Highlighting Counterstereotypical Scientists in Undergraduate Life Science Courses

INTRODUCTION

The majority of scientists featured in undergraduate life sciences textbooks are white, cisgender men (Wood et al., 2020; Appiah, 2020). Such curricular representation does not reflect the diversity within the scientific community, nor does it represent the increasingly diverse student body that engages with these resources (NASEM, 2023; NCSES, 2023). Specifically in the United States, the percentage of total enrollment for undergraduates from marginalized racial and ethnic backgrounds has tripled in the last 50 years (Hanson, 2024). The percentage of students with disabilities in college has doubled in less than two decades (US GAO, 2024). Although postsecondary enrollment data on sexuality and gender identity have not been recorded in a comprehensive way in federal data sources (PNPI, 2023), we recognize the needs of students who identify with these marginalized communities as well.

The discrepancy between who is featured in and who is reached by educational materials has motivated biology educators to disrupt such exclusive and normative aspects of science culture. Multiple efforts by curricular developers and biology education researchers have generated curricula that feature scientists with identities systemically excluded from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) (see examples in Table 1). The scientists featured in these materials hold identities and backgrounds that challenge the dominant stereotypes of scientists [see Table 3 in Metzger et al., (2023) for a list of stereotypical scientists] and can serve as role models to inspire students to pursue STEM careers (Morgenroth et al., 2015; Ahn et al., 2020; Gladstone and Cimpian, 2021). When students perceive the featured scientists as relatable and their scientific successes as achievable, students can become motivated to learn STEM course content and pursue STEM careers (Gladstone and Cimpian, 2021).

To forge beyond broadening participation in the scientific enterprise, we call for curricular reform that intentionally highlights contributions of counterstereotypical scientists. In this essay, we review how counterstereotypical scientists have been featured in life science courses and discuss the benefits and costs of interacting with these materials from three perspectives: students, instructors, and featured scientists. These curricular materials provide numerous benefits to students, especially those from systemically excluded communities (Schinske et al., 2016; Brandt et al., 2020; Yonas et al., 2020; Aranda et al., 2021; Metzger et al., 2023; Ovid et al., 2023, 2024; Acosta-Parra et al., 2024; Rivera et al., 2024; Costello et al., 2025). Research suggests that instructors and the featured scientists themselves could also benefit, but this is an understudied topic. We emphasize that, if not developed and implemented with attention to the diversity of personal, social, and contextual factors, such well-intentioned efforts could have negative impacts. Informed by the Social Ecological Model of Behavior Change and previous scholarship, we offer recommendations for the design and implementation of undergraduate life science course materials that feature counterstereotypical scientists.

Theoretical Framework: Social Ecological Model of Behavior Change

To explore the potential benefits and challenges of developing and implementing curricular materials featuring counterstereotypical scientists from multiple perspectives, we use Bronfenbrenner's Social Ecological Model of Behavior Change (Bronfenbrenner, 1976). This framework proposes that human behavior is influenced by personal and social interactions along with contextual factors (Figure 1) (Bronfenbrenner, 1976; Basham et al., 2010; Sansom et al., 2023). Rather than focusing on specific factors related to an individual, this framework stresses that within any setting, each individual is part of a larger environment and is influenced by social and contextual factors that impact their perceptions of and responses to that environment (Bronfenbrenner, 1976; Allen et al., 2016; Sansom et al., 2023). Within a school setting, each student is a part of the larger school community, and the personal, social, and contextual factors each individual engages with shapes how they perceive educational practices and their place within the larger educational community (Bronfenbrenner, 1976; Farrell et al., 2010; Sansom et al., 2023). This influence is bidirectional, with each individual possessing the ability to influence their environment (Rosa and Tudge, 2013; Michell et al., 2018).

While the Social Ecological Model of Behavior Change has been used primarily in public health research (Golden and Earp, 2012; Nguyen et al., 2022; Carmona et al., 2023), this model has also been applied to education research. For example, this framework has been used at the K-12 level to explore the environmental factors that promote student sense of belonging at school (Allen et al., 2016, 2023). In STEM education, Michell and colleagues (2018) used this framework to explore gender inequities in computer science education. Furthermore, this framework has been used to promote accessible STEM education for students with disabilities (Basham et al., 2010) and the integration of social justice issues in pharmacy curricula (Nonyel et al., 2021). It has also been used to characterize the factors that influence STEM faculty use of evidence-based instructional practices (Sansom et al., 2023). Taken together, these studies suggest that this model can be used to better understand the complexities surrounding the implementation of curricular materials that feature counterstereotypical scientists. In this essay, we consider the personal and social impacts of curricular interventions featuring counterstereotypical scientists within complex systems that include students, instructors, and the featured scientists themselves.

Scope of This Essay

Most of the current literature documents benefits to students who engage with curricular materials that feature counterstereotypical scientists. To expand this work and include the perspectives of instructors and featured scientists, we employ the Social Ecological Model of Behavioral Change framework and consider the personal and social benefits and costs to highlighting counterstereotypical scientists in undergraduate life science courses. Specifically, this essay considers:

1. How have curricula that feature counterstereotypical scientists been designed and implemented in undergraduate life science courses?

2. What are the potential benefits to students, instructors, and featured scientists?

3. What are the potential costs to students, instructors, and featured scientists?

4. What recommendations can we provide moving forward?

Positionality Statement

This essay stems from the shared belief among all authors that thoughtful and intentional inclusion of counterstereotypical scientists in biology education materials is necessary to avoid harmful curricular practices. When writing this essay, the authors collectively drew from their experiences with curricular materials featuring counterstereotypical scientists as curriculum developers, featured disciplinary scientists, biology students, biology education researchers, and biology educators at both predominantly white institutions and minority-serving institutions. Furthermore, the authors recognize that their identities and lived experiences inform their perspectives and approaches to research and education (Secules et al., 2021). The authors hold a wide range of both excluded and privileged identities, across race, gender, LGBTQ+ status, dis/ability, and socioeconomic status, among other identities that shaped the foundation of this essay.

Curricular materials highlighting counterstereotypical scientists can differ across many dimensions. Students, instructors, scientists, and/or curriculum developers may design the materials and involve the featured scientists in the design process to varying degrees (see examples in Table 1). Implementation may vary based on scale/duration, modality, identity depth, student engagement, instructor engagement, and scientist engagement (Figure 2A). These materials also vary in the number of scientists or the frequency with which they are highlighted, how personal and biographical information is presented, and how they are integrated into the course (Figure 2B). We elaborate on each of these axes of variation below, while acknowledging that this list is not exhaustive. Future scholarship should consider empirical evaluation of these different implementation approaches across a range of cultural and institutional contexts.

Scale/Duration.

Students may experience a counterstereotypical scientist at different scales in life science courses. At the most granular scale, a name or image of a scientist can be mentioned once in the context of an activity. More moderately, a scientist and their work or data can be referenced throughout an activity or unit to illustrate a concept, increasing the duration of engagement with the scientist. The evidence-based curricular materials listed in Table 1 (e.g., BioGraphI modules, DataVersify activities, Scientist Spotlights, Story Collider podcasts) reference the featured scientist multiple times throughout the activity and can be repeated throughout the course. For more in-depth and extended engagement, an individual scientist might be highlighted across the entire semester through readings and activities, student engagement and analysis with the scientist's published literature, and intentional connections with the scientists’ work and journey across content-based discussions.

Modality.

The variety of modes to convey information about an individual scientist may include text, verbal communication by an instructor or the scientist themself (as in Story Collider podcasts; Yonas et al., 2020), and/or visuals through videos, photographs, and drawings. Multimodal approaches such as verbal-plus-visual are generally more impactful as learning tools (e.g., see Mayer, 2014) and align with guidelines for Universal Design for Learning (CAST, 2024). Data Nugget activities, Project Biodiversify profiles, and the DataVersify activities (created collaboratively by the Data Nugget and Project Biodiversify curricular development teams) pair text written by the scientist with photographs of the scientist (Schultheis and Kjelvik, 2015; Schultheis et al., 2022; Zemenick et al., 2022; Costello et al., 2025). BioGraphI modules provide video interviews of scientists and pair these videos with activities that engage students in data and graph interpretation (Figure 1). Student-authored Scientist Spotlight assignments draw from a variety of online sources, including YouTube videos, Story Collider podcasts, and articles (Aranda et al., 2021), and they can be used to teach course content in lieu of course reading assignments alone (Schinske et al., 2016; Ovid et al., 2024). An in-person experience with the scientist engages all the senses and allows for personal connection and reciprocal exchange of information.

Identity Depth.

Few or many of a scientist's visible and concealable identities may be revealed depending on how personal and biographical information is presented. For example, a name or image alone may reveal information about less-concealable aspects of identity, such as age, ethnicity, race, or gender expression. Biographical sources can disclose concealable personal and/or social identities such as dis/ability, sexuality, religion, familial status, socioeconomic background, first-generation college-going status, and even personal values. Research on DataVersify activities found that students engaged more with the activities when more in-depth personal information was shared (e.g., personal stories about marginalized identities and obstacles the scientist faced in STEM) (Costello et al., 2025). Qualitative studies of semistructured interviews with students who experienced Scientist Spotlight assignments also show how biographical information supported students in challenging scientist stereotypes, thereby enhancing what students thought was possible for themselves and others (Acosta-Parra et al., 2024).

Student Engagement.

Students may learn about counterstereotypical scientists in a relatively passive way, such as viewing a scientist's name or image. Students may become more cognitively, metacognitively, and/or affectively engaged with the research or stories of counterstereotypical scientists by working on learning activities or assessment items related to the scientist's professional and/or personal life (Costello et al., 2025). Written reflective assignments in conjunction with in-class discussions can also bolster secondary students’ relatability to scientists (Ovid et al., 2023). Students can maximize their engagement by developing their own curricular materials highlighting counterstereotypical scientists, for example by researching and/or interviewing a counterstereotypical scientist to author a novel Scientist Spotlight (Aranda et al., 2021; see Table 1).

Instructor Engagement.

Instructors may be more or less involved in the development of the resource that highlights counterstereotypical scientists. Low engagement consists of embedding resources that are publicly available from publishers or open-source curriculum developers. This scenario can provide a benefit to students while minimizing the tax of time and resources of the instructor (Beatty et al., 2023). Alternatively, an instructor may select a published role-model activity, customize it, and embed it in the curriculum, or an instructor may construct an activity from scratch to highlight a counterstereotypical scientist.

Scientist Engagement.

A featured scientist may not be aware of their inclusion in course curricula if they are well known with many images and substantial personal information already published in the media. Alternatively, featured scientists may be consulted in the development of materials. They may give informal permission to be highlighted without being involved in the creation of the curricular materials, or they may have creative control, provide legal permission, and/or be compensated for their work or the use of their name, image, and/or intellectual property. For example, scientists are compensated for working very closely with the curricular developers to create DataVersify activities. The scientists featured in BioGraphI interviews are included as coauthors on all lessons highlighting their work. For Scientist Spotlights, student-authors draw from publicly available biographical sources and research articles to link in the assignment. Upon completion and submission to the website, scientists who can be reached are contacted and provided a copy of the assignment and may make minor changes or request it not be posted on the Scientist Spotlights website.

Number/Frequency.

A single assignment or activity may feature multiple scientists simultaneously, or such assignments may repeat throughout the course, featuring a different scientist during each iteration. The evidence-based curricular materials featured in Table 1 mostly highlight a single scientist in each activity. However, courses range in how many of these activities are implemented throughout the course. Some courses implement three or four assignments (Aranda et al., 2021; Metzger et al., 2023; Ovid et al., 2023; Costello et al., 2025), whereas other courses implement six to ten assignments (Schinske et al., 2016; Brandt et al., 2020; Yonas et al., 2020; Ovid et al., 2024; Rivera et al., 2024). While instructors may wonder about a recommended number or frequency to impact student outcomes, it is arguably more important to consider how such assignments are implemented instead of how many.

Identity Diversity.

In a single course, the diversity of revealed identities of scientists and people with science-adjacent careers can range from minimal to highly intersectional. For example, one course may highlight scientists who all share one or more counterstereotypical identities in common, while another course may feature scientists who belong to a wide array of identities. We know that the impact of these curricular materials depends on the degree to which students share identities with featured scientists (Costello et al., 2025). Furthermore, students can imagine backgrounds and personal characteristics that would uniquely resonate with salient aspects of their own identities that had not yet been featured in their coursework (Acosta-Parra et al., 2024). Future work could evaluate how varying the identity diversity of featured scientists impacts student outcomes or explore whether offering students a choice of counterstereotypical scientists enhances engagement, potentially making the material more relatable and impactful.

Curricular Integration.

