Intersections of Cultural Capital with Kimberly Scott

In this interview with Kimberly Scott, we discuss some of the problems with discourse around grit, students as techno-social change agents, teaching with culturally responsive approaches in communities that are hostile toward culturally responsive pedagogies, unpacking discourse and Discourse, considering both present and future identities when teaching, potential disconnects between theory and practice with intersectional work, comforting the disturbed and disturbing the comforted, and so much more.

  • Welcome back to another episode of the

    CSK8 podcast my name is jared o'leary

    each week of this podcast is either a

    solo episode where i unpack some

    scholarship in relation to computer

    science education or an interview with a

    guest or multiple guests in this week's

    interview i'm having a conversation with

    kimberly scott and we discuss some of

    the problems with discourse around grit

    students as techno social change agents

    teaching with culturally responsive

    approaches in communities that are

    hostile toward culturally responsive

    pedagogies unpacking discourse and

    discourse that's with a lowercase d and

    an uppercase d considering both present

    and future identities when teaching

    potential disconnects between theory and

    practice with intersectional work

    comforting the disturbed and

    disturbingly comforted and so much more

    as always the show notes includes links

    to other podcasts resources mentioned in

    this particular episode you can find

    that at jared o'leary.com or by clicking

    the link in the app that you're

    listening to this on on my website you

    will find a bunch of computer science

    drumming and gaming content there's

    literally several hundred hours worth of

    content on my website so if you haven't

    checked it out yet i recommend it and

    while you're there make sure you check

    out the free coding curriculum that i

    developed for boot up professional

    development which you can find at boot

    up pd.org but with all that being said

    we will now begin with an introduction

    by kimberly i am kimberly scott

    i'm a professor at arizona state

    university in the school of social

    transformation my administrative role is

    as founding executive director of the

    center for gender equity in science and

    technology and most recently i have

    assumed a new role as the senior

    faculty fellow at the arizona state

    university foundation i'm curious what

    kind of social transformation do you

    strive for

    in your work or research or just

    everyday way of being that's a good

    question i used to say

    i

    am trying to harness all of my energies

    my capital to

    not necessarily

    get more girls of color to populate a

    flawed system but instead to provide

    girls of color what i mean by that is

    african american native american latinx

    as well as latina alaska native girls to

    have the resources and the experiences

    to create a more equitable system i'm

    really mindful of efforts that are

    blaming our daughters for not succeeding

    in environments that are not only flawed

    but that are hostile that are

    consistently requiring them to put on

    what i write about in my book an

    astronaut suit that they're supposed to

    survive

    and

    thrive in contexts that they are really

    not welcome i used to say i want to blow

    up the system perhaps because as i go

    further into my 50s i'm more interested

    in again what do we

    need to create a new system and my

    argument is we need to work with our

    daughters and our allies so that they

    can create the new system sustainably

    scalably and intentionally so at the

    time of this recording a couple weeks

    ago i did a unpacking scholarship

    episode where i talked about your

    publication with elliot that used like

    sharecropping as a metaphor for the new

    labor system and it was fascinating to

    think through the different lenses that

    you were basically

    presenting in that so if anyone hasn't

    listened to that i recommend and then

    going and actually reading the paper

    itself it's really interesting thinking

    of okay so if we are promoting

    marginalized underrepresented

    communities to go into this system we

    need to also look at the system that is

    problematic and do something to actually

    address that so i really appreciate that

    publication oh that was a lot of fun to

    work on

    dr elliott and i

    took a couple of years to get to the

    point of putting that on paper and what

    i'm hoping to do in my next book which

    will be book number five is to really

    unpack not only that piece actually the

    name of the book is why does disparity

    continue for women of color and stem and

    i'm drawing on my sociological

    background to answer that question

    through a series of essays and that

    piece about sharecropping is one that i

    will use as a platform for a chapter

    to talk about

    how this goes back to

    something i studied many many moons ago

    as a student at rutgers in terms of

    false consciousness and how

    the system seems to set up these

    patterns these trends these strategies

    these efforts so it seems desirable as

    we said in that piece it seems like you

    want to increase your coding skills when

    in actuality it's not going to be a

    liberatory move

    towards any type of transformation it's

    simply going to increase the proletariat

    class so one of the things that i read

    in your book that really stood out was

    kind of problematizing some of the

    inadequacies of the positive psychology

    movement and in particular like you

    mentioned that grit can become

    problematic when it is teaching us to

    basically adhere to some of the

    hegemonic structures that are oppressing

    people i'm wondering if you could

    elaborate on that yeah i've seen too

    many examples where individuals use the

    concept of grit to substantiate why

    certain populations are not successful

    or why certain populations are

    successful so for instance i was at a

    meeting very recently and the focus was

    on women of color and tech and someone

    asked during the meeting well what about

    asian american women the person went on

    to say that asian american women tend to

    do really well in tech so really what

    are we talking about the implication was

    will they have the grit to do well and i

    responded in saying several things most

    of which comes from

    the significance that i identify using

    intersectionality as a framework to

    really make sense of systemic oppression

    my response was first of all which asian

    american women are we talking about i

    used to live in southeast asia and in

    fact when i was there i was working in a

    rehabilitation center was called that

    for

    young women who had been sold into

    slavery or the sex trade and i know

    from my not only my experience there but

    also looking at the literature if we're

    talking about southeast asian women and

    then break this down in terms of we're

    talking about hmong we're talking about

    laotian and where their experiences are

    are they in rural midwest u.s are they

    in northeast we see in the data that

    even though they are members of this

    very large category asian american they

    tend not to do very well by traditional

    means as it relates to text so that was

    one response i gave and then the other

    thing i said is well how are we defining

    success and that i talked about in the

    book and right before this conversation

    i was looking i still keep in contact

    via facebook with a lot of the girls

    who are now women who appear in that

    book and we communicate and we we

    celebrate each other and i said many of

    them are not in traditional stem fields

    but i would argue they are technical

    social change agents

    meaning they are using their

    skills they're using their computational

    thinking to improve their communities

    in some fantastic way they understand

    that for the most part we're measuring

    success

    based on how many black and brown female

    bodies are going into

    traditional tech fields they're aware of

    this and on one hand they've made a

    conscious decision some of them like i

    don't want to go there why am i going to

    subject myself

    to this type of abuse some people call

    it microaggressions we tend to just in

    my program just called straight out

    abuse and so they've made the decision

    of saying i'm going to go in this

    direction i'm either going to create my

    own space through a consulting agency

