Graduate school can feel extremely isolating as we juggle our various responsibilities and narrow our areas of expertise. This feeling of isolation is magnified when you look around and don’t see any visible peers or role models who share aspects of the same identity as you, whether that is sexuality, race, gender or any other marginalized or minority identity. As a gay man, this feeling of otherness is something I’ve contended with throughout my life, from growing up in conservative, rural California to choosing to pursue a career in science, where the role of one’s personal identity is often cordoned off from the work that we do in the name of objectivity.

A strong community rooted in queer identity has been something that has helped buffer these feelings since my undergraduate years and a combination of peer and ally support has afforded me the confidence to be an openly gay scientist with a commitment to broadening the diversity and inclusion of LGBTQ+ folx in STEM fields. When I arrived at Brown, well known at the undergraduate level for being a very queer institution, I was surprised to find an absence of avenues for connecting with and building queer community at the graduate level. Luckily, some colleagues in my department connected me with another queer STEM graduate student, Ben Wilks, and after a number of conversations about LGBTQ+ representation in STEM, we sent out an interest poll about starting an LGBTQ+ in STEM affinity group.

The response was stronger than we had expected. We received over 75 responses from other students, staff, and faculty across the University. Respondents expressed interest in systemic issues about representation and acceptance of LGBTQ+ people in STEM fields at Brown, curiosity about LGBTQ+ alumni working in STEM fields, and a desire for a more robust social community between LGBTQ+ peers. We knew there was a gap to fill. Building on this momentum and with the support of administrators including Jennifer Casasanto, the Associate Dean for Programs and Planning at the School of Engineering, Ben Wilks and I decided to form a local chapter of Out in STEM (oSTEM), a national non-profit professional society for LGBTQ+ individuals.

The central goal of oSTEM at Brown is to empower LGBTQ+ members of the Brown community to succeed personally, academically, and professionally. More specifically, we aim to confront barriers to success for LGBTQ+ individuals in STEM fields by developing programming around three main areas: community, representation, and institutional support. Much of the following is derived from our Constitution and Bylaws which can be accessed here.

First and foremost, the objective of oSTEM is to build an affirming community of LGBTQ+ individuals and allies at Brown, particularly within STEM-related fields. STEM fields can feel sterile and unwelcoming towards the expression of non-normative identities which can make finding networks of support and role models particularly challenging for LGBTQ+ folks. 

Therefore, the most important purpose of oSTEM is to create a recurring space for personal and professional identities as LGBTQ+ scientists to co-exist and to establish a network of colleagues, role models, and mentors-mentees through recurring oSTEM gatherings. These have been extremely successful and have led to new collaborations including with the Hay Library, where we hosted a social exploring a variety of curated LGBTQ+ ephemera from the library’s special collections and talked about potential research endeavors that span disciplines including the chemistry of papermaking and the use of spectroscopy for analyzing the composition of books, ink, and other paper materials.

Representation matters and oSTEM works to highlight affirming mentors, visible role models, and clearly articulated messages of support to improve campus and department-specific climates vis-à-vis gender and sexual identities. If students cannot see themselves in the grad students, faculty, and staff they work with, and if colleagues, mentors, or peers do not actively confront the underlying negative societal undertones and biases against LGBTQ+ identities, attracting and retaining students in STEM fields becomes incredibly challenging.

Consequently, a key mission of oSTEM is to increase LGBTQ+ representation through various channels. Chances are you’ve seen our brightly colored “You Are Welcome Here” door signs sprinkled around campus as one such example of this visible support. We’ve distributed over 750 of these door signs and every member of this year’s incoming graduate student class received a door sign in their orientation packets. We’ve also worked with individual departments to coordinate LGBTQ+-specific events such as the “Out in CS” panel that brought queer-identifying young professionals from a range of companies to discuss navigating the professional world after college. 

We are also engaging with departments to consider actively pursuing openly LGBTQ+ seminar speakers from other institutions who are not only strong scientists but also active proponents of increasing the diversity and inclusion of gender and sexual identities represented in our fields. My home department, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, recently hosted Dr. Karen Warkentin of Boston University who delivered a fascinating talk about the science behind amphibian hatching plasticity as well as a special talk highlighting how LGBTQ+ individuals can often bring different and exciting perspectives to science rooted in their lived experience. We look forward to engaging with more departments in the active recruitment of these kinds of perspectives that are able to synthesize both professional and personal identities. Finally, we sent a delegation of students to the oSTEM national conference this year where they were able to network with other students from around the country and potential employers. With the support of the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies and the Graduate School, Brown also for the first time had a booth and the Graduate School recruitment fair, increasing active efforts to recruit more LGBTQ+ folx to our graduate community.

Historically, minority identities have been excluded from higher education and in particular STEM fields. Consequently, we believe it is the responsibility of these institutions to confront the lasting legacy of exclusion and disenfranchisement of minority identities including LGBTQ+ individuals. To be successful, this needs to percolate through each level of power within the University from the macro (senior administration) to the micro (director of graduate studies, individual faculty advisors, individual peers and colleagues) and everywhere in between. We hope to attain this goal through advocacy for diversity workshops inclusive of LGBTQ+ identities, inclusion of language affirming support for gender and sexual minorities in Diversity and Inclusion Action Plans, and by facilitating individual conversations about identity in spaces like the lab that have traditionally restricted the dialogue to exclude non-normative identities. 

We have also pursued collaborations with other minority affinity groups including Graduate Students of Color in STEM and Society to Advance Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Sciences in the form of our DiversiTeas discussion series that aim to highlight both the shared and differential experiences of historically marginalized groups in STEM fields and create a space for personal and professional identities to coexist and be affirmed. We were recognized by the Student Activities Office in conjunction with GSOCnSTEM for our efforts in this series and have since expanded it through the support of the Graduate Community Fellows program. 

I am an extrovert that thrives on engaging with and building communities like the one that the oSTEM community is becoming – and it’s made a huge difference to me in my graduate career so far. I feel it is important to continue this work and welcome those interested from all facets of Brown to get engaged and bring their ideas and experiences to the table to continue crafting a diverse and inclusive vision of graduate education and community. I especially thank those who have joined the leadership team in the last year and expanded oSTEM’s capacity and reach across departments. You can visit our website at ostematbrown.com and explore our constitution, bylaws and leadership positions, and ongoing initiatives. You can also join our mailing list and our Slack channel to keep in touch with our goings-on and connect with other members of the community.

Credit to Benjamin Wilks and Jacqueline Goldman for writing related to oSTEM’s goals and bylaws.