An instructor may integrate counterstereotypical scientists in one or more component(s) of a course. At a broad level, learning outcomes might specify that, by the end of a course, students will be able to appreciate the value of diverse views and experiences in science. Other possibilities include asking students to respond to questions about the counterstereotypical scientists in summative assessments (e.g., case-study style exams or projects), in formative assessment (e.g., practicing with quantitative reasoning or process of science using a scientist's dataset and personal backstory, as with DataVersify activities and BioGraphI modules), and pre-class or in-class assignments (e.g., publisher-generated or open-source activities). Students may also encounter counterstereotypical scientists in their learning spaces outside of the curriculum, such as their instructors and teaching/learning assistants, posted flyers and announcements, department opportunities (such as seminar speakers), and their peers.

The wide variation in implementation of curricula featuring counterstereotypical scientists is important because the effects on students, instructors, and the featured scientists are likely to differ across contexts. In the following section, we review existing literature that highlights the potential benefits to students, instructors, and featured scientists as a result of these curricular interventions.

Students, instructors, and featured scientists can each experience personal benefits from engaging with curricular materials that feature counterstereotypical scientists. For example, one key personal benefit of these materials is that they challenge internalized, implicit biases around the types of people who can succeed in science (McIntyre et al., 2016).

While this essay delineates students, instructors, and scientists as unique groups with distinct perspectives, the perspectives of the individuals in each group are not only influenced by their individual lived experiences but also by social interactions with members of other groups and the larger educational environment, as described by the Social Ecological Model of Behavioral Change (Figure 1). Below, we organize our essay by applying the Social Ecological Model of Behavior Change framework to consider both the personal and social benefits of implementing these curricular materials for each of the three groups.

Benefits for Students

Previous research on the incorporation of counterstereotypical scientists in curricular materials has demonstrated numerous positive impacts on undergraduate students, including improvement in academic performance and affective student outcomes like engagement and science identity. Here, we summarize previous work and make predictions about the personal and social benefits students experience when engaging with course content that highlights the stories of counterstereotypical scientists (Table 2).

Personal Benefits to Students.

Students may experience improved academic performance and/or positive shifts in affect as a result of engaging with counterstereotypical scientist curricular representation.

Increased Academic Performance.

To date, many of the studies that have investigated the impact of featuring counterstereotypical scientists in undergraduate life science courses have primarily focused on the implementation of Scientist Spotlights assignments (see Table 1). Scientist Spotlights guide students as they first review the biography and work of counterstereotypical scientists and then write a critical reflection, including a description of “the types of people who do science” (Schinske et al., 2016). The initial study, a quasi-experimental design, documented that students who received weekly Scientist Spotlight assignments scored on average a grade level higher on course assessments relative to a comparison group of students who did not complete Scientist Spotlight assignments (Schinske et al., 2016).

Shifts in Affective Outcomes.

A growing body of literature also documents the positive impacts of Scientist Spotlights on student affective outcomes: students relate more to scientists, shift their perceptions of the type of people who do science, and increase their self-efficacy and interest in science (Schinske et al., 2016; Brandt et al., 2020; Aranda et al., 2021; Metzger et al., 2023; Ovid et al., 2023; Rivera et al., 2024). For example, Schinske et al. (2016) demonstrated that students who completed Scientist Spotlight assignments increased their interest in science and relatability to scientists even six months after the completion of the course. Similarly, Brandt et al. (2020) measured changes in students’ awareness about counterstereotypical scientists before and after completing eight Scientist Spotlights assignments during a semester, and more students could name at least one counterstereotypical scientist after completing the Scientist Spotlight assignments. Metzger et al. (2023) found that shifts in students’ ability to relate to scientists were most pronounced among first-generation college students and women students after a semester that included either four or six Scientist Spotlights assignments. Another study by Aranda et al. (2021) examined student perceptions of scientists in a biology service-learning course where students authored Scientist Spotlights. Student-authored Scientist Spotlights assignments significantly shifted students’ relatability to and perceptions of scientists compared with partner courses that did not include these activities, and the effects of student-authored Scientist Spotlights had similar effects among both white students and students with race/ethnicities excluded in STEM. Most recently, Rivera et al. (2024) found that nearly half of students in a large introductory biology course spontaneously mentioned Scientist Spotlights as something that they would “remember for years to come” in final course reflection. Students experienced multiple effects of Scientist Spotlights, including appreciating diversity in science, perceiving scientists as human beings, and increasing their sense of self-efficacy (Rivera et al., 2024). Taken together, these studies reveal the positive impact of these curricular interventions on how students relate to science and scientists.

While the literature established Scientist Spotlights as one effective resource, much less is known about the impacts of other resources featuring counterstereotypical scientists in undergraduate life science courses (but see Gurgel et al., 2016; Yonas et al., 2020; Romo and Rokop, 2022; Schultheis et al., 2022; Costello et al., 2025). Yonas et al. (2020) explored student engagement with the Story Collider podcast library in an online nonmajors biology course. They found that women, LGBTQ+ students, and politically progressive students reported higher levels of engagement with the assignment. Politically progressive students and students with race/ethnicities excluded in STEM also reported a higher ability to relate to the scientists. Furthermore, Costello et al. (2025) found that students in biology courses at 36 different undergraduate institutions who completed DataVersify activities found scientists more relatable and thereby engaged more with these quantitative biology activities. Finally, when students engaged directly with scientists (in addition to reading and writing about them), students gained a higher appreciation for science and increased their scientific career aspirations (Gurgel et al., 2016; Romo and Rokop, 2022). As resources that feature counterstereotypical scientists continue to expand (Table 1), we expect to learn more about how these curricular resources impact students’ science identity, engagement with course activities, and perception of who can participate in science.

Given these personal benefits to student academic performance and sociopsychological attitudes, we expect these curricular resources to have long-term effects on students’ academic trajectories. Prior work documents that students’ science identity plays an important role in persistence in STEM (Trujillo and Tanner, 2014). Further, students are more likely to pursue STEM majors and careers if they perform well in science courses (Seymour and Hunter, 2019) and hold positive attitudes toward scientists (Wyer, 2003). Specifically, Schneider (2010) found that the strongest predictors of undergraduate students’ intention to pursue a career in science included their academic major and their positive stereotypes of scientists. Given that curricular materials featuring counterstereotypical scientists improve both student academic performance and attitudes toward scientists, we expect these educational materials to likewise improve student persistence in science. However, this is an avenue that requires further research.

Social Benefits to Students.

Less scholarship has directly assessed how these curricular materials impact students’ perceptions of each other and of instructors who teach content through the stories of counterstereotypical scientists. However, we draw from research to infer social benefits resulting from engaging with counterstereotypical examples.

Contemporary Examples of Science.

One potential benefit of featuring counterstereotypical scientists and their work in course material is the increased focus on contemporary examples of science. Previous work showed that contemporary scientists featured in textbooks are more likely to possess counterstereotypical identities when compared with historical science figures (Wood et al., 2020). Incorporating more contemporary examples of science may more directly highlight the relevance of course content to students’ lives, which could strengthen student motivation to learn course content (Schunk and DiBenedetto, 2020) and could communicate to students that science is an ongoing process (Hansson et al., 2019; Vamvakas et al., 2021). Presenting science as ongoing and contemporary can dispel a common misconception that science is a series of known facts with little left to discover and demonstrate that scientific discoveries continue to affect modern society, including human and environmental health (Costello et al., 2023).

Implicit Bias and Interpersonal Interactions.

Featuring counterstereotypical scientists in curricula can mitigate negative social consequences of implicit biases. Social psychologists propose that positive intergroup contact (i.e., positive interactions between individuals of different social identities) may reduce implicit biases and deconstruct stereotypes (Rothbart, 1996; Schneider and Holmes, 2020), and this is true even when the “interaction” involves one party observing, but not interacting, with another (i.e., parasocial contact; Schiappa et al., 2005). Accordingly, featuring counterstereotypical scientists in curricular materials may help students dismantle stereotypes about scientists. We see evidence of shifts in scientist stereotypes from literature evaluating Scientist Spotlight assignments. Students began to use more counterstereotypical descriptors of scientists after engaging with multiple Scientist Spotlight assignments (Schinske et al., 2016). Future work can explicitly evaluate shifts in implicit biases among students in courses featuring counterstereotypical scientists.

Benefits for Instructors

The scholarship of inclusive curriculum in STEM tends to focus on benefits for students, and much less is known about the specific potential benefits for instructors. Explicit studies on instructors generally focus on social science courses (e.g., Miller et al., 2019) or preservice teachers (e.g., Brown et al., 2004), and we infer benefits for STEM instructors from these studies. The implementation of curricular materials that feature counterstereotypical scientists may benefit STEM instructors in a variety of ways, depending on the individual instructor's identity and positionality, student population, and institutional culture. We propose both personal and social benefits to instructors working within STEM higher education institutions and systems (Table 2).

Personal Benefits to Instructors.

Below, we consider benefits to the individual instructor. Such benefits can include an enriched teaching practice, increased self-efficacy and personal satisfaction, as well as the potential for career advancement.

Benefits to Teaching Practice.

Instructors may shift in their personal views on diversity when exposed to counterstereotypes in the curricular materials they implement in their life science courses (McIntyre et al., 2016). Greater awareness of counternarratives in STEM could lead instructors to value equity and thereby influence their instructional decisions. For example, instructors who value diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are more likely to adopt inclusive teaching practices (Aragón et al., 2017; Russo-Tait, 2023; Forsythe et al., 2024), incorporate diversity-related course content (Mayhew and Grunwald, 2006), and engage in advocacy for marginalized identities (Park and Denson, 2009). As counterstereotypes can also enhance cognitive flexibility and creative performance (Gocłowska et al., 2013), instructors exposed to counternarratives in their curriculum may experience additional benefits of increased innovation in their teaching and scholarship.

Self-efficacy, Validation, Satisfaction.

An instructor's personal view of their ability as an instructor (self-efficacy) may also shift when they receive positive feedback for incorporating counternarratives into their STEM curricula (Morris et al., 2017; Smith et al., 2020) or for engaging in professional development on how to improve their curricula with counternarratives (Morris et al., 2017; Täschner et al., 2024). Furthermore, feelings of validation from interacting with resources aimed to dismantle problematic ideologies (i.e., belief systems that maintain the dominant narratives of STEM) may also affect instructor self-efficacy, especially for instructors who hold one or more marginalized identities. Educators can experience personal satisfaction from knowing they contributed to diversifying the scientific workforce (Miller, 2015).

Social Benefits to Instructors.

There is evidence to suggest that teaching content that highlights counterstereotypical scientists can foster interpersonal relationships with students and other colleagues.

Benefits to Relationships with Students.

STEM instructors have explained that a major benefit of using culturally responsive teaching strategies was the connection they built with their students (Forsythe, 2023). While incorporating diversity-related course content requires emotional labor, Miller et al. (2019) described how instructors conceptualized positive aspects of emotional labor, including when instructors’ vulnerability solicited student engagement on challenging topics. Such dialogic approaches that practice storytelling and cultural humility can enhance faculty-student relationships (Kanemoto et al., 2024).

Benefits to Relationships with Colleagues.

Choosing to incorporate counterstereotypical scientists into curricula may build or strengthen connections among colleagues engaged in work related to DEI. Explicit studies on instructor interactions generally involve formally-structured groups (such as faculty learning communities), but we predict similar benefits to the connections among instructors in the same department or professional society. In faculty learning communities, support among colleagues can develop through sharing insights, perspectives, and resources toward a common outcome (e.g., Sirum et al., 2009; Rodriguez et al., 2021). These strengthened connections can then feed back to instructor self-efficacy and sense of belonging (Rodriguez et al., 2021), as well as shift personal views on the role of diversity and equity in classrooms (Kelley et al., 2020).

Career Advancement in the Context of the Institutional Culture/System.

When institutions value and reward DEI work in their promotion and tenure decision processes, instructors professionally benefit from implementing curricular materials that feature counterstereotypical scientists rather than rely entirely on examples of scientists found in textbooks to highlight exemplary science (Wood et al., 2020). Rules and institutional expectations across higher education in the United States can reward or discourage faculty from implementing inclusive materials. While many recent political decisions in the United States discourage inclusive teaching in higher education (Ballen et al., 2024; Mervis, 2025), some institutions consider diversity and inclusion accomplishments when granting tenure (Flaherty, 2021; Gasman, 2021; Stewart, 2021; NASEM, 2023). When systems and institutions reward DEI efforts, easy-to-implement curricular materials that feature counterstereotypical scientists can promote career advancement of biology faculty.

Benefits for Featured Scientists

Similarly to instructors, little is known about the impacts of featuring counterstereotypical scientists on the featured scientists themselves. While there is a lack of primary literature documenting positive impacts of counterstereotypical scientists’ participation in biology or STEM curricular materials, we draw from the evidence that participating in outreach activities is beneficial for scientists. We discuss several possible personal and social benefits for scientists highlighted in curricular materials in biology, while acknowledging the scarcity of research on this topic (Table 2).