    some of them have done that or i'm going

    to go in politics one young lady i'm

    thinking of she did that very purposely

    but she says i want to change policy at

    the broad level the macro level so i

    know i said a lot of things that

    hopefully speak to some of the things

    you were asking me about what kind of

    changes are

    they hoping to make as a techno social

    change agent like if where to double

    click on the person who is going into

    politics what are they hoping to

    change about society and technology in

    the world that young woman she wants

    hopefully she's listening because she

    knows who she is first of all she wants

    to better educate policy makers in terms

    of systemic inequities i love that but

    she also realizes she has to understand

    how the system works if she wants to

    create a new one i get chills thinking

    of that that's brilliant one young woman

    she

    wanted to work more at the local level

    so she was very much invested i think i

    brought this up in the book in terms of

    working with head start programs but she

    was a product of a head start program

    and more specifically helping them with

    their digital presence another young

    woman she's in her phd program and she

    is interestingly enough doing

    anthropology another young woman who i

    keep in a lot of context she's a teacher

    and she's made it very very clear

    that she wants to teach the next

    several generations how to become techno

    social change agents so

    you know quick answer your question it

    varies but i think the common thread

    that is pulsing through all of these

    narratives is that they want to make an

    impact that is sustainable so how can we

    encourage and model that kind of

    ontology or way of being within schools

    you know i'll be honest it's a herculean

    task to think about this and it has to

    do with changing the system and a piece

    that i'm working on with my colleague we

    were talking just about how do we better

    integrate culturally responsive

    principles

    into our k-12 system right now we do

    know for instance new york state

    department of education they have now

    implemented a culturally responsive

    sustaining framework that is amazing and

    they've called on

    the leading scholars who have written

    about culturally responsive and

    sustaining to help craft the framework

    and they're at the point now of saying

    let's be intentional of how we're going

    to integrate this framework that to me

    is a fantastic model that we should pay

    attention to in other states that

    haven't taken this bold move as well as

    measure its effects i think also how do

    we do this we need to be really mindful

    not only of thinking of the end product

    but the means by which we get there so

    what i mean by that is there's a lot of

    emphasis on okay we want to have culture

    responsive practices whether it be

    culturally responsive computational

    thinking of culturally responsive

    sustaining pedagogical practices we want

    to have them and we want to have them by

    way of creating these products curricula

    experiences professional development the

    list goes on and on but i am

    mindful of thinking about the process by

    which we get to those products and i'm

    beginning to think about

    how can we use culturally responsiveness

    as a framework to

    poke collaborations

    how can we think about culturally

    responsive collaboration so that we are

    not cannibalizing or colonializing

    marginalized communities work in a way

    that's going to disenfranchise them and

    again reinforce a hierarchical system so

    what i'm seeing unfortunately is like

    there are organizations that are saying

    i want to do quote-unquote good i want

    to be socially responsible i want to

    support social justice initiatives and

    depending upon the organization they may

    say okay just here's a whole bunch of

    money organization x do what you want

    well this leads to what i'm currently

    involved in as foundation fellow

    what we're seeing is more and more

    there's been no change in terms of

    white-led organizations getting the same

    amount of money even if they have no

    background in culturally responsive or

    racial justice anything they're still

    getting money and less so for women and

    people of color-led organizations and so

    one of the things that we need in order

    for this to be

    different is that if you're talking

    about grant making organizations or

    donors

    they need to do something differently in

    terms of funding their habitus

    and their way of thinking their habits

    of mind needs to be transformed in order

    to fund differently that's one example

    if we think about some other

    organizations that are saying i want to

    do things differently so i'm going to

    implement implicit bias trainings and

    then they

    co-opt some implicit bias training

    without asking for

    has this particular training been used

    on populations that i actually do want

    to engage

    and so i'm seeing just really bizarre

    haphazard

    approaches

    in the name of social justice being

    adopted so i i'm saying that if we're

    really going to do something we need to

    be intentional we need to think about

    culturally responsive in different terms

    about collaboration and we need to

    question ourselves so for anyone who

    hasn't listened to it i'll include links

    to this in the show notes but i do

    unpack k-por center's culturally

    responsive sustaining cs framework so

    that's what's being discussed here but

    then also there's a paper at a recent

    respect conference that used their

    bodugian lens to look at habitus and

    things like that in cs interventions so

    if people are unfamiliar with those

    terms check out those episodes that'll

    unpack it more but i imagine it'll make

    sense with like some of these follow-up

    questions that i have but i'm curious

    how does this idea and this kind of way

    of being fit into systems like ap for

    students or certification for teachers

    in terms of having a social impact those

    kind of things aren't necessarily easily

    standardized and measured and what not

    and quantified and put into systems like

    that like for example a really awesome

    social impact for an individual might be

    to be less racist and understand their

    biases and whatnot but then

    an impact that you might have within a

    community might be like some kind of a

    positive influence or impact in the

    community like creating support systems

    etc but those things don't necessarily

    fit

    well within our current educational

    system so what can we do to do these

    more culturally relevant practices when

    we have these systems that kind of are

    focused on the content knowledge and not

    necessarily the social impact i think

    the policy makers i'm talking about the

    policymakers for education standards

    they need to

    rethink reform transform the standards i

    think that there needs to be a

    culturally responsive standard required

    and there needs to be a way to measure

    it i mean i was a classroom teacher in

    what was called a special needs district

    and i remember the pressure and this was

    well before high stakes testing and its

    current iterations but i remember the

    pressure that i felt as a teacher in a

    high needs district because we're judged

    by not how well

    a young person feels a sense of

    belonging in a context not how well a

    young person has created an initiative

    to

    help other homeless people in their

    context but instead are they up to grade

    level in math unless we have

    standards about culturally responsive

    learning then nothing's going to really

    change can anything really change right

    what could teacher education programs

    and professional development programs

    kind of do to

    help teachers facilitate these

    techno-social change agents that's a

    hard question because the teacher

    education programs to their credit are

    preparing teachers to be

    effective in a system that has standards

    that are anti-culturally responsive yeah

    so

    unless

    the policies change teacher education

    can do nothing now it could be so maybe

    that's a very dark way of looking at

    things or

    and it is it is i'm sorry you know there

    are examples of a few teacher education

    programs that have beautifully

    integrated culturally responsive

    teaching into their practices my

    university arizona state they have

    several teacher education scholars who

