We discuss what the liberal arts have to offer students majoring in the sciences in this first part of a special two-part episode with Dr. Lori Banks. We’ll hear about Lori’s project to develop a “cultural cheat sheet” to help first-gen students prepare for the culture of graduate school. In 2020, Dr. Lori Banks was named to a list of 1000 inspiring black scientists by Cell Mentor. She is an assistant professor of biology at Bates College, where she dedicates her teaching to instilling a love of biology and actively works to embrace pedagogies of equity, inclusion and anti-racism.
Memorable Moments:
Dr. Lori Banks: They're definitely learning the nuts and bolts of the chemistry, the biology, the physics and the math, but in more of an application or problem-based learning kind of way rather than just these are the things that we need you to memorize because we said so.
Dr. Lori Banks: You do need to consider what are you sending these people out into the world with now that you've granted them this bachelor's degree, what are they actually really going to be able to do with it? And do they have the skills to walk on someone's job and be productive or to go out into public service? Or, you know, a number of different things, but enough that they're able to sustain themselves?
Dr. Lori Banks: The learning curve for a lot of people is so huge, particularly for students who don't have some sort of familial institutional knowledge of how graduate education works. So I actually was only recently made aware of a statistic that more people who are getting PhDs come from families where someone already has a Ph.D. than not.
Dr. Lori Banks: What I worked on with the post baccs was really helping them understand what they were getting into and sort of the "off-menu items" that they needed to be aware of so that they could increase their success.
Dr. Lori Banks: As we think about sort of the difference between what is helping us focus purely on the science and what has been accepted within the scientific profession because it was good for the people that were allowed to do it, we need to be aware of that and address it as such as we now have lots of people in these spaces who don't look like what the profession used to look like 50 years ago.
Episode 18 Transcript:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GUbHSqC_U_6sOG8SedOC-PfPCzzIgKnr?usp=sharing
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