Personal Benefits to Scientists.

Scientists may receive personal benefits for being recognized in curricular materials. When scientists work with curricular developers to author these materials, they can benefit from professional skill development in science communication. Furthermore, counterstereotypical scientists can experience increased perseverance when they participate in advocacy activities that align with their values.

Professional Skills Development.

Engaging in outreach work may help improve important professional skills such as science storytelling and science communication to a broader audience (Ko et al., 2014). For example, research has documented that graduate fellows who participated in an NSF-funded K-12 outreach program gained mentoring, science communication, and pedagogical skills (Ufnar and Shepherd, 2019, 2020). Other work showed that scientists engaged in a prison outreach program reported increased science communication skills and that early career scientists were more likely to see these activities as beneficial (Nadkarni et al., 2022). We expect that scientists who work with curricular developers to author curricular materials may likewise better their science storytelling and communication skills. Most scientists engaged in outreach express that it is personally rewarding; after engaging in outreach work, scientists have reported feeling happy, refreshed, and having renewed motivation (Nadkarni et al., 2022).

Value Alignment.

Scientists from excluded racial and ethnic groups in science commonly participate in outreach because they recognize its importance and want to give back to their communities (Gewin, 2020). Among Black women physicists, for example, doing science research as well as social justice work and engaging in community empowerment were documented reasons for perseverance in a white-dominated field (Dickens et al., 2020). In contrast, emerging scientists from backgrounds excluded from STEM who perceive a misalignment between their own prosocial values and that of the field are more likely to be deterred from STEM careers (reviewed in Boucher et al., 2017).

Social Benefits to Scientists.

At the social level, increased representation and academic recognition in curricular materials may present opportunities for featured scientists to advance professionally. Ultimately, as more life science courses feature counterstereotypical scientists, the culture of science may begin to change. However, we stress that this curricular intervention is one of many curricular, institutional, and systemic reforms required for counterstereotypical scientists to receive the social benefits of a more equitable system.

Potential for Networking and Professional Advancement.

While there has not been formal study on the professional impacts of featured scientists in curricular materials, we propose several possible direct and indirect benefits. First, materials highlighting research led by counterstereotypical scientists draws attention to their work, and the attention could lend credibility to be leveraged on CVs or as part of Broader Impacts statements on grant proposals. Additionally, students and instructors directly engaging with their materials may become interested in the scientists’ research, which could lead to productive collaborations. Last, given that exposure to counterstereotypical examples seems to be the most effective intervention to address implicit bias (reviewed in FitzGerald et al., 2019), we expect increased representation of counterstereotypical scientists in curriculum to help mitigate implicit biases. Reducing biases, implicit or not, in science is especially important to reduce inequities in the review of scholarly work, including job materials, journal manuscript submissions, and grant applications (Kang et al., 2016; Kolehmainen and Carnes, 2018; Silbiger and Stubler, 2019).

While featuring counterstereotypical scientists in curricular materials may begin to mitigate implicit biases for students, we do not expect this one curricular intervention to substantially alter our current exclusionary system. Future research is needed to investigate the degree to which this curricular intervention translates to career benefits for featured scientists.

Despite the potential benefits of highlighting counterstereotypical scientists in curricular materials, there are also potential costs to consider when creating and implementing curricula. To understand the root cause for the costs outlined in this section, we look to dominant ideologies and narratives that influence Western science (Harding, 1992; Aikenhead, 2002; cited in Morton et al., 2023). The main narrative in science—that is, the mainstream structure used to conduct and understand science—centers white European elite cisgender men (Au et al., 2016; McLean and Syed, 2016). The scientists featured in science textbooks and courses communicate how to be a “good” scientist against the backdrop of this main narrative (Morton et al., 2023). Some scientists align with the main narrative of science, while other scientists differ from or resist the main narrative by presenting counternarratives of who scientists are and how scientists conduct research.

Participating in or interacting with such counternarratives as a student, instructor, or featured scientist in curricula could incur costs. For example, as students develop their own science identity, some may find it challenging to negotiate with and internalize main narratives that focus on individuals with whom they cannot personally identify or relate. Furthermore, when curricula and instruction feature counterstereotypical scientists only superficially (e.g., without exploring the rich cultural contexts and epistemologies that inform their work)  or disregard how systemic racism/sexism/classism (and other types of discrimination) impacts the lived experiences of scientists with excluded identities (e.g., by emphasizing how merit alone drives the success of famous historical or contemporary scientists), students may experience feelings of exclusion or tokenization (Flowers and Howard-Hamilton, 2002; hooks, 2014). Below, we again draw from the literature and apply the Social Ecological Model of Behavior Change framework to consider the personal and social costs of engaging with curricular materials that highlight counterstereotypical scientists for students, instructors, and featured scientists.

Costs for Students

Student experiences in the classroom are enmeshed with social hierarchies and power dynamics that impact learning. We consider the personal and social costs to students engaged with curricula featuring counterstereotypical scientists and caution how well-intended efforts can still have unintended consequences (Table 2). This is not to dissuade instructors from teaching about counterstereotypical scientists. It serves as a reminder of the contextual factors that should be considered when implementing such a curriculum.

Personal Costs to Students.

How individual students perceive and experience interventions featuring counterstereotypical scientists will vary and depend on contextual factors, including how instructors implement this curricula and the student identities represented in the classroom. Potential personal costs to students include tokenism, stereotype threat, and decreased relatability to scientists.

Personal costs to students are complicated by the intersectional nature of identity: the fact that individuals hold multiple personal and social identities that interact with one another and inform their experiences (Oyserman and Destin, 2010). Depending on which identity is salient to the student at a given time, their response to the presentation of counterstereotypical scientists may vary. If a student's excluded racial identity is more salient, then the frequent presentation of white women scientists may feel exclusionary to this student and convey the message that science is not a feasible path for them to take. Alternatively, if a student's excluded gender identity is more salient, then the frequent presentation of Black men scientists may result in a similar outcome. Intersectionality in education has a rich history adapted from legal studies (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991) and Black queer feminist activism (Combahee River Collective, 2014). Importantly, “intersectionality is less identity-centered and more the apprehension of conditions that shape and make meaningful these same identities as they crisscross and make cuts in each other” (Harris and Leonardo, 2018, p. 18). We urge readers to consider and apply intersectional perspectives as they advance through the following sections.

Tokenism.

Students with excluded identities may feel tokenized (Flowers and Howard-Hamilton, 2002; hooks, 2014) in STEM classrooms when instructors implement examples of counterstereotypical scientists. Tokenism in institutional contexts “refers to persons (usually women or minorities) who are hired, admitted, or appointed to a group because of their difference from other members, perhaps to serve as ‘proof’ that the group does not discriminate against such people” (Zimmer, 1988). Symbolic gestures by instructors who include counterstereotypical scientists to communicate that they are “inclusive” with good moral character is a prime example of tokenism. Even well-intended instructors who label counterstereotypical scientists by their racial/ethnic background, sexual orientation, or other aspects of their identity may create feelings of tokenization among students sharing these marginalized identities. We rarely mention these aspects when describing the work of Einstein, Tesla, or Darwin. Then why should it be different for scientists from counterstereotypical backgrounds? This only serves to isolate and delegitimize the scientist—and perhaps students who also share those identities.

Stereotype Threat.

Student tokenism is compounded when students holding excluded identities are numerically underrepresented in the educational context (Flowers and Howard-Hamilton, 2002). A large body of research stemming from Claude Steele's work on stereotype threat shows how highlighting aspects of students’ counterstereotypical identities negatively affects performance (Pennington et al., 2016). Stereotype threat refers to the fear of negative evaluation for confirming certain stereotypes regarding excluded identities and causes students to feel they must work harder to disprove harmful assumptions by their instructor and/or classmates (Steele and Aronson, 1995; Shapiro and Williams, 2012). Stereotype threat has been shown to cause performance and psychological pressure for women and students with excluded race/ethnicities to perform better than their peers (Wingfield and Wingfield, 2014). When counterstereotypical scientists are featured in classrooms, students from systemically or institutionally excluded groups may feel that they have a smaller margin of error or that they must speak on behalf of all people who have salient identities (Wingfield and Wingfield, 2014; Hubain et al., 2016). This, in turn, may cause a heightened sense of stereotype threat and pressure to perform (Kanter, 1977).

Decreased Relatability to Scientists.

A subset of students reported decreased identification with scientists following the Scientist Spotlights intervention (Aranda et al., 2021; Metzger et al. 2023). Upon a close reading of open-ended responses, these students reported that they did not identify with the scientists’ struggles, the aspects of their identities highlighted, and/or their level of passion for science. It is also possible that if featured scientists discuss identity-related challenges, students who share similar identities may expect their path into science to be more difficult, perpetuating the idea that overcoming identity-based challenges is the responsibility of individual scientists while ignoring the systemic barriers that exist to prevent individuals with excluded identities from persisting in the field (Hemprich-Bennett et al., 2021; Lim et al., 2021). In fact, emphasizing the persistence gap that exists for students with excluded identities in STEM can perpetuate feelings of not belonging in STEM and not identifying as a scientist (Aranda et al., 2021; Cowgill et al., 2021).

Social Cost to Students.

Below we consider a potential social cost to students who engage with assignments that feature counterstereotypical scientists: false ideas rooted in meritocratic ideology. Systemic factors and instructor implementation could mitigate or exacerbate this potential social cost. Social costs to students are understudied and represent another frontier of research on scientist role model interventions, which have historically focused exclusively on their positive impacts on students.

Reinforcement of Meritocratic Ideology

Interventions featuring counterstereotypical scientists may inaccurately inform students’ ideologies, their beliefs and preferences concerning the broader social system in which they are embedded. A systematic narrative review of work described the possibility that interventions featuring counterstereotypical scientists may affect student ideologies in several ways, including reinforcing the belief that STEM is a meritocracy (Verniers et al., 2024). If students see many successful counterstereotypical scientists, they may erroneously conclude that STEM only rewards skills and effort, regardless of identities, making the false assumption that systemic inequalities have been resolved or do not exist. Alternatively, these interventions may endorse stereotypes, reinforcing the false belief that certain identities are excluded in science because they are not as competent or driven.

Costs for Instructors

Along with the benefits that come with featuring counterstereotypical scientists in courses, the implementation of these materials may lead to unintended negative outcomes for instructors. As with instructor-specific benefits, costs may impact instructors in a variety of ways, depending on the individual instructor's identity and positionality, student population, and institutional culture. Institutional context and culture may also affect an instructor's willingness to integrate counternarratives in their curricula. For example, recent federal targeting of marginalized groups include executive orders and proposed legislation that call of the elimination of DEI initiatives and race-conscious programming and policies in higher education (Moore, 2025; Trump, 2025). Within classrooms, several states in the United States have introduced restrictions on teaching critical race theory (Filimon and Ivănescu, 2023) and discouraged faculty from teaching topics related to DEI (Ballen et al., 2024). These actions are expected to have a silencing effect, such that any intervention that addresses race, even indirectly, may be prohibitied or avoided by instructors out of an abundance of caution (Morgan, 2022; Ballen et al., 2024). Given this context and the dominant ideologies of STEM previously discussed, we describe potential personal and social costs for instructors who feature counterstereotypical scientists in STEM courses (Table 2).

Personal Costs to Instructors.

The potential costs to instructors who incorporate counterstereotypical scientists into their STEM curricula have not been empirically studied. However, as with all new curricular innovations, these pedagogical decisions may come with personal and professional challenges.

Stress and Well-Being.

As valuing diversity intersects with social justice, we infer that costs of social justice work may be similar to the costs of incorporating counterstereotypical scientists into curricula. Taylor and Travino (2022) showed psychology faculty who engaged in social justice reported a high cost of emotional labor, such as burnout. Burnout resulting from social justice efforts is not experienced equally by all faculty, but faculty who hold marginalized identities are more likely to be silenced for their work and experience heightened fear of negative consequences (Taylor and Trevino, 2022). Instructors who touch on diversity, racism, anti-coloniality, or other social justice topics during class might face microaggressions (subtle disparagement or acts of discrimination; Harrison and Tanner, 2018), as well as more overt acts of student resistance during class discussions. While student resistance and microaggressions can occur in any learning environment, they may be more common when science is humanized and topics presented through the work of counterstereotypical scientists, and therefore the emotional burden associated with potentially responding to these encounters falls on the faculty implementing these curricula. Furthermore, instructors may receive negative student or peer evaluations of their teaching, which could in turn influence their career advancement and well-being (Hammoudi Halat et al., 2023).

Time and Fidelity of Implementation.