    have expertise in this area and that is

    fantastic but there's a host of research

    about teacher self-efficacy and

    culturally responsive and throughout the

    research i just looked at it two days

    ago two things we see one teachers

    do not feel in any way shape or form

    efficacious or an increase of their

    self-efficacy to implement culturally

    responsiveness even after professional

    development and they don't feel

    that even if they go through a

    culturally responsive professional

    development so these are in-service

    teachers they feel like it's affected

    their self-efficacy in general so to me

    there's a gap between

    teachers having the opportunity to say

    if i can teach in a culturally

    responsive and sustaining way i should

    feel more self-efficacious

    and if i do then i will have a greater

    impact on my students

    but that impact may not be

    reflected or even picked up in the

    standardized testing as we know it the

    self-efficacy thing is an important

    thing to consider but then there's also

    the political pressures involved with if

    you do anything that is labeled as crt

    among

    some communities then you could get

    fired literally lose your job for doing

    that so like i'm curious if you have

    recommendations for that like there's a

    professor that i know who recommended

    something called sas small acts of

    subversion and so an example of that

    might be oh well i'm not doing

    culturally relevant teaching i'm doing

    interest driven teaching like it's the

    same thing they would have done they're

    just labeling something different yeah

    like do you have recommendations for

    teachers who are afraid if they're

    teaching in those communities where it's

    hostile toward these approaches yeah you

    know i'm glad you bring that up because

    the struggle is real and i love that

    fast and i think that's a really

    important way to go to to code it

    differently so it can be heard by those

    who

    are more unwilling to listen

    and you know what the model is there so

    if we take that example out of teaching

    again in my more recent work i was

    troubled by not seeing especially

    among

    community foundations i was troubled by

    not seeing a statistically significant

    number of solicitations that called out

    specifically

    women of color girls of color my

    hypothesis was oh my goodness it's

    community foundations they're not

    necessarily subject to

    you know federal obligations they can

    kind of do what they want so this is

    where i'm gonna find some cutting edge

    bold language no

    but what i have learned in my research

    is that many incredibly agile and adept

    foundations have coded their

    solicitations so that at the end of the

    day women of color girls of color or

    other racialized and marginalized groups

    are the recipients of the support they

    really need they do so by coding the

    language differently they don't say

    women of colored girls with code they

    may say they don't even say

    underrepresented so we are interested in

    supporting let's say communities

    that frequent the food bank well if we

    look at statistics in a particular given

    area that may mean

    a certain racial engendered group yeah

    that's interesting it's amazing the

    impact of discourse exactly and so i

    think that you know clearly it's not

    working simply

    maintaining in our silos and trying to

    reconcile and resolve disparity i am

    deeply interested in disparity as is

    manifested in stem writ large technology

    in particular it's clearly not working

    in fact the data are clear in some cases

    it's gone backwards and i'll talk about

    that more specifically but you know it's

    not working saying okay computer

    scientist you figure out disparity right

    it's not working social scientists you

    figure it out we need an

    interdisciplinary approach but to your

    point about discourse i

    am consistently engaged in and leading

    interdisciplinary initiatives and it

    takes time for us to create a common

    language going back to my point earlier

    about collaboration it takes a fair

    amount of time to work across

    disciplines and we're all perhaps

    invested in doing the work but because

    we've been so siloed i have met so many

    barriers and obstacles and it's been a

    question of language like you said

    saying critical race theories is bad

    right for so many people but if i say

    let's be really student focused and

    think about community improvement

    through reflective means that's

    considerably more digestible so i took a

    discourse analysis class from james paul

    g at arizona state and

    he's really well known professor for a

    variety of things but one of the things

    he likes to talk about is the difference

    between lowercase

    discourse and uppercase discourse and

    the lowercase would be like the talk the

    text the speech etc but the uppercase is

    like how you present yourself so the way

    that you dress the way that you engage

    in things and from hearing that like

    it's interesting looking at like for

    example i go to research conferences and

    i hear people talking about low

    socioeconomic status individuals and how

    it's difficult for them to engage in

    conversations with researchers etc but i

    look at what people wear at these

    conferences and it's mimicking ceos and

    upper-class elites and so it's like well

    there's a disconnect between what we are

    saying and how we are presenting

    ourselves if we really wanted people

    from low socioeconomic status to be able

    to participate in these discussions why

    are we separating themselves by putting

    on these fancy suits etc so it's

    interesting looking at not only what

    people are saying but how our actions

    and our ways of being aligned with or

    diverge from what we are saying yeah you

    know one of my earlier pieces you're

    reminding me was on culturally

    responsive research and i tell in that

    case study

    the story and it was true

    that i was a youngish scholar meaning i

    was early in my career and i was seeking

    access to a particular district that was

    predominantly african-american and so

    the assumption would be well kim you're

    african-american so you're going to be

    able to get in more easily well that was

    not the case and i found out through

    lots of different means why i had so

    many issues getting in part of it had to

    do with social class the perception of

    me

    being not of the same social class

    as the majority in that particular

    district the other thing though is age

    i tend to present younger than i am and

    at the time gosh i was in my early 30s

    they didn't think i could do the project

    that i was proposed the other thing was

    gender i had at least one male graduate

    assistant and it was automatically

    assumed that he was really in charge and

    that

    we as a team had just put forward my

    face

    to

    appease the leaders in the district

    interesting it wasn't until

    there was someone in the district who

    happened to be a student of mine and it

    wasn't until i revealed to him i was

    having challenges so right there that

    gets into another issue of power that i

    was willing to show my vulnerability

    to

    what became a fantastic gatekeeper and i

    shared with him my troubles he said he

    called me doc he said doc i got you let

    me take care of it a week later he

    didn't get the doors open but he got me

    a meeting with people who could have

    opened the doors and in that meeting it

    wasn't until again i revealed several

    parts of my identity such as

    i am the product of

    a household

    where my father was a pastor in an

    african-american church i did reveal my

    age

    and

    i don't remember what i wore

    but i didn't have my wedding ring on a

    day for whatever reason and it was

    during that 90-minute meeting that then

    the gatekeeper was like let me tell you

    why we didn't let you in and that's

    where i found out so it's all these i

    mean we talk about intersectionality and

    we talk about it in terms of

    disaggregation of identities but we need

    to also think about in terms of power

    context social categories interpersonal

    uh domains and so many other elements

    that seem to be missing yeah earlier at

    the start of the interview you mentioned

    cultural capital these are all examples

    of that if people aren't familiar with

    it and again that podcast that talks

    about bordeaux is a great place to like

    learn more about that it is interesting

