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THE podcast on Implicit Bias

I keep telling myself I need to get back to blogging but, well, it's been a long pandemic... But I guess this is as good an excuse as any to post something: I am Bonni Stachowiak's guest on the latest episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, talking about implicit bias and how it can impact our teaching. 

Doing the interview with Bonni (which was actually recorded a couple months ago) was a lot of fun. Listening to it now, I also realize how far I have come from the instructor I was when I started this blog over a decade ago. I've been away from the blog so long that I should probably spell this out: my current title is Associate Vice President for Faculty and Staff Diversity and I have responsibility for all professional learning and development related to diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as inclusive faculty and staff recruitment, and unit-level diversity planning. But I often say that in a lot of ways, I have no business being in this position - I've never studied anything in this area, I've never even taken an ethnic studies or sociology class, I'm "just" an economist. However, what I *have* done is thought a LOT about how to teach a wide range of students, and I've done a lot of work, both personally and professionally, to be reflective and self-aware in order to be a more empathetic person. And as I have learned more about what it means to 'do diversity work', I am more and more convinced that reflection, self-awareness and empathy are the keys to advancing equity and inclusion. I'll expand on that more in future posts but for now, I hope you'll listen to the podcast and feel free to let me know what you think!

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