Another personal cost to instructors is the time it takes to incorporate assignments that feature counterstereotypical scientists into curricula. Instructors commonly cite workload and other logistical concerns as barriers to curricular transformation (Hora, 2016; Bathgate et al., 2019). Beyond the time required to investigate the work of a scientist and incorporate this into a lesson, instructor preparation might also include thinking about and acknowledging their positionality and considering how to handle microaggressions should they emerge during discussions. Openly accessible curricular materials can save instructors time and effort when developing courses aimed to humanize science (Beatty et al., 2023), such as those outlined in Table 1. However, intentional and effective implementation of openly accessible materials that feature counterstereotypical scientists requires instructors to first know what is effective and also feel confident in their ability to implement the activities (Thoman et al., 2021). Instructors who create “adaptations” to the materials that are misaligned with an interventions’ original design may exacerbate social costs when interacting with their students, described below. To mitigate implementation challenges, instructors may seek professional development to aid their curricular transformation. These training courses and faculty learning communities also require substantial time, cognitive, and affective commitments beyond the typical expectations for course preparation.

Social Costs to Instructors.

Along with the potential for social benefits to instructors comes the risk of social costs when interacting with students and faculty. Further, the implementation and reception of curriculum can vary by contextual factors that can increase social costs.

Costly Interactions with Students.

Potential social costs to instructors who incorporate counterstereotypical scientists in their curricula may include resistance from students. Instructors may need to navigate difficult conversations, confrontations, alienation, and complaints from students. One source of resistance may result from students preferring to “stick to the science” content instead of learning about the background of scientists. Another source of student resistance may stem from white discomfort and fragility, documented negative responses of white students when they are presented with antiracist educational material (Applebaum, 2017). While most counterstereotypical scientist examples do not directly address white privilege, they may imply the lack of privilege of counterstereotypical scientists, thereby activating white privilege discomfort in some students. Higher education instructors have reported experiencing targeted student bullying when introducing diversity-related content in their teaching (May and Tenzek, 2018). However, research shows that, overall, brief multicultural educational materials can improve awareness of white privilege, increase empathy in white students (Garriott et al., 2016), and rarely invoke white discomfort. Furthermore, preliminary analyses suggests that students engaged with the DataVersify activities suggests only rare express resistance to the activities. Despite this evidence, instructors cite fears of negative student evaluation and resistance as a reason to avoid content deemed “controversial” (Beatty et al., 2023). The extent of fear depends on the institutional context and on an instructor's positionality, as an instructor's identity shapes students’ perceptions of their authority, credibility, and expertise. As a result, many instructors are hesitant to implement diverse curricula for fear of these “worst-case” scenarios (Beatty et al., 2023).

Instructors also need to consider how the way they describe scientists shapes student perceptions of science culture. For example, only highlighting scientists who are successful in their respective fields may perpetuate a “survivorship bias,” whereby students may not be exposed to scientists that did not achieve success or were pushed out from the field (Hemprich-Bennett et al., 2021). Conversely, emphasizing the obstacles that counterstereotypical scientists had to overcome may perpetuate feelings of not identifying as a scientist among students with excluded identities (Aranda et al., 2021; Cowgill et al., 2021). Furthermore, tokenism can result from a lack of instructor reflection and intentionality in how counterstereotypical scientists and their diverse stories are represented. To avoid tokenism, instructors must consider how they present information about scientists (Cowgill et al., 2021; Ovid et al., 2024; Costello et al., 2025) and allocate time for student reflection about and engagement with the scientist stories (Gladstone and Cimpian, 2021).

Costly Interactions with Colleagues.

Integration of counterstereotypical scientists and other inclusive curricula may also negatively influence instructor interactions with colleagues who may be resistant to DEI initiatives. Other colleagues may seek out “behind-the-scenes” conversations about how such curricular efforts replace more important course content. However, instructors can recruit several forms of “backup” to help them navigate these negative interactions, such as leveraging student DEI initiatives or mobilizing administrators or senior faculty who value DEI (Pollock et al., 2022).

Costly Interactions with Institutions.

The interpersonal element of interactions among faculty may seem small-scale, but the impact can reach the institutional threshold when issues of tenure, promotion, and job security are brought to the fore. In the United States, federal and state-level governance has passed legislation that target inclusive teaching practices (Ballen et al., 2024; Moore, 2025). Since 2021, 150 bills have been introduced in 35 states, and 21 bills have been signed into law (Kamola, 2024). More recently, the federal government has passed orders to end DEI programs (Moore, 2025; Trump, 2025). These actions jeopardize progress in curricular representation by either directly prohibiting it or indirectly causing a chilling effect stoked by definitional ambiguity. As a result, faculty are now concerned that teaching certain topics can result in issues with university/school boards, administrators, and other key parties who have a say in their job security and advancement (Kamola, 2024). While thoughtful consideration of curricular representation should not violate any law, the risks of increased scrutiny could make any instructor feel vulnerable to the mis/interpretation and ultimate decision-making authority of administrative and political power structures.

Costs for Featured Scientists

Just as with students and instructors, sharing the stories of counterstereotypical scientists in curricular materials carries risks for the scientists featured in those materials. Featured scientists may experience hostile backlash when their stories are included in curricular materials. Furthermore, depending on how curricular materials engage scientists in their development (Figure 2), scientists may be burdened with increased workloads to diversify science without due credit or compensation, lose control of their own narrative, and/or be exposed to feelings of tokenism. We explore these potential personal and social costs experienced by the very people we aim to highlight in STEM courses (Table 2).

Personal Costs to Scientists.

Despite a gap in the literature for how counterstereotypical scientists experience personal costs to being featured in curricula, we understand that such costs should be considered and prevented. We discuss one personal cost to scientists, the minority tax.

Minority Tax.

When the burden of developing curricular materials falls on the featured counterstereotypical scientists, they may experience a “minority tax” of additional work that is frequently not recognized or compensated (Rodríguez et al., 2015; Gewin, 2020; Trejo, 2020). This uncredited work to diversify science disproportionately tasks counterstereotypical scientists with service to enhance diversity and inclusion (Trejo, 2020; Alicea, 2024), all while maintaining the same level of research productivity as their colleagues. Yet, if featured counterstereotypical scientists do not participate in the development of these curricular materials, they lose control over their own narrative. Without narrative control, scientists may be misrepresented and reduced to their personal story (i.e., separated from their science). Curriculum developers can be intentional about inviting scientists to review any content created to represent the scientist and offer compensation for their consultation.

Social Costs to Scientists.

To date, we have not identified scholarship investigating the social costs to scientists who are highlighted in science curricula. Below, we consider possible interactions with faculty and the public that could pose additional work and emotional labor for scientists, along with opportunities we see for future research in this area.

Costly Interactions with Faculty.

When counterstereotypical scientists are included in curricular materials because of their excluded identities and seemingly to “check a diversity box,” these featured scientists may experience feelings of tokenism, especially when these scientists are introduced without the scientists’ input and without acknowledgment of the social context that creates unequal representation (Flowers and Howard-Hamilton, 2002; hooks, 2014). As counterstereotypical scientists are exposed to risks both when involved and uninvolved in the development of materials, curriculum development must strike a balance to include but not burden counterstereotypical scientists in the development process.

Costly Interactions with the Public.

By sharing their stories in curricular materials, featured scientists expose themselves to potential hateful backlash. Individuals who contradict stereotypical expectations directly challenge cultural beliefs and, according to the Backlash and Stereotype Maintenance Model, often elicit hostile reactions aimed at legitimizing group-based roles and diminishing threats to social systems (Rudman, 1998; Rudman et al., 2012; Morgenroth et al., 2020). Forms of backlash can include: in-person and cyber bullying (Weaving et al., 2023) and penalties (e.g., harassment, negative evaluations, diminished opportunities) in workplace environments (Lee, 2023), among others. Many individuals take actions to avoid backlash in workplace environments, including intentionally fitting into stereotypical roles, remaining silent, and concealing success (Rudman et al., 2012; Lee, 2023, p. 2). Today, the threat of backlash is exacerbated by the current politicized climate in the United States and across the globe. Many politicians and media outlets either implicitly condone or explicitly stoke hate and violence against LGBTQ+, people with marginalized race/ethnicities, and other marginalized groups (Giroux, 2021). In such an environment, there is always a risk to advocacy.

We recognize that effectively and ethically highlighting counterstereotypical scientists in undergraduate life science courses will require multifaceted considerations at classroom, institutional, and systemic scales. According to the Social Ecological Model for Behavior Change, these different scales will interact in complex ways, and interventions that aim to maximize benefits should target as many scales as possible (Bronfenbrenner, 1976; Sansom et al., 2023). For example, progress will be difficult if faculty who value inclusive teaching work within an institution that does not reward or acknowledge these efforts (or even prohibits them). Similarly, scientists who possess excluded identities may be discouraged from participating in the development of curricular materials that highlight their research if their department or disciplinary community does not reward and celebrate that work. Furthermore, instructors and scientists engaged in the development and implementation of these curricular materials will need to contend with exclusionary systems, including colonialism, individualism, meritocracy, and white supremacy (Philip and Azevedo, 2017; Kayumova and Dou, 2022; Kayumova and Strom, 2023; Morton et al., 2023). Below, we discuss instructor, institutional and systemic recommendations, and areas of future research for each. We encourage the reader to also consider how these forces interact to shape action.

Instructors

Here, we provide a nonexhaustive list of evidence-based recommendations for instructors to maximize benefits and minimize costs of integrating counterstereotypical scientists in college life science courses for all three groups: students, instructors, and featured scientists. Beginning with students, previous work has demonstrated that highlighting counterstereotypical scientists increases engagement, relatability, science identity, and student success, all while changing students’ perceptions of the types of people who do science (Schinske et al., 2015; Schinske et al., 2016; Brandt et al., 2020; Aranda et al., 2021). Work by Ovid et al. (2023) provides preliminary evidence that in-class discussions of counterstereotypical scientists may make a difference. Students were more likely to relate to the “types of people that do science” after receiving Scientist Spotlight assignments with instructors who reportedly engaged in classroom discussions about the assignments. Ways to provide students with opportunities for reflection and discussion about these materials include:

1. giving students the space (written, verbal, even quiet thinking) to (re)consider their preconceived notions about scientists before and after learning about counterstereotypical scientists (Sanchez et al., 2019);

2. encouraging students to openly discuss representation in the sciences (e.g., critically gauge who is showcased on the walls of the department, in classrooms, on residential bulletin boards, and throughout their educational experiences in science) (Greenfieldboyce, 2019; Simpson et al., 2021; Konkwo et al., 2022); and

3. seeking feedback on language used in the class or curricular materials that may be outdated, as communication changes quickly over time (Baeckens et al., 2020; Cheng et al., 2023; Dunk et al., 2024; Rice et al., 2025).

Through these approaches, instructors can center and discuss the work of counterstereotypical scientists to foster students’ relatability to scientists and challenge long-standing stereotypes.

Some students may believe that science classes should not spend time discussing the personal stories, hardships, or identities of scientists whose work is featured in curricula. To address this issue, we recommend that instructors establish that their course will emphasize the development of cultural humility, which is a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique whereby one not only learns about and respects others' cultures but also examines their own beliefs and cultural identities (Tervalon and Murray-Garcia, 1998; Yeager and Bauer-Wu, 2013). To promote student buy-in for this approach, instructors are encouraged to disclose the intentions behind their course design, including their commitment to inclusive teaching. Cultural humility, initially discussed in the context of clinical practice (Tervalon and Murray-Garcia, 1998), empowers students to recognize and honor their own cultural beliefs while understanding they exist in a wider culture.

Centering the work of counterstereotypical scientists also necessitates that students engage in critical reflection, a central tenet of critical consciousness (Freire, 1970). Developing critical consciousness requires unpacking the racialized, gendered, and politicized influences on science and scientists (Watts and Hipolito-Delgado, 2015). Course learning outcomes, assignments, and assessments should provide multiple opportunities for students to learn and reflect on how scientific knowledge impacts society and is impacted by society—how social inequalities and unjust power structures disadvantage scientists with marginalized identities. By priming students and interweaving issues related to cultural aspects of biology throughout the course in this manner, students are less likely to perceive lessons that feature counterstereotypical scientists and their personal stories as unimportant or unrelated to the course's content and assessments or to the student's career goals.

We also recommend that instructors are intentional in how they discuss the success of scientists. Gladstone and Cimpian (2021) use attribution theory to address the question: how should we describe a scientist's success in STEM? Attribution theory predicts that how students explain the causes of success (or failure) will influence their motivation in a domain (reviewed in Graham, 2020). Gladstone and Cimpian (2021) suggest that portraying a scientist's success as more or less attainable could boost or diminish a student's motivation to pursue a STEM domain. For example, if the scientist's success is portrayed as stemming from factors beyond a student's control—such as luck, privilege, or innate ability—students are less likely to see themselves as capable of achieving the same success. However, if a scientist's success is portrayed as within a student's control and malleable—such as the result of hard work and overcoming challenges—students are more likely to see themselves as capable of achieving that success.