    the intersections not only of the

    identities and capital and how the

    different types of capital and how those

    can kind of impact things like i

    intentionally don't use the term doctor

    because i don't want to separate myself

    from teachers and students but when

    speaking to some admin and to other

    professors then sometimes i need to use

    the term to be like hey i know how to do

    research so it's interesting

    how we position ourselves

    depending on the context and whatnot

    yeah absolutely when when i remember i

    was teaching an undergraduate class and

    i do this for every undergraduate class

    i would say you know i don't want to

    know what you did friday night but i am

    pretty sure how you behave friday night

    is how you're not behaving at this exact

    moment

    and i said but it's still you right and

    they would say yes i said so let's talk

    about the influence of context on that

    and the same thing flipping it around

    again when i was early in my academic

    career

    i did this experiment that i know if

    you're a professor listening some of you

    may have done i would go into class the

    first day and sit with the students

    and i wasn't dressed in any particular

    way and i would wait 10 minutes after

    the class was supposed to start and i

    would do that to see what were they

    saying what were they thinking about how

    long could i push it and then i would

    stand up

    and say all right we're going to get

    started

    actually i remember i did that one year

    in a teacher education program

    pre-service education program and i

    became very close to that class and by

    the end of the semester

    several of them came to me and they said

    we thought you were indian and i said

    why did you think i was indian and this

    was in the early 2000s it was their own

    biases

    and perceptions of all of those

    markers that we used for identity

    and capital i was a sociologist of

    education i studied my boulder i studied

    my

    i studied my foucault i did philosophy

    of education so i'm so interested in how

    those concepts apply and play out today

    yeah the

    you sitting with the students is is

    funny and it reminds me of i've seen the

    opposite of that where like a student at

    the start of class will just go up and

    like write like i'm dr blah blah on the

    board and then the actual professor will

    come and be like wait who are you and

    they just like run away like oh

    that's pretty funny when you were

    talking about identity it reminded me of

    a section in the book where you're

    talking about how it's important for

    educators to design and facilitate for

    not only present identities but future

    identities and i wonder if you could

    expand upon that yeah that was one of

    those

    concepts that i was trying really hard

    to again go back to my philosophy is i

    think that many of us because we get so

    caught up in the here and now that we

    are constrained by the future or rather

    our perceptions of the future and we use

    our current understanding of the here

    and now and assume it will be

    sustained and will always be and i was

    trying to say that we as educators we

    need to not be constrained we need to

    emancipate ourselves by these

    constraints and not say well if you're

    acting like an anti-social defiant

    teenager you're probably going to grow

    up to be an anti-social defiant teenager

    plus having those beliefs are always

    raced always genderized anyway i was

    trying to say that let's encourage

    teachers to not only recognize what they

    think or know about students but to

    really engage in reflective activities

    themselves to think how did i come to

    know this why do i think this where's

    the veracity into this and how does it

    influence the future self or my

    perception of this individual's future

    self more than likely especially with

    when we're working with marginalized

    groups they're negative

    yeah that reminds me a lot of it's a

    combination of ipsitive assessment with

    curare which is like this reflection of

    yourself as in a journey so one of the

    things that i do with kids when they'd

    finish a project they would reflect on

    how their project differed from where

    they were previously their

    understandings and then reflect on where

    they wanted to go next with it and to

    recognize that it's always this process

    of continuing to learn more and

    it's important to look at where you've

    come from and the things that you've

    learned while also still planning ahead

    well said thank you when exploring

    intersectionality i've noticed a

    tendency for some educators to start to

    tokenize or essentialize

    entire groups of people so for example

    somebody might look at my intersections

    and go oh well you're white and you're

    non-binary and so therefore i'm going to

    treat you as all the other white like

    trans community individuals and i'm

    wondering if you have some

    recommendations on how educators can

    engage in intersectional work without

    those problems of over generalizing yeah

    i think that

    educators

    need to spend and it's very challenging

    because we don't have infinite amounts

    of time

    but

    in listening to the narratives of

    participants um i think that

    and this is important intersectionality

    standpoint theory and how we need to

    valorize the standpoints

    of individuals

    i want to take a step backwards i think

    because we know that many teachers end

    up teaching in communities that resemble

    where

    they come from and so

    we should be asking teachers to engage

    in

    work that not only valorizes a multitude

    of narratives but also represents the

    intragroup differences along narrative

    lines i'm wondering if you could

    elaborate on the story of miguel from

    your book and how that relates to

    this work so for context for people who

    haven't read the book yet miguel was a

    teacher who on paper understood what

    needed to be done the intersectional

    work like just really got it on paper

    but then in practice when actually tried

    to do it and met with resistance like

    basically gave up and was like well i

    can't do this thing even though like

    going into the work seemed like oh yeah

    miguel will be perfect for this and then

    when actually trying it out just had

    this almost like a fixed mindset of oh

    well i can't work with them

    you know that anecdote taught me a lot

    you know in all transparency

    i remember giving the recommendation to

    the girls and the girls also saying well

    maybe if we just spoke to him in his

    native language that that would be okay

    we would be able to bridge the gap

    between what we want to do and what he's

    hoping to help us to do the assumption

    was language was just going to make

    everything okay and that was not the

    case right you know and unfortunately

    i've seen other instances where there's

    this

    disconnect this hostile divorce between

    theory and practice

    i think that going back to your question

    about teacher education programs there

    needs to be many more occasions where

    pre-service teachers can

    apply and see theory practice practice

    can also think about and problem solve

    the issues i think that

    in that case yeah i had high hopes and i

    think the students did as well

    that he was going to get it and i think

    i failed in terms of providing him

    sufficient support to say

    these are some of the issues you may

    come up on let's problem solve

    proactively how we might be able to

    address them without you walking off i

    mean he like so many of us felt as if

    the hard work was going to be done by

    the students and not him being a

    culturally responsive pedagogue is hard

    work and i said this in the book it's

    hard work it's a lot of work and to

    believe that it's only the kids who have

    to do the work again goes back to this

    deficit approach or to the point i said

    earlier like well you just need more

    grit you'll be fine right yeah if anyone

    hasn't listened to it yet i do

    a four-part mini-series um paulo

    ferreira's book pedagogy of the

    oppressed and it's chapter three in

    particular that talks about dialogue if

    i remember correctly so that is very

    important to consider

    in context like this where you need to

    engage in a dialogue in a way that you

    are open to and willing to change and

    not just trying to colonize somebody

    else's way of being or values etc so

    it's important when engaging in

