We're attending the annual conference of the Graduate Career Consortium (GCC) occurring June 25-28 in Philadelphia, PA. Our abstract below was submitted for a Lightning Talk. We're also happy to sponsor a (pending) session of the GCC "From PhD to Postdoc" Community of Practice (CoP) titled "Let’s Talk About It! Postdoc Recruitment Practices, Challenges, & Successes." At the bottom of this page, members of this CoP can find discount info for services from our non-profit.
Recruiting Minoritized Graduate Students to Achieve Postdoctoral Diversity
How do you attract a diverse applicant pool of minority PhD trainees to your institution? Are you yielding the recruitment outcomes expected from the funds and time spent on promoting your PhD-level opportunities at undergraduate diversity conferences? How do we support our existing minority graduate students and postdocs who are trying to survive within a predominantly white institution? We all need to address these tactical questions collectively if we want to achieve faculty diversity by minding equity and inclusion issues at the (post)doctoral training stage.
We will describe reaching minority PhD trainees through our MinorityPostdoc.org career portal and monthly email newsletter. Both benefit from the Resources page of the portal that is the largest roster of diversity postdoctoral fellowships in the nation. We have also organized a "Postdoc Fundamentals" career session for minority PhD trainees at undergraduate diversity conferences such as SACNAS and ABRCMS. By contrast, we have produced our own event that focuses on the career needs of PhD graduate students and postdocs designed to catalyze the in-person interactions that are more common for postdoctoral and faculty recruitment networking.
Beyond our own activities, another learning outcome is understanding the STEM diversity community ecosystem composed of over 150 minority doctoral communities (listed on our portal's Stakeholders page). This includes organizations since the 1970s like SACNAS with their annual in-person conferences. In addition, there are newer emerging communities that since 2020 have been organizing virtual events online using social media. Generally, there are many more #BlackInSTEM communities stratified by discipline (#BlackInNeuro, #BlackInChem, etc) than can be found with a Latinx mission.
In summary, attend our session to benefit from the over 20 years of experience our non-profit has earned working on STEM diversity initiatives.
Discount for GCC Community of Practice members
Welcome GCC 2024 attendees! Our non-profit is happy to sponsor this year's conference. Click below to learn about our services to diversify your institution's postdoctoral or faculty workforce:
- Connect with our MinorityPostdoc.org career portal's readership of diverse graduate students and postdocs by purchasing ads on our job board. Review our Past Clients roster to see if your institution has already published ads with us.
- Exhibit to recruit PhD trainees at our DiverseScholar Postdoctoral Conference. This late summer (or early fall; 2024 date pending) event serves to match the faculty recruiting cycle. By contrast, most existing STEM diversity conferences are undergrad focused and so occur in October and November well after many faculty job application deadlines. Read more about our professional development training. For PhD graduate students, our sessions focus on postdoctoral topics.
- We publish original articles about diversity news, issues, and events so we are more than just a job board. For example, read articles that describe our work with the new #BlackInSTEM and #LatinxInSTEM communities. We function as a multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary professional society that engages with a diverse PhD trainee audience.
Finally, "From PhD to Postdoc" CoP members qualify for a 25% discount off of the services bundled as institutional subscriptions (Gold-level or higher) if you are a new client. Request your discount by contacting us at info@DiverseScholar.org.