Other ways to be mindful of how counterstereotypical scientists are represented include featuring different counterstereotypical scientists multiple times throughout the course to avoid tokenism or misrepresenting systemic discrimination as isolated rather than pervasive in STEM (Figure 2). Additionally, counterstereotypical scientists should be selected in a way to ensure intentional representation of intersectional identities. Work has shown that while intersectionality is a critical component of science identity, courses rarely include scientists with intersectional identities (Wood et al., 2020). When choosing counterstereotypical scientists to feature in undergraduate science courses, we should take care to explicitly include intersectional examples, so students can see themselves more fully reflected in the counterstereotypical scientists included in the curriculum.

To effectively highlight counterstereotypical scientists in undergraduate life science curricula, we encourage instructors to provide students a space to discuss diversity matters that relate to science. To overcome the challenge of instructor voices holding more perceived power than student voices, we recommend that students actively engage with their peers and instructors through written assignments, group work, and class discussions on these topics (Dougherty, 2002). It is important for instructors to gain experience to moderate these discussions with care in a classroom setting (Beatty et al., 2023). Instructor hesitations to lead such conversations may be alleviated if they allow students to choose diverse scientists from a bank of scientists with different pathways or characteristics that align with the content of the course. Further, we recommend instructors consider having students author their own scientist profile, as this results in significantly positive shifts in science identity for students (Aranda et al., 2021; Young and Caporale, 2022). Student authorship of profiles additionally helps to alleviate the minority tax that would be experienced by counterstereotypical scientists participating in the development of curricular materials.

Our last recommendation to maximize student benefits is for instructors to provide personal information about themselves to their students, to the extent they are comfortable. Because many faculty hold stereotypical scientist identities (Morgan et al., 2022), students may be more likely to make assumptions that their instructors’ success is unattainable. For example, a white man instructor could be first-generation, hold religious views, identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community, or possess other concealable backgrounds that are excluded in STEM. Previous work shows students benefit when instructors choose to reveal concealable stigmatized identities (Busch et al., 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024).

To maximize benefits and minimize costs to instructors themselves, instructors can adopt pre-existing, open-access lesson materials that contain implementation notes with advice on how to avoid tokenism or other potential issues (Table 1). Importantly, we encourage instructors to engage in self-reflection and education of one's privilege and complicity in racism/sexism/classism in order to ground their commitment to DEI, recognize the actions needed to advance social justice in their spheres of influence, and then take action beyond curricular representation (Russo-Tait, 2022; Forsythe, 2023). We further encourage instructors to participate in professional development to build a network that values diversity. A supportive network is crucial to sustainable implementation of evidence-based teaching practices (Bathgate et al., 2019) and social justice action (Rodriguez et al., 2021). Cross-institutional professional development networks may play an especially important role for faculty whose institutional culture is unsupportive. Finally, we recommend that instructors identify, recruit, and leverage allies in their efforts to incorporate counterstereotypical scientists into their curricula (Pollock et al., 2022; Villavicencio et al., 2023).

Last, we offer suggestions to maximize benefits and minimize costs to the featured counterstereotypical scientists. To reduce the risk of scientists losing control over their own narratives, instructors can prioritize adopting materials written by the featured scientists themselves. For example, Project Biodiversify offers short slide decks submitted by scientists to describe their personal and research interests (Table 1). Alternatively, instructors can co-author novel lessons with counterstereotypical scientists that feature that scientists’ work and personal narrative in the scientists’ own words. Examples of such lessons are published by the BioGraphI Project and various Scientist Spotlight assignments (Table 1). Regardless of which materials instructors employ in their courses, we encourage instructors to, if possible, let the scientist know that their work is being featured in their classroom. This acknowledgement can provide validation to the scientists about their value to the STEM community, as well as offer the scientists an opportunity to highlight this broader impact in their tenure and promotion materials.

Institutions and Systems

The supposed “apolitical” and “acultural” culture of STEM can make it challenging for instructors to acknowledge the historical and social context of science in their teaching (Imad et al., 2023). Curricular materials that feature counterstereotypical scientists can aid instructors in openly acknowledging the stereotypes and biases inherent to science (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Costello et al., 2023). To effectively and ethically highlight counterstereotypical scientists in undergraduate life science courses, we must simultaneously consider opportunities and challenges at institutional and systemic scales. Ultimately, large-scale overhauls of existing institutions and systems are required to remove structural barriers and humanize science across classrooms, departments, higher education institutions, funding agencies, and society (Meuler et al., 2023).

First, institutions should reward and encourage instructors to teach inclusively. Recent political efforts in the United States have made this particularly challenging by targeting and eliminating efforts in higher education that promote or study diversity, equity, or inclusion (Ballen et al., 2024; Mervis, 2025). Further, institutions and systems are responsible for overloaded curricula and evaluation structures that fail to reward evidence-based and inclusive teaching practices (Dennin et al., 2018). An inclusive paradigm shift at the institutional level includes rewarding efforts to implement evidence-based interventions in teaching and inclusive departmental norms (Cronin et al., 2021).

Second, featured scientists should be rewarded and fairly compensated for participating in efforts to create course materials. To do so may require a broader paradigm shift in how we measure success in academia. For example, Davies et al. (2021) show traditional metrics of success in academia to be sexist and racist. They describe an alternative system to evaluate academic impact and success that can replace the current discriminatory reward system. Their system evaluates and rewards science communication (Callwood et al., 2022) and service, among other considerations. A challenge inherent to this approach is the often-hidden nature of service, but rewarding these expanded considerations needs to extend into hiring considerations, promotion, and funding decisions. Additionally, scientists highlighted in curricular materials should be appropriately compensated for their time and contribution of ideas that advance undergraduate education. Scientists who choose to be highlighted in curricular material or in the public domain may be at higher risk of threats or cyberbullying, and institutions should protect and support those individuals who are in the public eye.

Finally, we call for a paradigm shift in how science institutions view diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. One current approach to equity, reflected in the Next Generation Science Standards, stems from the need for more skilled STEM labor in the United States (NRC, 2012). This approach places value on maintaining U.S. scientific, technological, military, and economic dominance, not on working toward remedying societal injustices (Philip and Azevedo, 2017). Other approaches to DEI emphasize the importance of assimilating into science and that the aim is to help individual students from marginalized backgrounds fit the main narrative in science culture (Casper et al., 2022; Kayumova and Dou, 2022). Highlighting counterstereotypical scientists within a Eurocentric STEM educational system can communicate to students that these scientists are celebrated for succeeding in the very system that marginalizes them and can suggest that assimilation is desirable. Instead, Kayumova and Dou (2022) call for acknowledging and celebrating a “pluriverse of multiple identities” in science, which centers diverse identities and marginalized knowledge systems (Kayumova and Dou, 2022; Kayumova and Strom, 2023). By elevating the diverse epistemological backgrounds and cultural histories of counterstereotypical scientists in science curricula, we can begin to disrupt norms and challenge the status quo. However, we want to emphasize that this curricular change is not a cure-all and that critical examination and substantial shifts in the culture of science are needed for students with excluded identities to succeed in STEM without costs to their wellbeing (McGee, 2020). While we recognize the outsized impacts that systems and institutions have on the individuals we have focused on in this essay, we also note that systems are composed of interacting individuals possessing the ability to influence their environment (Michell et al., 2018; Rosa and Tudge, 2013). We encourage readers to leverage the influence they have in their system to enact change within their capacity. Overall, several multipronged approaches are necessary to amplify and celebrate the research of counterstereotypical scientists to maximize benefits to students, instructors, and featured scientists.

Future Research

Several novel areas of research would advance our understanding of how instructors can use evidence-based strategies that effectively and ethically highlight counterstereotypical scientists in undergraduate life science courses. For example, while previous work underscores the importance of highlighting scientists in life sciences coursework, little work has investigated downstream implications for the retention of students within STEM programs. Future work may consider whether exposure to counterstereotypical scientists encourages students to pursue or remain in STEM coursework. Additionally, little scholarship has focused on students who intend to become scientists and conduct research versus those who are interested in a science-allied career (e.g., a doctor or pharmacist) versus nonscience majors. Furthermore, theory predicts that multiple components of featured scientists may moderate the degree to which curricular materials positively impact students in STEM and their motivation to pursue STEM careers (Gladstone and Cimpian, 2021). We recommend instructors and education researchers collaborate to empirically test these components and advance our understanding of how to most effectively present counterstereotypical scientists in science classrooms as a part of transforming science culture. Finally, future research should consider the role of Instructor Talk, or non-content language, in shaping the impact of materials featuring counterstereotypical scientists (Seidel et al., 2015; Harrison et al., 2019). Given that students remember non-content insturctor language (Ovid et al., 2021) and that students cite examples of Instructor Talk as important for fostering an inclusive environment when learning about counterstereotypical scientists (Ovid et al., 2024), future work may explore how (and if) instructors discuss such assignemnts and whether instructor language about counterstereotypical scientists shapes students' perceptions of science culture more broadly.

Beyond the impacts of highlighting counterstereotypical scientists to students, future scholarship may also consider the impact on instructors themselves. Based on the theories summarized in this essay, one would predict that instructors who include counterstereotypical scientists in their curriculum will shift their perceptions of equity and social justice (Russo-Tait, 2022). One could further speculate how such curricula might impact aspects of professional identity and disciplinary norms in science (Brownell and Tanner, 2012).

The experiences of counterstereotypical scientists highlighted in curricular materials are an underexplored area of research. What are challenges, benefits, and motivations for those who have experience working with curricular developers? How can the scientific community simultaneously highlight counterstereotypical scientists, which is beneficial for students, and reward these scientists, so there is mutual benefit? Future research addressing these questions will be critical in our efforts to effectively and ethically develop course materials.

CONCLUSIONS

To address the lack of congruence between the identities of scientists featured in curricular materials in undergraduate life science courses and the identities of the students reached by those materials, curriculum developers and biology educators have developed and implemented a wide range of materials that intentionally feature counterstereotypical scientists (Table 1, Figure 2). We explored the benefits and costs of these curricular materials from the perspectives of three groups: students, instructors, and featured scientists (Table 2). In light of these benefits and costs, we recommend that biology instructors use care and intentionality when implementing these curricular materials into their courses and urge a paradigm shift at the institutional level to reward the development and implementation of these materials. We call for research to focus on identifying features of curricular materials that are beneficial for all involved parties. Future work should also identify ways to develop and implement these curricular materials in ways that eliminate possible harms and maximize benefits for featured scientists.