    culturally relevant responsive

    sustaining practices that it's not

    coming down top down like you are trying

    to fix or change etc but you are also

    looking inward and going oh these are

    areas in my own growth that i need to

    work through and along those lines it

    should not be the responsibility of the

    marginalized to do the education of

    those who need to go through the process

    you know we started talking about this i

    am committed to establishing systems

    not necessarily educating individuals on

    how

    my individual black femaleness

    should be conceived instead i want to

    put energy in how do i collectively

    because i can't do it by myself

    collectively collaboratively and

    including culturally responsive

    practices to create a an equitable

    system so that all of us not necessarily

    get the same that's equality but we get

    what we need in order to be successful

    however that's defined yeah i really

    appreciate that there was a paper that i

    co-authored with three other trans

    individuals and one of the things that

    we recommend is it's not on the student

    to have them educate you on their

    transness like it is up to you to learn

    about it and as the educator so yeah

    that definitely resonates if you don't

    know enough about x community okay well

    people in that community they don't need

    to teach you about it if they're your

    students it's not their responsibility

    yeah a quick anecdote and this is a true

    story i was attending a meeting and i

    was making the point

    that

    there was research that was looking at

    family dynamics and how

    kids in particular three and four and

    five-year-olds make sense of race and

    what the research indicated is that for

    white families a side note i take issue

    in terms of because they were using a

    heteronormative

    structure of family but right i really

    want to address that but anyway they

    said white families if white families

    have friends who are non-white the

    implications it has

    for the three four and five-year-olds

    are more statistically significant than

    for any other group

    if you're a black family and you have

    non-black friends it still doesn't make

    as big of an impact as it does if you're

    a white family and you have non-white

    friends same for latina and then they

    did they just black white and latino

    okay so i was at a meeting and i brought

    this point up and

    someone at the meeting said to me well

    what about maids and i said what about

    maids

    i couldn't make sense of what they were

    asking yeah i said what about maids and

    i said well what if your black maid is

    a friend but what if you treat her like

    a friend and a real member of the family

    i wish your viewers could see your face

    i tried really hard not to have your

    face

    and i said

    so

    i said that's a really good question in

    order to answer that i think it'd be

    really helpful at the time the book the

    help was really popular i said have you

    read the book the help or seen the movie

    if you don't have time to read it person

    said no i said that would be a really

    good you know first step and i said you

    know i keep thinking about bell hooks

    god rest her soul her work and in terms

    of

    how african-american women are often put

    into specific buckets such as the mammy

    such as jezebel on and on and on and the

    person looked at me and said wow this is

    really interesting and then about two or

    three weeks after the meeting they asked

    me to be their friend

    now their children were far older than

    three four and five so what do you do

    with that this is an individual

    who wanted to learn who was trying to be

    responsive to what i was telling them

    which was empirically based but to your

    question about essentializing or

    tokenizing

    that's where it devolved to you know

    needless to say i did not become their

    friend for a host of reasons i know that

    that anecdote while i tell it and most

    people are shocked

    it happens more and more and more and

    more yeah on a positive though at least

    they were asking and trying to learn

    more and whatnot so like that's a good

    thing it's good to yes reflect on and be

    open about your own biases and whatnot

    and blind spots like

    i don't know anyone that had a nanny so

    that is like a whole separate like level

    of socioeconomic status that i am not

    privy to

    yes i wouldn't even even thought of that

    it was

    yes it was yes but yeah you're right i

    mean what do you i really do present

    like what do you do with that situation

    i think there's lots of opportunities

    but who's going to be responsible for it

    again first and foremost it needs to be

    the individual who recognizes their

    blind spots i would like to believe that

    i provided reasonable resources

    so that the person could go and read the

    help and i provided other things you

    know i you know talked about some other

    black feminist ideas and stereotypes and

    hopefully that was helpful i'm curious

    if this phrase resonates with you with

    what you were just saying so one of the

    lines in your preface was comfort the

    disturbed disturb the comforted and i'm

    wondering one if that does relate to the

    way you were just thinking about

    anecdote but then two how does that kind

    of relate to your thoughts on schools i

    think that you know

    comforting the disturbing disturbing the

    comfortable schools as a system

    reinforce over and over and over again

    who should be

    most comforted who is the type of child

    that should be

    given the

    path to success you know for example i'm

    thinking specifically of jane margolis's

    work and she wrote the fantastic book

    along with others stuck in the shallow

    end but then she's done some follow-up

    work particularly with joanne good and

    others on what happens in schools even

    if they're disproportionately

    housed by marginalized kids they find

    that there's still maybe one or two or

    three kids from dominant cultures so

    that could be white or asian and even if

    there's one or two or three so there's a

    numeric minority they tend to be and

    gain more comfort than those who are the

    racial majority in that context so when

    i say you know disturb the comfortable

    i'm mindful of how systems will poise

    certain individuals because of their

    race and ethnicity and perceived

    sexuality and it goes back to my point i

    want to challenge that system to say who

    are you comforting more i think back on

    my dissertation although you know quite

    a while ago but it was on first grade

    african-american girls play patterns and

    i had the fun of i did it in ethnography

    and i sat on the playgrounds i think i

    talked about a little bit in the book

    and

    and i also think it's really important

    to share data with participants i don't

    care how young they are and

    for the dissertation i would take video

    of the girls of course this was approved

    by parents and girls and the school

    board and i would show those videos to

    the girls and say my interpretation and

    they would correct me or

    not correct me and what have you and i

    remember there was one video that i

    showed of a little girl who was really

    just dynamic really a leader always

    bossing kids around and i showed it to

    her teacher and the teacher kept calling

    her an animal and kept saying how she's

    such an animal she acts like an animal

    led out of a cage and this teacher was a

    white female and i remember exactly

    where i was i remember standing in the

    hallway the teacher had finished lunch

    and she kept calling her an animal and

    not

    hesitating and doing so she's looking at

    me as an african-american woman and i

    thought about my lord if she's willing

    to not only call this child who could be

    my daughter an animal or could be a

    younger version of myself right what is

    she doing in the classroom that is

    making the

    implicit explicit what kind of

    hidden curriculum is this young lady

    experiencing from this teacher there's

    no doubt in my mind that this young lady

    was very disturbed not because of

    anything she had done but because of the

    teacher's perception those experiences

    made me

    really think carefully

    what could i do beyond writing and

    publishing to create a space where young

    girls like her could be comforted and

    then that's what made me start to think

    about developing these out of school

