Credo

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement
Authors: Mathieu Groussin & Mathilde Poyet last updated: September 15th, 2021

We are committed to creating a safe, supportive and engaging environment for all students and lab members, irrespective of their gender, origin, religion and sexual orientation. We aim to provide professional and psychological support to all lab members and colleagues, and to publicly engage in society to promote inclusion and inspire new generations in choosing a career in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

Values

Diversity has many facets, including gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, culture, religion, disability or socioeconomic status. The lack of diversity in academia and STEM is both the cause and the consequence of systemic disparities affecting underrepresented groups. This strongly impacts individual people and their career, but also the capability of the scientific community to effectively solve problems of our modern society. We are convinced that diverse scientific teams, which are composed of people of different origins that have complementary areas of expertise, skill sets and thinking styles, are better equipped to address complex problems.

In our lab, we will foster a culture of supporting diversity at all levels, including trainees, technicians and scientific committees. By doing so, we wish to have positive impacts on society that go beyond the benefits of our scientific progress.

To improve diversity and representation in STEM, we aim to both attract and retain scientists from minority backgrounds. We also aim to learn more about, and to break, existing barriers preventing people from underrepresented groups to be included in the scientific community. Such barriers include (to name a few): inadequate criteria for the recruitment of students and personnel, biases when evaluating scientists for career advancement, awards and promotions, the imposter syndrome that students from underrepresented communities experience during their trainings, and the increased socioeconomic stress that minorities face on a daily basis, which influences their productivity and well-being.

Actions

We engage in supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion through the following set of actions:

We promote a culture of open-mindedness, compassion, and inclusiveness among all team members.
We engage in inclusive, active, and individualized learning and mentoring. Just as the CAU and UKSH strive to integrate personalized approaches into our healthcare, we strive to build adaptive/personalized approaches to STEM education and training.
We engage in fair and unbiased evaluation of new lab member candidates, as well as of the work of ongoing lab members.
We promote cultural, personal, and individual expressions that contribute to meaningful interaction and dialogue.
We will seek scholarship, fellowship and award opportunities for minority students in my lab and our institutes, and help them on writing proposals and applications.
We will provide empowering and supportive work evaluations to prevent feelings of imposter syndrome.
We acknowledge the existence of our unconscious biases and strive to identify and overcome them. Check out this resource1, designed to help you understand your own unconscious biases.
We will always do our best to acknowledge that we are fallible beings who will make mistakes that we will try to correct and learn from.
We have an open-door policy — Mathilde and Mathieu are happy to discuss any feedback or concerns regarding our diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.

Resources