REFERENCES

• Acosta-Parra, A., Ovid, D., & Tripp, B. (2024). Breaking stereotypes: How exposure to counter-stereotypical scientists shapes undergraduates scopes of possibility. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 23(4), ar58. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.24-05-0148 Medline, Google Scholar
• Ahn, J. N., Hu, D., & Vega, M. (2020). “Do as I do, not as I say”: Using social learning theory to unpack the impact of role models on students’ outcomes in education. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 14(2), e12517. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12517 Google Scholar
• Aikenhead, G. (2002). Whose scientific knowledge? The colonizer and the colonized. Counterpoints, 210, 151–166. Google Scholar
• Allen, K.-A., Gallo Cordoba, B., Ryan, T., Arslan, G., Slaten, C. D., Ferguson, J. K., … Vella-Brodrick, D. (2023). Examining predictors of school belonging using a socio-ecological perspective. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 32(9), 2804–2819. Google Scholar
• Allen, K.-A., Vella-Brodrick, D., & Waters, L. (2016). Fostering school belonging in secondary schools using a socio-ecological framework. The Educational and Developmental Psychologist, 33(1), 97–121. Google Scholar
• Alicea, J. Á. (2024). Predatory DEI: How racialized organizations exacerbate workplace racial stratification through Exploitative Diversity Work. Social Problems, spae052. Social Problems. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spae052 Google Scholar
• Appiah, K. A. (2020). Racial identity and racial identification. In Theories of race and racism (pp. 669–677). Routledge. Google Scholar
• Applebaum, B. (2017). Comforting discomfort as complicity: White fragility and the pursuit of invulnerability. Hypatia, 32(4), 862–875. https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12352 Google Scholar
• Aragón, O. R., Dovidio, J. F., & Graham, M. J. (2017). Colorblind and multicultural ideologies are associated with faculty adoption of inclusive teaching practices. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 10(3), 201–215. https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000026 Google Scholar
• Aranda, M. L., Diaz, M., Mena, L. G., Ortiz, J. I., Rivera-Nolan, C., Sanchez, D. C., … Boorstin, S. N. (2021). Student-authored Scientist Spotlights: Investigating the impacts of engaging undergraduates as developers of inclusive curriculum through a service-learning course. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 20(4), ar55. Medline, Google Scholar
• Au, W., Brown, A. L., & Calderón, D. (2016). Reclaiming the multicultural roots of US curriculum: Communities of color and official knowledge in education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Google Scholar
• Baeckens, S., Blomberg, S. P., & Shine, R. (2020). Inclusive science: Ditch insensitive terminology. Nature, 580(7802), 185–186. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01034-z Medline, Google Scholar
• Ballen, C. J., Adams, P. E., Burkholder, E. W., Costello, R. A., Fagbodun, S., Henning, J. A., & Ntam, M. (2024). Alabama's attack on DEI hinders STEM teaching. Science, 385(6710), 722–722. Retrieved from http://doi.org/10.1126/science.adq2367 Medline, Google Scholar
• Basham, J. D., Israel, M., & Maynard, K. (2010). An ecological model of STEM education: Operationalizing STEM for all. Journal of Special Education Technology, 25(3), 9–19. Google Scholar
• Bathgate, M. E., Aragón, O. R., Cavanagh, A. J., Waterhouse, J. K., Frederick, J., & Graham, M. J. (2019). Perceived supports and evidence-based teaching in college STEM. International Journal of STEM Education, 6, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-019-0166-3 Google Scholar
• Beatty, A. E., Driessen, E. P., Clark, A. D., Costello, R. A., Ewell, S., Fagbodun, S., … Ballen, C. J. (2023). Biology instructors see value in discussing controversial topics but fear personal and professional consequences. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 22(3), ar28. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.22-06-0108 Medline, Google Scholar
• Boucher, K. L., Fuesting, M. A., Diekman, A. B., & Murphy, M. C. (2017). Can I work with and help others in this field? How communal goals influence interest and participation in STEM Fields. Frontiers in Psychology, 8. Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00901 Medline, Google Scholar
• Brandt, S., Cotner, S., Koth, Z., & McGaugh, S. (2020). Scientist spotlights: Online assignments to promote inclusion in ecology and evolution. Ecology and Evolution, 10(22), 12450–12456. Medline, Google Scholar
• Bronfenbrenner, U. (1976). The experimental ecology of education. Teachers College Record, 78(2), 1–37. Google Scholar
• Brown, K. M. (2004). Assessing preservice leaders' beliefs, attitudes, and values regarding issues of diversity, social justice, and equity: A review of existing measures. Equity & Excellence in Education, 37(4), 332–342. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665680490518948 Google Scholar
• Brownell, S. E., & Tanner, K. D. (2012). Barriers to faculty pedagogical change: Lack of training, time, incentives, and…tensions with professional identity? CBE—Life Sciences Education, 11(4), 339–346. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.12-09-0163 Link, Google Scholar
• Busch, C. A., Bhanderi, P. B., Cooper, K. M., & Brownell, S. E. (2024). Few LGBTQ+ science and engineering instructors come out to students, despite potential benefits. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 23(2), ar17. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.23-10-0181 Medline, Google Scholar
• Busch, C. A., Cooper, K. M., & Brownell, S. E. (2023). Women drive efforts to highlight concealable stigmatized identities in US academic science and engineering. PLoS ONE, 18(7), e0287795. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287795 Medline, Google Scholar
• Busch, C. A., Supriya, K., Cooper, K. M., & Brownell, S. E. (2022). Unveiling concealable stigmatized identities in class: The impact of an instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity to students in a large-enrollment biology course. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 21(2), ar37. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.21-06-0162 Medline, Google Scholar
• Busch, C., Supriya, K., Brownell, S., & Cooper, K. (2021). Students benefit from instructor revealing LGBTQ+ identity in an upper-level physiology course. The FASEB Journal, 35(S1). https://doi.org/10.1096/fasebj.2021.35.S1.01548 Google Scholar
• Callwood, K. A., Weiss, M., Hendricks, R., & Taylor, T. G. (2022). Acknowledging and supplanting white supremacy culture in science communication and STEM: The role of science communication trainers. Frontiers in Communication, 7. Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2022.787750 Google Scholar
• Carmona, G., Sawant, K., Hamasha, R., Cross, F. L., Woolford, S. J., Buyuktur, A. G., … Israel, B. (2023). Use of the socio-ecological model to explore trusted sources of COVID-19 information in Black and Latinx communities in Michigan. Journal of Communication in Healthcare, 16(4), 389–400. https://doi.org/10.1080/17538068.2023.2277499 Medline, Google Scholar
• Casper, A. A., Rebolledo, N., Lane, A. K., Jude, L., & Eddy, S. L. (2022). “It's completely erasure”: A qualitative exploration of experiences of transgender, nonbinary, gender nonconforming, and questioning students in biology courses. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 21(4), ar69. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.21-12-0343 Medline, Google Scholar
• CAST (2024). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 3.0. Retrieved December 2, 2024, from https://udlguidelines.cast.org Google Scholar
• Cheng, S. J., Gaynor, K. M., Moore, A. C., Darragh, K., Estien, C. O., Hammond, J. W., … Smith, J. A. (2023). Championing inclusive terminology in ecology and evolution. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 38(5), 381–384. Medline, Google Scholar
• Combahee River Collective. (2014). A black feminist statement. Women's Studies Quarterly, 42, 271–280. Google Scholar
• Costello, R. A., Beatty, A. E., Dunk, R. D. P., Ewell, S. N., Pruett, J. E., & Ballen, C. J. (2023). Re-envisioning biology curricula to include ideological awareness. Research in Science Education, 54(1), 13–26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-023-10101-0 Google Scholar
• Costello, R. A., Driessen, E. P., Kjelvik, M. K., Schultheis, E. H., Youngblood, R. M., Zemenick, A. T., … Ballen, C. J. (2025). More than a token photo: Humanizing scientists enhances student engagement. Proceedings B, 292 (2039), 20240879. Google Scholar
• Cowgill, C., Halper, L., Rios, K., & Crane, P. (2021). “Why so few?”: Differential effects of framing the gender gap in STEM recruitment interventions. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 45(1), 61–78. https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684320965123 Google Scholar
• Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1, 139–167. Google Scholar
• Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43, 1241–1299. Google Scholar
• Cronin, M. R., Alonzo, S. H., Adamczak, S. K., Baker, D. N., Beltran, R. S., Borker, A. L., Favilla, A. B. Gatins, R., Goetz, L. C., Hack, N., et al. (2021). Anti-racist interventions to transform ecology, evolution and conservation biology departments. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 5(9), 1213–1223. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01522-z Medline, Google Scholar
• Davies, S. W., Putnam, H. M., Ainsworth, T., Baum, J. K., Bove, C. B., Crosby, S. C., Côté, I. M. Duplouy, A., Fulweiler, R. W., Griffin, A. J., et al. (2021). Promoting inclusive metrics of success and impact to dismantle a discriminatory reward system in science. PLOS Biology, 19(6), e3001282. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001282 Medline, Google Scholar
• Dennin, M., Schultz, Z. D., Feig, A., Finkelstein, N., Greenhoot, A. F., Hildreth, M., … Miller, E. R. (2017). Aligning practice to policies: Changing the culture to recognize and reward teaching at research universities. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 16(4), es5. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.17-02-0032 Link, Google Scholar
• Dickens, D., Jones, M., & Hall, N. (2020). Being a token Black female faculty member in physics: Exploring research on gendered racism, identity shifting as a coping strategy, and inclusivity in physics. The Physics Teacher, 58(5), 335–337. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.5145529 Google Scholar
• Dougherty, K. D. (2002). Giving voice: The challenge for a white instructor in a multicultural course. Michigan Sociological Review, 16, 63–77. Google Scholar
• Dunk, R. D., Malmquist, S. J., Prescott, K. K., Ewell, S. N., Henning, J. A., & Ballen, C. J. (2024). How do students critically evaluate outdated language that relates to gender in biology? CBE—Life Sciences Education, 23(2), ar24. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.23-07-0125 Medline, Google Scholar
• Farrell, A. D., Mays, S., Bettencourt, A., Erwin, E. H., Vulin-Reynolds, M., & Allison, K. W. (2010). Environmental influences on fighting versus nonviolent behavior in peer situations: A qualitative study with urban African American adolescents. American Journal of Community Psychology, 46, 19–35. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-010-9331-z Medline, Google Scholar
• Filimon, L.-M., & Ivănescu, M. (2023). Bans, sanctions, and dog-whistles: A review of anti-critical race theory initiatives adopted in the United States since 2020. Policy Studies, 45(2), 183–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2023.2214088 Google Scholar
• FitzGerald, C., Martin, A., Berner, D., & Hurst, S. (2019). Interventions designed to reduce implicit prejudices and implicit stereotypes in real world contexts: A systematic review. BMC Psychology, 7(1), 29. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-019-0299-7 Medline, Google Scholar
• Flaherty, C. (2021). The DEI Pathway to Promotion. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved February 16, 2024, from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/05/14/iupui-creates-path-promotion-and-tenure-based-dei-work Google Scholar
• Flowers, L. A., & Howard-Hamilton, M. F. (2002). A qualitative study of graduate students’ perceptions of diversity issues in student affairs preparation programs. Journal of College Student Development, 43(1), 119–123. Google Scholar
• Forsythe, D. (2023). Committing to racial justice as a White woman in STEM: Using constructivist grounded theory to explore white activism. The Journal of Higher Education, 95(7), 942–967. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2023.2265285 Google Scholar
• Forsythe, D., Dewsbury, B., & Hsu, J. L. (2024). Exploring the journey of STEM faculty into justice-centered pedagogy. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 23(4), ar60. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.24-02-0063 Medline, Google Scholar
• Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin Random House. Google Scholar
• Garriott, P. O., Reiter, S., & Brownfield, J. (2016). Testing the efficacy of brief multicultural education interventions in white college students. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 9(2), 158–169. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0039547 Google Scholar
• Gasman, M. (2021). When they grant tenure, more colleges are taking professors’ diversity work into account. Forbes. Retrieved February 16, 2024, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/marybethgasman/2021/06/01/when-they-grant-tenure-more-colleges-are-taking-professors-diversity-work-into-account/ Google Scholar
• Gewin, V. (2020). The time tax put on scientists of colour. Nature, 583(7816), 479–481. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01920-6 Medline, Google Scholar
• Giroux, H. A. (2021). Rethinking neoliberal fascism, racist violence, and the plague of inequality. Communication Teacher, 35(3), 171–177. https://doi.org/10.1080/17404622.2021.1923772 Google Scholar
• Gladstone, J. R., & Cimpian, A. (2021). Which role models are effective for which students? A systematic review and four recommendations for maximizing the effectiveness of role models in STEM. International Journal of STEM Education, 8(1), 59. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-021-00315-x Medline, Google Scholar
• Gocłowska, M. A., Crisp, R. J., & Labuschagne, K. (2013). Can counter-stereotypes boost flexible thinking? Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 16(2), 217–231. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430212445076 Google Scholar
• Golden, S. D., & Earp, J. A. L. (2012). Social ecological approaches to individuals and their contexts: Twenty years of health education & behavior health promotion interventions. Health Education & Behavior, 39(3), 364–372. Medline, Google Scholar
• Graham, S. (2020). An attributional theory of motivation. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 61, 101861. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2020.101861 Google Scholar
• Greenfieldboyce, N. (2019). Academic science rethinks all-too-white ‘dude walls ‘of honor. NPR: Weekend Edition Sunday. Google Scholar