    programs such as copy girls so if you

    could wave a magic wand and design like

    the ideal school or district what would

    it look like oh goodness gracious i

    think it would depend on which audience

    i want to

    engage i don't think there can be any

    one school for everyone

    i appreciate that response yeah i think

    that there would have to be multiple

    schools

    i will say that i think that parents

    and other community leaders need to be

    more integrated into schools and not

    integrated as guest speakers only i

    think that it would be

    fantastic again going back to my point

    about education policymakers that i

    don't care what school i get to create

    i have to work with education

    policymakers so that the school can be

    accredited and can be

    funded appropriately and unfortunately

    you know we look a lot at the results of

    standardized testing which is linked to

    property values which is linked to who's

    getting into the district and who's

    moving to the district or exiting the

    district right so i think that engaging

    education policy makers is imperative to

    the creation of any cutting-edge school

    i would love for a school if i had my

    way

    that students are not assessed in the

    traditional conventional ways let's do

    portfolio assessments let's do

    project-based learning again it would

    really depend on the audience so to have

    several schools that are truly

    responsive to the students

    needs

    and then have a system where you as a

    student can go to this school and you're

    not going only to

    be a student but you're going to learn

    how does tlc relate to that so tlc you

    describe as teaching learning and

    community

    so that was a program that was the first

    iteration of config girls that was when

    i was on faculty at a school back east

    and that was my first attempt to create

    a teaching learning community school i

    mean going back to the point of

    culturally responsive research again

    talking about colonizing ideas as we

    colonize participants particularly those

    who are marginalized you know

    researchers come in they gather the data

    and then they hightail it out of there

    and they don't give back i know i said

    in the book and i was referencing jackie

    jordan irvine's work in terms of how

    many researchers will treat communities

    particularly communities of color like

    plantations and i'm forever mindful of

    that and so tlc came about because i had

    engaged in about a year's worth of data

    collection and analysis in a high needs

    district it was the same district that i

    had issues getting entrance in so i

    finally got entrance and i had promised

    that before i was going to publish

    anything and i maintained the same

    promise today i said let me have the

    opportunity to share with you what i

    found and let's see if it's accurate or

    things i should change and i did that

    interestingly enough the mothers

    and the girls came to this presentation

    and at the conclusion after they gave me

    what they agreed with and didn't agree

    with they said we really would like to

    continue these conversations and we

    elect you to do it to organize us and i

    assumed it as the least of which i could

    do and i wanted it to again be

    systematized i wanted to be organized

    and i started teaching learning in

    community tlc and so there are three

    prongs to that program one was a parent

    piece

    where mothers in particular even though

    we open it up to fathers as well they

    could learn about their rights in terms

    of being in a state-operated school

    district and so i had a series of

    workshops specifically for parents and

    then the other piece of it was for their

    daughters it was all girls at the time

    even though we didn't exclude and they

    were learning easy at the time that was

    really popular easings meaning

    electronic magazines it was you know

    digital representation of a magazine and

    then we have mentoring and so i had

    enlisted and recruited and helped to

    provide professional development

    opportunities for undergraduates to

    support the creation of the ezines by

    way of lots of interactions and

    workshops and i was teaching learning in

    community and then you know when i was

    wooed to move across the country i took

    my lessons learned i did help to ensure

    that it was continued i'm still in

    conversation with the project director i

    haven't talked to her lately so i don't

    know if it's still going on but we did

    keep in contact and i revised the

    program was able to enlist some

    fantastic collaborators and i renamed it

    comfy girls you've had a lot of

    different experiences working in the

    field of education whether it's like as

    a teacher as a scholar as admin like i'm

    curious how do you stave off the burnout

    that can come with working in

    a field that is pretty hostile

    especially now towards the people who

    are working in it and then

    to work at an r1 that is known for

    having quite the workload like how do

    you prevent the burnout that can come

    with all that you do i try really hard

    not always successful to surround myself

    with individuals who maintain the same

    work ethic as me and we have created an

    accountability system where we will say

    you know you really need to take a day

    off or

    you know let's celebrate

    xyz achievement

    that has helped considerably the other

    thing i've done

    is i try to take one day and i purposely

    say it's my change of rhythm day and

    that means i cannot do the same rhythm

    as i do the six other days i mean it

    depends on what happened this week yeah

    but it's one day i have to change my

    rhythm whether it's i spend more time

    doing one thing or less time or doing

    something completely you know

    anti-academic that seems to help renew

    my spirit for the next the other thing

    is you know i have to be honest i'm at a

    point as a senior professor where i'm

    privileged where i can

    craft a lot of my own projects i have a

    fair amount of autonomy and i'm grateful

    to my university for it so as i said you

    know i have this new fellowship which is

    fantastically fascinating i mean i'm

    able to do that now

    as well as maintain my commitment

    to the other things that are of

    importance

    like how do you intentionally try and

    improve in any of those areas so like

    you can see with the drum sets in the

    background i'm very intentional with oh

    i'm at disability level i want to

    improve it but when it came to teaching

    like my questioning technique was not

    great source very intentional for months

    i try and improve my questioning

    technique over time so like how do you

    practice or

    intentionally try and improve in

    different areas in life oh good i'll

    take the intentionally improve i am an

    ardent believer of mentors

    huge and i have multiple mentors across

    the country who give me advice and i

    trust them and i can say this is what's

    going on with me this is what i'm hoping

    to do and they'll say yes no and this is

    what you know you should be thinking

    about so that's huge for me and then

    relatedly i try to mentor other

    individuals based off of my mentoring

    experiences in terms of me establishing

    what's the next stage and what i'm

    trying to

    actually slow down and what i mean by

    that is

    i'm trying to say here i am at this

    stage of my career i say this to my

    graduate students what do i want to be

    remembered for at the end of the day

    what do i want to be remembered for and

    so

    i'm trying to and i am thinking about

    okay what are my strengths where are my

    opportunities to grow and where are the

    opportunities i want to grow

    that's different yeah and again i think

    it goes back to the privilege of being

    in the situation i'm at i'm trying to

    focus more on those one or two

    opportunities that i want to grow tim

    ferriss has a phrase where he says if

    it's not a hell yes then it's a hell no

    and so like that's his way of like

    trying to find the one or two things to

    focus on yes

    exactly what do you wish there's more

    research on that could inform your own

    practices oh gosh i really wish that

    there was more

    research on intersectionality as a

    framework influencing empirical research

    methodologies ontological studies and

    explorations phenomenological it's

    starting and that is fantastic thank god

    and i don't know i mean

    intersectionality is just starting of

    course not it's been going on

