
so it's easier to trip and in his mind,
he's like, "I'd rather be on this side,"
where it's kind of a clear path,
I'm like, "I'd rather be on this side
"because that railing is not gonna hold me,"
but he wasn't depending on the railing, I guess,
I don't know, so, yeah.
So, it's like a little silly thing when we got to the top.
I'm freaked out, he's not freaked out.
He's like, "This is beautiful, look,"
so different perspectives, you can bring that to a team,
you can bring that to an engineering experience as well.
Alright, so we talked about these three,
really quick, the last one is change the culture.
This one I'm not gonna belabor too much
because a lot of this has to do with maybe,
as you move on from your graduate teaching position
into a faculty position or into a leadership position,
you might be able to really do something to
change the culture.
In engineering, we have a lot of things about
changing the conversation, so this is like,
be more inclusive in using women as examples
of engineers and things like that.
What you could consider doing is
using a different classroom pedagogy,
so instead of just lecturing,
you might be able to do active learning
or something like that in order to,
kind of, people learn differently,
and so it might be better for different group members
to learn with problems instead of you just lecturing.
So, the five things in this review is
acknowledge biases, equip the under-represented
group member, create equal opportunity,
value difference and change culture.
If you want to know more about these,
there's a web link where there's a webinar,
and this is actually an hour and a half seminar,
so you can learn more about any of them individually
or all of them together,
but I encourage you to think about what
might be useful in your classroom
and then apply that as appropriate.
Again, not all five of these, maybe one, maybe two.
Alright, this is who I am, my email is jean@ece.msstate.edu
if you have any other questions,
I'm happy to answer them,
feel free to email me, thanks so much.
(applause)