• Gretzinger, E., Hicks, M., Dutton, C. & Smith, J. (2024). Tracking higher ed's dismantling of DEI. The chronicle of higher education. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/tracking-higher-eds-dismantling-of-dei?sra=true Google Scholar
• Gurgel, I., Pietrocola, M., & Watanabe, G. (2016). The role of cultural identity as a learning factor in physics: A discussion through the role of science in Brazil. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 11(2), 349–370. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-014-9580-5 Google Scholar
• Hammoudi Halat, D., Soltani, A., Dalli, R., Alsarraj, L., & Malki, A. (2023). Understanding and fostering mental health and well-being among university faculty: A narrative review. Journal of Clinical Medicine, 12(13), 4425. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm12134425 Medline, Google Scholar
• Hanson, M. (2024). “College Enrollment & Student Demographic Statistics” EducationData.org, Retrieved December 2, 2024, from https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics. Google Scholar
• Hansson, L., Leden, L., & Pendrill, A.-M. (2019). Contemporary science as context for teaching nature of science: Teachers’ development of popular science articles as a teaching resource. Physics Education, 54(5), 055008. https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6552/ab194e Google Scholar
• Harding, S. (1992). After eurocentrism: Challenges for the philosophy of science. PSA: Proceedings of the biennial meeting of the philosophy of science association, 2, 311–319. Google Scholar
• Harris, A., & Leonardo, Z. (2018). Intersectionality, race-gender subordination, and education. Review of Research in Education, 42(1), 1–27. Google Scholar
• Harrison, C., & Tanner, K. D. (2018). Language matters: Considering microaggressions in science. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 17(1), fe4. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.18-01-0011 Link, Google Scholar
• Harrison, C. D., Nguyen, T. A., Seidel, S. B., Escobedo, A. M., Hartman, C., Lam, K., … Tanner, K. D. (2019). Investigating instructor talk in novel contexts: Widespread use, unexpected categories, and an emergent sampling strategy. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 18(3), ar47. Link, Google Scholar
• Hemprich-Bennett, D., Rabaiotti, D., & Kennedy, E. (2021). Beware survivorship bias in advice on science careers. Nature, 598(7880), 373–374. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02634-z Google Scholar
• hooks, b. (2014). Teaching to transgress. New York, NY: Routledge. Google Scholar
• Hora, M. T. (2016). Navigating the problem space of academic work: How workload and curricular affordances shape STEM faculty decisions about teaching and learning. aera Open, 2(1), 2332858415627612. Google Scholar
• Hubain, B. S., Allen, E. L., Harris, J. C., & Linder, C. (2016). Counter-stories as representations of the racialized experiences of students of color in higher education and student affairs graduate preparation programs. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29(7), 946–963. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2016.1174894 Google Scholar
• Imad, M., Reder, M., & Rose, M. (2023). Recasting the agreements to re-humanize STEM education. Frontiers in Education, 8. Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2023.1193477 Google Scholar
• Kamola, I. (2024). Manufacturing backlash: Right-wing think tanks and legislative attacks on higher education, 2021–2023. Redbook, 96. Google Scholar
• Kanemoto, E., Craig, M. J., Gerringer, M. E., Lewis, J., Michaels, A., Smith, H. M., … Harrigan, M. M. (2024). Re-imagining student-faculty relationships: Strengthening social justice efforts through dialogue. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000602 Medline, Google Scholar
• Kang, S. K., DeCelles, K. A., Tilcsik, A., & Jun, S. (2016). Whitened résumés: Race and self-presentation in the labor market. Administrative Science Quarterly, 61(3), 469–502. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839216639577 Google Scholar
• Kanter, R. M. (1977). Some effects of proportions on group life: Skewed sex ratios and responses to token women. American Journal of Sociology, 82(5), 965–990. https://doi.org/10.1086/226425 Google Scholar
• Kayumova, S., & Dou, R. (2022). Equity and justice in science education: Toward a pluriverse of multiple identities and onto-epistemologies. Science Education, 106(5), 1097–1117. Google Scholar
• Kayumova, S., & Strom, K. J. (2023). Ontology, epistemology, and critical theory in STEM education. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Google Scholar
• Kelley, J., Arce-Trigatti, A., & Garner, B. (2020). Marching to a different beat: Reflections from a community of practice on diversity and equity. Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning Journal, 13(3). https://doi.org/10.26209/td.v13i3.505 Google Scholar
• Ko, L. T., Kachchaf, R. R., Hodari, A. K., & Ong, M. (2014). Agency of women of color in physics and astronomy: Strategies for persistence and success. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 20(2), 171–195. https://doi.org/10.1615/JWomenMinorScienEng.2014008198 Google Scholar
• Kolehmainen, C., & Carnes, M. (2018). Who resembles a scientific leader—Jack or Jill? Circulation, 137(8), 769–770. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.117.031295 Medline, Google Scholar
• Konkwo, C., Fitzsousa, E., Chan, S. M., Muhammad, M., Anderson, N., & Reisman, A. (2022). Revisiting the exhibits—Medical student reflections on changes to the institutional portraiture at a US medical school. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 37(16), 4209–4215. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-022-07803-y Medline, Google Scholar
• Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312032003465 Google Scholar
• Lee, J. (2023). A critical review and theorization of workplace backlash: Looking back and moving forward through the lens of social dominance theory. Human Resource Management Review, 33(1), 100900. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2022.100900 Google Scholar
• Lim, W. H., Wong, C., Jain, S. R., Ng, C. H., Tai, C. H., Devi, M. K., … Chong, C. S. (2021). The unspoken reality of gender bias in surgery: A qualitative systematic review. PLoS ONE, 16(2), e0246420. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0246420 Medline, Google Scholar
• May, A., & Tenzek, K. E. (2018). Bullying in the academy: Understanding the student bully and the targeted ‘stupid, fat, mother fucker’ professor. Teaching in Higher Education, 23(3), 275–290. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2017.1379482 Google Scholar
• Mayer, R. E. (2014). Incorporating motivation into multimedia learning. Learning and Instruction, 29, 171–173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2013.04.003 Google Scholar
• Mayhew, M. J., & Grunwald, H. E. (2006). Factors contributing to faculty incorporation of diversity-related course content. The Journal of Higher Education, 77(1), 148–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2006.11778922 Google Scholar
• McGee, E. O. (2020). Interrogating structural racism in STEM higher education. Educational Researcher, 49(9), 633–644. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189×20972718 Google Scholar
• McIntyre, K., Paolini, S., & Hewstone, M. (2016). Changing people's views of outgroups through individual-to-group generalisation: Meta-analytic reviews and theoretical considerations. European Review of Social Psychology, 27(1), 63–115. https://doi.org/10.1080/10463283.2016.1201893 Google Scholar
• McLean, K. C., & Syed, M. (2016). Personal, master, and alternative narratives: An integrative framework for understanding identity development in context. Human Development, 58(6), 318–349. https://doi.org/10.1159/000445817 Google Scholar
• Mervis, J. (2025). Trump orders cause chaos at science agencies. Science, New York, NY), 387(6734), 564–565. Medline, Google Scholar
• Metzger, K. J., Dingel, M., & Brown, E. (2023). “No matter what your story is, there is a place for you in science”: Students’ ability to relate to scientists positively shifts after Scientist Spotlight assignments, especially for first-generation students and women. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 22(1), ar12. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.22-06-0103 Medline, Google Scholar
• Meuler, M., Lee, J., Foutch, K., Al-Khayat, N., Boukouzis, K., Christensen, P., … Theobald, E. J. (2023). Biology in a social context: A comprehensive analysis of humanization in introductory biology textbooks. Frontiers in Education, 8. Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2023.1165239 Google Scholar
• Michell, D., Szabo, C., Falkner, K., & Szorenyi, A. (2018). Towards a socio-ecological framework to address gender inequity in computer science. Computers & Education, 126, 324–333. Google Scholar
• Miller, B. A. K. (2015). Effective teachers: Culturally relevant teaching from the voices of afro-caribbean immigrant females in STEM. SAGE Open, 5(3). Google Scholar
• Miller, R. A., Howell, C. D., & Struve, L. (2019). “Constantly, Excessively, and All the Time”: The emotional labor of teaching diversity courses. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 3(3), 491–502. Google Scholar
• Moore, R. (2025). Trump's executive orders rolling back DEI and accessibility efforts, explained, ACLU, Retrieved from https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/trumps-executive-orders-rolling-back-dei-and-accessibility-efforts-explained Google Scholar
• Morgan, A. C., LaBerge, N., Larremore, D. B., Galesic, M., Brand, J. E., & Clauset, A. (2022). Socioeconomic roots of academic faculty. Nature Human Behaviour, 6(12), 1625–1633. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01425-4 Medline, Google Scholar
• Morgan, H. (2022). Resisting the movement to ban critical race theory from schools. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 95(1), 35–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/00098655.2021.2025023 Google Scholar
• Morgenroth, T., Kirby, T. A., Ryan, M. K., & Sudkämper, A. (2020). The who, when, and why of the glass cliff phenomenon: A meta-analysis of appointments to precarious leadership positions. Psychological Bulletin, 146(9), 797–829. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000234 Medline, Google Scholar
• Morgenroth, T., Ryan, M. K., & Peters, K. (2015). The motivational theory of role modeling: How role models influence role aspirants’ goals. Review of General Psychology, 19(4), 465–483. Google Scholar
• Morris, D. B., Usher, E. L., & Chen, J. A. (2017). Reconceptualizing the sources of teaching self-efficacy: A critical review of emerging literature. Educational Psychology Review, 29, 795–833. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-016-9378-y Google Scholar
• Morton, T. R., Agee, W., Ashad-Bishop, K. C., Banks, L. D., Barnett, Z. C., Bramlett, I. D., … Woodson, A. N. (2023). Re-envisioning the culture of undergraduate biology education to foster Black student success: A clarion call. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 22(4), es5. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.22-09-0175 Medline, Google Scholar
• Nadkarni, N. M., Horns, J., Chen, J. M., Morris, J. S., Bush, K., Scalice, D., … Anholt, A. (2022). Reversing the lens on public engagement with science: Positive benefits for participating scientists. BioScience, 72(7), 673–683. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biac003 Google Scholar
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2023). Advancing Antiracism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEMM Organizations: Beyond Broadening Participation |The National Academies Press. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26803 Google Scholar
• National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). (2023). Diversity and STEM: Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities 2023. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf21321/report Google Scholar
• National Research Council (NRC). (2012). Next Generation Science Standards. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Google Scholar
• Nguyen, J.-M., Rotonda, C., Gendarme, S., Martin-Krumm, C., Omorou, Y. A., & Van Hoye, A. (2022). Oncology health professionals’ perspectives of determinants of exercise by cancer patients: A socio-ecological approach. European Journal of Oncology Nursing, 61, 102234. Medline, Google Scholar
• Nonyel, N. P., Wisseh, C., Riley, A. C., Campbell, H. E., Butler, L. M., & Shaw, T. (2021). Conceptualizing social ecological model in pharmacy to address racism as a social determinant of health. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 85(9), 8584. Medline, Google Scholar
• Ovid, D., Rice, M. M., Luna, J. V., Tabayoyong, K., Lajevardi, P., & Tanner, K. D. (2021). Investigating student perceptions of Instructor Talk: Alignment with researchers’ categorizations and analysis of remembered language. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 20(4), ar61. Medline, Google Scholar
• Ovid, D., Abrams, L., Carlson, T., Dieter, M., Flores, P., Frischer, D., … Lipski, C. (2023). Scientist Spotlights in secondary schools: Student shifts in multiple measures related to science identity after receiving written assignments. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 22(2), ar22. Medline, Google Scholar
• Ovid, D., Rose Acosta-Parra, A., Alemayehu, A., Francisco Gomez, J., Tran, D., & Tripp, B. (2024). “All of us are capable, and all of us can be scientists.” The impact of Scientist Spotlight assignments with undergraduates in physiology courses. Advances in Physiology Education, 48(4), 770–783. https://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00116.2024 Medline, Google Scholar
• Owens, D. C., Sadler, T. D., & Zeidler, D. L. (2017). Controversial issues in the science classroom. Phi Delta Kappan, 99(4), 45–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/0031721717745544 Google Scholar
• Oyserman, D., & Destin, M. (2010). Identity-based motivation: Implications for intervention. The Counseling Psychologist, 38(7), 1001–1043. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000010374775 Medline, Google Scholar
• Park, J. J., & Denson, N. (2009). Attitudes and advocacy: Understanding faculty views on racial/ethnic diversity. The Journal of Higher Education, 80(4), 415–438. Google Scholar
• Pennington, C. R., Heim, D., Levy, A. R., & Larkin, D. T. (2016). Twenty years of stereotype threat research: A review of psychological mediators. PLoS ONE, 11(1), e0146487. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146487 Medline, Google Scholar
• Philip, T. M., & Azevedo, F. S. (2017). Everyday science learning and equity: Mapping the contested terrain. Science Education, 101(4), 526–532. Google Scholar
• Pollock, M., Kendall, R., Reece, E., Lopez, D., & Yoshisato, M. (2022). Keeping the freedom to include: Teachers navigating “pushback“ and marshalling “backup” to keep inclusion on the agenda. Journal of Leadership, Equity, and Research, 8(1), 87–114. Google Scholar
• Postsecondary National Policy Institute (PNPI). (2023). LGBTQ+ students in higher education. Retrieved December 2, 2024, from https://pnpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/LGBTQStudentsFactSheet-Nov-2023.pdf.Accessed November 25, 2024. Google Scholar
