The University of Oregon Institute of Neuroscience seeks to provide a holistic and forward-thinking educational experience to UO students regardless of cultural, biological, gender, or socioeconomic background. ION recognizes the longstanding history of bias, racism, and ableism that prohibits the success of underrepresented minorities (URM) in science and ION is committed to transforming our educational program to create a more inclusive and supportive learning environment for all students.

To achieve this goal the ION DEI teaching subcommittee will advocate for all ION educators to adopt teaching strategies that better support URM student learning, develop curricula that highlight the contributions of URM scientists, talk explicitly about racial injustices in our field and ways to combat these issues, and commit to receive regular training on instructional practices that promote success for URM students.

To encourage adoption of these measures the DEI teaching subcommittee will provide resources for instructors seeking to adapt their teaching plans, including a compendium of academic and popular articles, video materials, campus support and training opportunities, and guidelines created by other institutions with similar goals

Together we hope to remodel our classrooms in a way that will not only welcome URM who wish to study neuroscience, but create a sense of ownership and belonging within the field itself. Our long-term goal is that these concrete changes will impact career trajectories in a way that will diversify ION, and neuroscience overall, for generations to come.

In the Spring 2021, we started a “Research Inclusivity in STEM“ graduate level course (Bi 607) with the goals of enabling trainees completing this course to interrogate their own biases while learning to identify and work to eradicate bias in academic working groups and institutions.

Please find more details here regarding our Aims, our Teaching resources and our Bias in AI effort.