How to choose a workplace that is welcoming and safe, and where your career will thrive.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01889-4Adam Levy: 00:09
But the reality is that some scientists have to take account of more variables than others. For scientists with disabilities, it can be a challenge to find somewhere that is welcoming, supportive, and, crucially, safe. You know, more recently, I’ve had this chronic disease that has evolved over the course of the last six years that is autoimmune in nature. And it’s a rare disease. It’s called myasthenia gravis, which affects my neuromuscular junction, and the way that my nerves talk to my muscles, basically.
And I think, you know, I’ve been really lucky in some ways that all of this happened during the pandemic, because I’ve been able to maintain my livelihood, working largely by, you know, almost exclusively actually through telework, where I can get infusions, and do the work that I need to do at the same time.
So at one point, as an anthropologist, you know, it almost felt like a requirement that I would need to be in the field. People who are able bodied or that can fill in the things that are deficits for people that are disabled is a really important part of maintaining diversity in STEM, right? Or really in academia overall.Do you have any thoughts on how people with disabilities should approach finding a lab or institution that does take these questions into account, and will be a safe and welcoming place for them?My own approach to this is to be really upfront about it.
Disability is incredibly heterogeneous, right? It’s as heterogeneous as anything in the non-disabled universe. So knowing how to support disabled faculty requires really open and frank conversations that people have maybe sometimes been shy to have. But he was incredibly supportive. And he offered me everything that I needed to make sure that I could still do my job. They’ve given me fully remote teaching, actually. In my case, having the conversations has largely resulted in the things that I’ve needed in order to do my job. But it is really hard.
If you call, you know, an institution and you asked to talk to the disability coordinator, and you can’t even set up a meeting with them, I'd probably be a little bit worried about that. This was deeply problematic, not just because, you know, we're all sort of at advancing age. It gets very challenging, for instance, to carry really heavy bags of rat chow up and down the stairs.
I spoke with Logan about how his experiences as a scientist with a disability affected his career trajectory.Personally I have diastrophic dysplasia dwarfism. So it’s a it’s a type of dwarfism causing short stature, as well as issues with with muscles and joints. So, in my own training, I faced some of those challenges that really made me rethink kind of what I wanted to do as a career, and actually motivated me in some ways to study what I did with my PhD considering the experiences of students with disabilities in STEM.
So you know, in an ideal world, you know, researchers with disabilities would be able to pursue, you know, what exactly it is they’re they're most interested in, most passionate about, regardless of the lab environment or the work environment, they’re, they’re going to be in.
Because, you know, there were many instances in my career where I’m, you know, it’s like “enough is enough, this isn’t for me, I no longer want to be a scientist.”In your current work in STEM education, how do you hope to, I suppose, address some of the issues that we’ve spoken about?Despite some of my own personal challenges with navigating STEM, it also motivated me to think about and consider the experiences of individuals with disabilities in STEM.
But I didn’t really identify as disabled until about halfway through graduate school, when I ran into a group of students, undergrads and grad students, who had a supportive disability community at my PhD institution. And I’d have conversations with my lab mates walking down the hallway towards the stairs. And I’d go and wait for the lift and they’d break off the conversation halfway through and just walk up the stairs and leave me at the lift. And that was really othering.
And then when I moved to my second postdoc, I actually talked to my supervisor ahead of time before he said, “Yes, I want to hire you.” And I was like, very excited, because I was like, “Oh, this is fabulous. There’s somebody who is actually kind of like me, who's there already. This is a great sign.”
And then I’ve seen other job ads that have a paragraph that describes the institution or the lab’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. And it really makes a really big difference. It’s a signal.What can PIs and lab heads do, then, to really try to ensure that their lab and perhaps their wider institution, do go above and beyond to provide a safe and welcoming environment for people with disabilities?It’s hard. And I think the biggest thing that people can do is communicate.
And that was really helpful as a resource to feel included. I also was working with an intern when I was down in Panama. “Do they have a statement on the department website or the university website, that’s more than just everyone should have the right to be happy?” Does it actually cover “we understand that communities have experienced oppression and marginalization in science, and we want to encourage those communities to thrive in science as much as possible” Things like that.
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