    you know since forever

    since ida b wells time i mean you know

    we should never think that it just

    started once the word was coined but i

    really am hopeful

    that there's going to be more of

    an understanding and clear

    series of frameworks

    that can be used and can be measured and

    applied as it relates to

    intersectionality i also

    would like to see more

    research or theory to practice movements

    so

    a colleague of mine we're creating

    a series of videos to

    say this is what we mean by culturally

    responsive computational thinking and

    because i have a soft spot in my heart

    for arts and you know my initial career

    actually was in art i'm really mindful

    of the power of imagery and so

    i want to honor that in terms of how we

    can better use aesthetics to tell again

    the theoretical stories of in this case

    cultural responsiveness what about your

    own research what has surprised you

    about it whether it's a finding or the

    processes or you know what it's really

    about just how

    hidden the system is but how explicit it

    is about its own invisibility if that

    makes any sense and so what i mean by

    that is i continuously get surprised

    when i identify patterns that

    are

    undoubtedly leading to marginalization

    there's no question i'm looking at these

    data and i'm thinking oh my gosh this

    clearly says

    that the

    more money a foundation has the more

    likely the head is a white male

    you can see it and

    i get surprised that no one else sees it

    and that when i say it and i show the

    data and i show how i did it oh wow

    it continuously surprises me i'm in my

    mind clear

    clear evidence of how the system is

    working to oppress how it is going using

    material collins language about from

    intersectionality you can clearly see

    the matrix of domination and no one now

    and then people are shocked by it begun

    questioning it you know are they really

    shocked or is this a performance um and

    are they shocked at different things in

    different ways so i co-wrote a paper

    with someone we were talking about

    neoliberal practices and corporate

    influences on

    music technology and we had quite the

    critique talking about corporate

    influence

    and the thing that people focused on was

    not the main point of the paper so it's

    really interesting like it surprised me

    we have this really good argument and

    you want to talk about this little thing

    about computer science and music like

    it's weird for me to see what gets

    picked up by public discourse and what

    people want to talk about correct

    it's always a surprise

    you know what people pick up what

    resonates with individuals and when

    i'm typically surprised by it

    my computer girls book someone said to

    me well it's really not a book that

    people can do anything with they can

    read it and hear the stories and that's

    good but it's not going to give

    direction by the way this was a

    publicist who i did not hire so you know

    and i thought about what she said

    and i said i thought i made it clear in

    the book i'm writing it again going back

    to my point about the importance of

    narratives that too often we don't hear

    what happens to

    young people when the program is going

    on and what happens after the program

    you know which i try to put into the

    epilogue we don't hear how they're

    making sense of all the money that was

    put forward to help this particular

    effort and we certainly don't think

    about it through a lens that they have

    agency to not only understand the

    program but the larger system and how it

    even came about and where they fit in

    right so if people read this book and

    just say like this would be publicist

    well you know you're not giving me any

    direction

    i hope that in thinking that they

    question why they even have that thought

    yeah i could see for people who say

    something like that it's still serving

    as like a pebble in their shoe which is

    like a the phrase that i've heard for

    this where it's like it bothers them

    throughout the day as they move and they

    keep revisiting it like every now and

    then they just think oh there's a rock

    in my shoe but they're not pulling it

    out and so they keep coming back to the

    ideas that are presented and the

    narratives and the stories like it's

    like a moment just like pings back a

    memory for it and then eventually

    they're able to act upon it but i think

    it depends on who's reading it i mean i

    have gotten some lovely lovely emails

    from

    young women of color who are in computer

    science or computer science engineering

    or not and they say i read your book and

    the stories just reminded me about my

    story and i feel less alone it reminds

    me that i'm not crazy it reminds me that

    you know there are efforts out there and

    so for me

    that's success yeah the organization

    that i work for the nonprofit the time

    of recording this upcoming monday we're

    releasing four girls by girls so it's

    two young girls who are interviewing

    other girls who have like gone into stem

    or i.t or some kind of tech career to

    help try and increase like the

    narratives out there the stories that

    people aren't hearing and say like hey

    there is a space in place for you but

    going back to what we talked about

    previously we also do need to critique

    those spaces and places that they're

    going into and improve them yeah i'm

    curious what's something that you're

    working on that you could use some help

    with from a listener my most recent

    project is as i said at the foundation

    asu foundation and i am incredibly

    excited because if time allows and

    obviously you can truncate what i'm

    going to say it started with me as i

    said looking at funding trends and so a

    colleague of mine dr michael simeone was

    a data scientist we looked at every

    solicitation

    from nsf from 1989 to 2020 and then we

    had to create our own web crawler

    because we couldn't find a lot of the

    solicitations then we looked at nih and

    then

    we started looking at corporate

    foundations and community foundations

    and then we use the database from the

    women and girls index and the point of

    looking at all this was to understand a

    couple of things one how are the federal

    agencies presenting girls women of color

    and stem in their solicitations over

    time and we use computational topic

    modeling which is a critical

    quantitative approach which i love and

    i've learned way too much about and as a

    someone who's really qualitative

    research my appreciation for mixed

    methods has grown exponentially and so

    we use computational topic modeling to

    actually identify

    word neighbors and it's called we did

    concordance analyses and collocate

    analyses and so we looked at you know

    how are words appearing so in fact

    i have a presentation to do next week

    and i printed out something that i wrote

    oh gosh months ago and so we have some

    very clear data i won't ruin the

    surprise of it but i will say

    that the word negro n-e-g-r-o

    was very popular

    in the early 2000s

    oh wow in their solicitation when i say

    popular i don't mean it was used a lot

    but it was statistically significant wow

    in fact the word

    black appears in 1996

    first time it appears again statistical

    significance with an increase in both

    occurrence and frequency by 2012. after

    the occurrence and frequency drops at

    the same level as in 1996. 1998 the term

    at-risk demonstrates some frequency and

    occurrence but declined a year later in

    anyway we have all these fantastic

    nuggets so this is just one federal

    agency we looked at nih we evaluated 15

    interesting interesting data we did a

    comparison of nsf with nih

    in terms of how their top collocates

    where were there similarities

    where were there differences

    and then we also talked about

    we actually have the exact number of

    sentences from 1992 to 2020 has the word

    three words women of color

    that was done by concordance analysis

    anyway so i took all this fun data and

    we have community foundation we have

    corporate foundations community

    foundations it was impossible to do

    because there's too many different types

    of community foundations i couldn't get

    a very good idea what i can do is look

    at individual community foundations

    using women and girls index and so we

    looked at their databases forty thousand

    community organizations

