Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
"Inclusion is chief among the goals of responsible health and science communication. This claim is reified in the statements of the major professional organizations of health and science communication. And, the necessity for inclusion is evidenced in such phenomena as epistemic injustice (inequitable access to knowledge and knowledge production) or health disparities (preventable differences in the burden of disease and opportunities to be healthy for specific groups). In my courses, I ask that students consider, embrace, and appreciate difference in our learning of concepts integral for working toward inclusive health and science communication. But, I also stress the importance for students to integrate that learning into their professional (and personal) communication practices, and to be agents of change"
"The Health Reporting course features lectures, discussions and activities on cultural competence in health care and cultural competence in health journalism.
News Reporting I features lectures on multicultural sensitivity and cultural competence. In Fall 2020, News Reporting I students will hear from guest speaker, Dr. Kathleen Woodruff Wickham, Professor, School of Journalism & New Media, the University of Mississippi. Dr. Wickham, a Rowan alumna and scholar in the history of racial integration in education, will discuss the historical roots of anti-racism and the Black Lives Matter protest movement in the U.S."
Higher education has for me always been about entering into new conversations. In my research and teaching, I am dedicated to welcoming more people and more voices into the academic community and the mini discourse communities I cultivate in my classes. Specifically, my research and my civil commitment to environmental justice have forced me to confront the fact that the effects of climate change and ecological devastation will adversely impact not those who bear the lion’s share of the blame, but the already marginalized, both in the US and across the world. The impacts of the Anthropocene will be unequally and unfairly distributed. As Naomi Klein has so eloquently insisted, climate change is always “everything change,” and environmental advocacy is also a form of social justice. For this reason, to make campuses, classrooms, and the conversations they engender more diverse is to also make them more ecologically conscious and sustainable.
"Science and medicine are, above all, social disciplines. In other words, the creation of scientific and medical knowledge stems from social processes. Physicians determine what research questions are worthy of study based on their experiences with patients. Scientists work side-by-side in labs as they run experiments. Academic journals record lively debates about the 'right' way to interpret a set of results. In Developing Health and Scientific Literacy, we work to provide students with the tools for understanding the ways in which bias based on race, gender, or ability, can influence these social processes--ultimately affecting what we know and don’t know in the realms of health and science."