• Rice, M. M., Tumber-Dávila, S. J., Baiz, M. D., Cheng, S. J., Darragh, K., Estien, C. O., … Moore, A. C. (2025). Terminology in ecology and evolutionary biology disproportionately harms marginalized groups. PLoS biology, 23(1), e3002933. Medline, Google Scholar
• Rivera, A. T., Chong, S., Kim, J., & Owens, M. T. (2024). Low-stakes Scientist Spotlight assignment demonstrates high value and multiple effects for introductory biology students. CBE–Life Sciences Education, 23(4), ar47. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.24-02-0079 Medline, Google Scholar
• Rodríguez, J. E., Campbell, K. M., & Pololi, L. H. (2015). Addressing disparities in academic medicine: What of the minority tax? BMC Medical Education, 15(1), 6. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-015-0290-9 Medline, Google Scholar
• Rodriguez, A. J., Ciftci, A., Howell, K., Kokini, K., Wright, B., & Nikalje, A. (2021). Promoting equity, diversity and social justice through faculty-led transformative projects. Innovative Higher Education, 47(2), 201–222. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-021-09560-y Google Scholar
• Romo, J. A., & Rokop, M. E. (2022). A novel undergraduate seminar course celebrating scientific contributions by scientists from historically marginalized communities. Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education, 23(3), e00123–22. https://doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.00123-22 Medline, Google Scholar
• Rosa, E. M., & Tudge, J. (2013). Urie Bronfenbrenner's theory of human development: Its evolution from ecology to bioecology. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 5(4), 243–258. Google Scholar
• Rothbart, M. (1996). Category-exemplar dynamics and stereotype change. Prejudice, Discrimination and Conflict, 20(3), 305–321. https://doi.org/10.1016/0147-1767(96)00021-1 Google Scholar
• Rudman, L. A. (1998). Self-promotion as a risk factor for women: The costs and benefits of counterstereotypical impression management. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(3), 629–645. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.3.629 Medline, Google Scholar
• Rudman, L. A., Moss-Racusin, C. A., Phelan, J. E., & Nauts, S. (2012). Status incongruity and backlash effects: Defending the gender hierarchy motivates prejudice against female leaders. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(1), 165–179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.10.008 Google Scholar
• Russo-Tait, T. (2022). Color-blind or racially conscious? How college science faculty make sense of racial/ethnic underrepresentation in STEM. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 59(10), 1822–1852. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21775 Google Scholar
• Russo-Tait, T. (2023). Science faculty conceptions of equity and their association to teaching practices. Science Education, 107(2), 427–458. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21781 Google Scholar
• Sanchez, N., Norka, A., Corbin, M., & Peters, C. (2019). Use of experiential learning, reflective writing, and metacognition to develop cultural humility among undergraduate students. Journal of Social Work Education, 55(1), 75–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2018.1498418 Google Scholar
• Sansom, R. L., Winters, D. M., Clair, St., B., E., West, R. E., & Jensen, J. L. (2023). Factors that influence STEM faculty use of evidence-based instructional practices: An ecological model. PLoS ONE, 18(1), e0281290. Medline, Google Scholar
• Schiappa, E., Gregg, P. B., & Hewes, D. E. (2005). The parasocial contact hypothesis. Communication Monographs, 72(1), 92–115. https://doi.org/10.1080/0363775052000342544 Google Scholar
• Schinske, J., Cardenas, M., & Kaliangara, J. (2015). Uncovering scientist stereotypes and their relationships with student race and student success in a diverse, community college setting. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 14(3), ar35. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.14-12-0231 Link, Google Scholar
• Schinske, J. N., Perkins, H., Snyder, A., & Wyer, M. (2016). Scientist Spotlight homework assignments shift students’ stereotypes of scientists and enhance science identity in a diverse introductory science class. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 15(3), ar47. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-01-0002 Link, Google Scholar
• Schneider, B., & Holmes, M. A. (2020). Science behind bias. In Addressing Gender Bias in Science & Technology (pp. 51–71). American Chemical Society. Google Scholar
• Schneider, J. (2010). Impact of undergraduates’ stereotypes of scientists on their intentions to pursue a career in science [Ph.D., North Carolina State University]. Retrieved February 16, 2024, from https://www.proquest.com/docview/761001640/abstract/C127CAF78F274E40PQ/1 Google Scholar
• Schultheis, E. H., & Kjelvik, M. K. (2015). Data Nuggets: Bringing real data into the classroom to unearth students’ quantitative & inquiry skills. The American Biology Teacher, 77(1), 19–29. Google Scholar
• Schultheis, E. H., Kjelvik, M. K., Snowden, J., Mead, L., & Stuhlsatz, M. A. (2022). Effects of Data Nuggets on student interest in STEM careers, self-efficacy in data tasks, and ability to construct scientific explanations. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 21(4), 1339–1362. Google Scholar
• Schultheis, E. H., Zemenick, A. T., Youngblood, R. M., Costello, R. A., Driessen, E. P., Kjelvik, M. K., … & Ballen, C. J. (2024). “Scientists are People too”: Biology students relate more to scientists when they are humanized in course materials. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 23(4), ar64. Medline, Google Scholar
• Schunk, D. H., & DiBenedetto, M. K. (2020). Motivation and social cognitive theory. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 60, 101832. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2019.101832 Google Scholar
• Secules, S., McCall, C., Mejia, J. A., Beebe, C., Masters, A. S., Sánchez-Peña, M. L., & Svyantek, M. (2021). Positionality practices and dimensions of impact on equity research: A collaborative inquiry and call to the community. Journal of Engineering Education, 110(1), 19–43. https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20377 Google Scholar
• Seidel, S. B., Reggi, A. L., Schinske, J. N., Burrus, L. W., & Tanner, K. D. (2015). Beyond the biology: A systematic investigation of noncontent instructor talk in an introductory biology course. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 14(4), ar43. Link, Google Scholar
• Seymour, E., & Hunter, A.-B. (2019). Talking about Leaving Revisited: Persistence, Relocation, and Loss in Undergraduate STEM Education. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25304-2 Google Scholar
• Shapiro, J. R., & Williams, A. M. (2012). The role of stereotype threats in undermining girls’ and women's performance and interest in STEM fields. Sex Roles, 66(3), 175–183. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-011-0051-0 Google Scholar
• Shim, J. (2021). Token fatigue: Tolls of marginalization in white male spaces. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 44(7), 1115–1134. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2020.1779947 Google Scholar
• Silbiger, N. J., & Stubler, A. D. (2019). Unprofessional peer reviews disproportionately harm underrepresented groups in STEM. Peer J, 7, e8247. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8247 Medline, Google Scholar
• Simpson, D. Y., Beatty, A. E., & Ballen, C. J. (2021). Teaching between the lines: Representation in science textbooks. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 36(1), 4–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2020.10.010 Medline, Google Scholar
• Sirum, K. L., Madigan, D., & Klionsky, D. J. (2009). Enabling a culture of change: A life science faculty learning community promotes scientific teaching. Journal of College Science Teaching, 38(3), 38–44. Google Scholar
• Smith, E. C., Starratt, G. K., McCrink, C. L., & Whitford, H. (2020). Teacher evaluation feedback and instructional practice self-efficacy in secondary school teachers. Educational Administration Quarterly, 56(4), 671–701. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161×19888568 Google Scholar
• Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 797. Medline, Google Scholar
• Stewart, M. (2021). Colleges revise tenure requirements to include diversity and inclusion accomplishments. Insight Into Diversity. Retrieved February 16, 2024, from https://www.insightintodiversity.com/colleges-revise-tenure-requirements-to-include-diversity-and-inclusion-accomplishments/ Google Scholar
• Täschner, J., Dicke, T., Reinhold, S., & Holzberger, D. (2024). “Yes, I Can!” A systematic review and meta-analysis of intervention studies promoting teacher self-efficacy. Review of Educational Research, 95(1), 3–52. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654323122149 Google Scholar
• Taylor, J., & Trevino, A. (2022). The good, the bad, and the ugly: Experiences, barriers, and self-efficacy enhancement for social justice-oriented faculty. Journal for Social Action in Counseling & Psychology, 14(1), 53–77. https://doi.org/10.33043/JSACP.14.1.53-77 Google Scholar
• Thoman, D. B., Yap, M.-J., Herrera, F. A., & Smith, J. L. (2021). Diversity interventions in the classroom: From resistance to action. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 20(4), ar52. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.20-07-0143 Medline, Google Scholar
• Trejo, J. (2020). The burden of service for faculty of color to achieve diversity and inclusion: The minority tax. Mol Biol Cell, 31(25), 2752–2754. https://doi.org/10.1091/mbc.E20-08-0567 Medline, Google Scholar
• Tervalon, M., & Murray-Garcia, J. (1998). Cultural humility versus cultural competence: A critical distinction in defining physician training outcomes in multicultural education. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 9(2), 117–125. Medline, Google Scholar
• Trujillo, G., & Tanner, K. D. (2014). Considering the role of affect in learning: Monitoring students’ self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and science identity. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 13(1), 6–15. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.13-12-0241 Link, Google Scholar
• Trump, D. (2025). Ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing, The White House Retrieved from https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing Google Scholar
• Ufnar, J. A., & Shepherd, V. L. (2019). The Scientist in the Classroom Partnership program: An innovative teacher professional development model. Professional Development in Education, 45(4), 642–658. https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2018.1474487 Google Scholar
• Ufnar, J. A., & Shepherd, V. L. (2020). The magic in the classroom: A twenty-year sustained scientist in the classroom partnership program. Journal of STEM Outreach, 3(3), 15. Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1325666 Google Scholar
• United States Government Accountability Office (US GAO). (2024). Report to Congressional Addresses: HIGHER EDUCATION: Education Could Improve Information on Accommodations for Students with Disabilities. Retrieved December 2, 2024, from https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-24-105614.pdf November 25, 2024. Google Scholar
• Vamvakas, M., White, P., & Tytler, R. (2021). Contemporary science practice in the classroom: A phenomenological exploration into how online curriculum resources can facilitate learning. International Journal of Science Education, 43(13), 2087–2107. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2021.1952333 Google Scholar
• Verniers, C., Aelenei, C., Breda, T., Cimpian, J. R., Girerd, L., Molina, E., … & Cimpian, A. (2024). The double-edged sword of role models: A systematic narrative review of the unintended effects of role model interventions on support for the status quo. Review of Research in Education, 48(1), 89–120. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732×241261310 Google Scholar
• Villavicencio, A., Conlin, D., & Pagan, O. (2023). Practice partnerships in pursuit of racial justice in schools: Navigating a hostile sociopolitical climate. Educational Policy, 37(1), 250–275. https://doi.org/10.1177/08959048221130353 Google Scholar
• Watts, R. J., & Hipolito-Delgado, C. P. (2015). Thinking ourselves to liberation?: Advancing sociopolitical action in critical consciousness. The Urban Review, 47, 847–867. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-015-0341-x Google Scholar
• Weaving, M., Alshaabi, T., Arnold, M. V., Blake, K., Danforth, C. M., Dodds, P. S., … Fine, C. (2023). Twitter misogyny associated with Hillary Clinton increased throughout the 2016 U.S. election campaign. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 5266. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-31620-w Medline, Google Scholar
• Wingfield, A. H., & Wingfield, J. H. (2014). When visibility hurts and helps: How intersections of race and gender shape Black professional men's experiences with tokenization. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 20(4), 483–490. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035761 Medline, Google Scholar
• Wood, S., Henning, J. A., Chen, L., McKibben, T., Smith, M. L., Weber, M., … Ballen, C. J. (2020). A scientist like me: Demographic analysis of biology textbooks reveals both progress and long-term lags. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 287(1929), 20200877. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.0877 Medline, Google Scholar
• Wyer, M. (2003). Intending to stay: Images of scientists, attitudes toward women, and gender as influences on persistence among science and engineering majors. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1615/JWomenMinorScienEng.v9.i1.10 Google Scholar
• Yeager, K. A., & Bauer-Wu, S. (2013). Cultural humility: Essential foundation for clinical researchers. Applied Nursing Research, 26(4), 251–256. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apnr.2013.06.008 Medline, Google Scholar
• Yang, S., & Pigg, R. (2022). An overview of the biologists and graph interpretation project. Google Scholar
• Yonas, A., Sleeth, M., & Cotner, S. (2020). In a “Scientist Spotlight” intervention, diverse student identities matter. Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education, 21(1), 25. https://doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.v21i1.2013 Google Scholar
• Young, E. K., & Caporale, N. (2022). Lessons learned from implementing and assessing Scientist Spotlights in three introductory geoscience courses, 2022, ED12B-0359. Google Scholar
• Zemenick, A. T., Jones, S. C., Webster, A. J., Raymond, E., Sandelin, K., Hessami, N., … Lund Dahlberg, C. L. (2022). Diversifying and humanizing scientist role models through interviews and constructing slide decks on researchers’ research and life experiences. CourseSource, 9. Retrieved February 16, 2024, from https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10349168 Google Scholar
• Zimmer, L. (1988). Tokenism and women in the workplace: The limits of gender-neutral theory. Social Problems, 35(1), 64–77. https://doi.org/10.2307/800667 Google Scholar