    that are geared towards women and girls

    writ large and we looked specifically

    through their database about which of

    those organizations got money from which

    type of grant making organization

    and then we worked backwards to then

    come up with social network analysis

    just so to see

    which organizations were getting the

    most amount of money and from whom

    and now we're looking at for what and

    seeing if there's overlap so that there

    can be more collaborative funding

    opportunities so doing all this

    wonderfully fun

    cool things

    had led me to think more carefully about

    how can a university foundation

    integrate the knowledge expertise and

    desires of faculty

    in a sustained way so i'm creating

    around diversity equity inclusion so i'm

    creating a faculty program for

    my

    university's foundation to the best of

    my knowledge does not exist meaning a

    program for faculty who are interested

    in foundation work whether it be

    philanthropy or advancement or strategy

    and that's my charge so you know answer

    to your question you know

    if i could i would love to have a cohort

    of other people like myself who are

    interested in poking the bear

    interested in doing these deep dives of

    data interested in thinking about

    creating again a new system in this case

    a system for faculty who have a

    committed interest in terms of diversity

    equity inclusion to jump the fence and

    do something in terms of philanthropy

    advancement and strategy well if you

    consider including any alumni in that

    count me in the work that you were doing

    as soon as you started talking about the

    data analysis i was like oh corpus

    assisted discourse analysis would be

    fantastic for looking at the data then

    you're talking about concordance

    analysis it's like yes this is it like

    if anyone hasn't read up on this i'll

    link to my chapter 3 of my dissertation

    it like specifically unpacks like how to

    use these to analyze large sets of data

    it is so fascinating looking at patterns

    of discourse and like how it changes

    over time and whatnot like i could nerd

    out about this for hours so

    oh yes yes we will definitely follow up

    because i do have hopes of doing the

    same type of analysis in terms of how we

    categorize funding and not only at our

    foundation but as i'm looking at other

    university foundations whether they be

    peer institutions or

    minority serving institutions

    or

    university foundation peer institutions

    how language is used

    right to describe

    systems that need funding

    along diversity equity inclusion

    fascinating who's talking about lgbtq

    and advancement right who's talking

    about racial justice and how are they

    talking about it yep i plan on using

    some of those techniques to look at like

    like how the discourse has changed and

    whatnot so that's a future project

    yes so maybe you'll be my collaborator

    because i'm so excited about this happy

    too are there any questions that i

    haven't asked or topics that you'd like

    to discuss you know it's funny and i

    read your question like you know what do

    you do in order to

    avoid burning at first i was like oh

    does he want me to talk about you know

    working out or you know but then to me

    that's what so many of us do you know to

    try to balance ourselves i mean i have i

    think pretty

    interesting past times but at least most

    people say like i do aerial yoga my wife

    does yeah we have an aerial yoga rig

    like literally underneath me

    oh my goodness i know whose house i'm

    visiting

    oh i love ariel yoga because you know it

    engages my body in ways that is a

    different rhythm than my normal sitting

    in a chair and being in a meeting but i

    think along those same lines i think

    about how to engage my mind and my

    spirit and i return to art so i become

    also one of my big hobbies at least now

    is photography and you think about it

    you know photography there is a lot of

    computational thinking and so

    some of my side gigs are

    photo shoots i'm going on a photo shoot

    tomorrow to do wild horses my

    professional life still bleeds into that

    because i'm conscious about not so much

    the horses but when i'm photographing

    people who's in the shot how are we

    representing their being you know let me

    engage them in the process

    so is this really the story you want

    told in this way here are my ideas but

    lord knows my ideas may not be congruent

    to what you want so

    that's the only thing i wanted to say

    because i was chuckling when i was

    thinking about how to address that but i

    think it still reflects my professional

    self even though it's a different rhythm

    yeah and i'm glad you shared that it's

    important for people to

    hear like even the aerial yoga stuff and

    then to think through like how looking

    at culture and looking at power

    can apply into many different things

    whether it's photography or discourse or

    whatever again i started with art and a

    lot of people say well how did you move

    from art to where you're at now and i

    said i'm sorry it's all about

    storytelling it's all about narratives

    yeah and exploring your passions and

    interests along the way and being a

    provocateur yeah yeah yeah my website

    which is not live because i don't have

    enough pictures i started with a tagline

    of i think photography provocation

    yeah so speaking of that so where can

    people go to connect with you and the

    organizations that you work with or to

    check out your photography certainly the

    website cgs.asu.edu

    that has you know a lot of the programs

    it has our publications

    so not just mine but the other people

    affiliated and associated with the

    center

    we have a monthly newsletter you go to

    the website there's a way to sign up for

    the monthly newsletter and find out all

    the fantastic things that we're doing

    and who's leading them so that's one way

    to keep in contact also that helps to

    alert people to

    webinars or conferences or presentations

    or publications

    that individuals affiliated with the

    center

    are involved in so that would be the

    ideal way join our newsletter group and

    with that that concludes this week's

    episode of the csk8 podcast i hope you

    enjoyed this conversation with kimberly

    i know i certainly did and i hope you

    consider sharing this with somebody else

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    leaving a review on whatever app you're

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    you can find more resources and podcasts

    and whatnot in the show notes which you

    can click the link in your app that

    you're listening to this on or simply by

    going to jaredoleary.com if you're

    interested in being a guest on the show

    there is a contact me button on my

    website where i'm happy to chat with you

    on the podcast or even to talk about

    potential collaborations on future

    grants stay tuned next week for another

    episode and until then i hope you're

    staying safe and are having a wonderful

    week

Guest Bio

Kimberly A. Scott, Ed.D. is Professor of women and gender studies in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University (ASU) and the founding executive director of ASU’s Center for Gender Equity in Science and Technology. The center is a one-of-a-kind research unit focused on exploring, identifying, and creating innovative scholarships about underrepresented women and girls in STEM. Having written and successfully raised millions in grant funding to support research about and programs for women and girls of color in STEM, Scott was named in 2014 as a White House Champion of Change for STEM Access. In 2018, Scott was invited to join the NSF STEM Education Advisory Panel created to encourage U.S. scientific and technological innovations in education in consultation with the U.S. Department of Education, NASA, and NOAA. Center projects include the National Science Foundation-funded COMPUGIRLS; U.S. Department of Education-funded COMPUGIRLS Remixed; Gates-funded project on African American Families and Technology Use; and Pivotal-funded Women of Color in Computing Research Collaborative. Scott is the 2022 Inaugural ASU Foundation Faculty Fellow focused on increasing diversity, equity and inclusion opportunities in philanthropy, and expanding faculty involvement in philanthropy. With four published books, the most recent is COMPUGIRLS: How Girls of Color Find and Define Themselves in the Digital Age (2021, University of Illinois Press).


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