DEI Dispatch - Scientist Spotlight
Sue Wessler promotes inclusion efforts within National Academy of Sciences
and Geneticist
Dr. Sue Wessler is a renowned geneticist, and her research focuses on understanding the contribution of transposable elements to gene and genome evolution. She is equally passionate about advancing undergraduate education. As an HHMI award recipient she created the Dynamic Genome, a course open to first year undergraduates to give them hands-on research experience. This early exposure to research can strongly impact a student's future trajectory as a biology major and their overall self-efficacy in science. Her efforts to change the status quo in academe are continued as the Home Secretary of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). This year she helped usher one of the most diverse cohorts of NAS members. We reached out to Sue to learn more about this effort.
Could you tell us a little bit about the steps or the process that it took to welcome this diverse class?
We have been working to diversify the membership since I became Home Secretary in 2011. It’s been a very gradual process with many initiatives all steadily increasing diversity. They are all like experiments where you need to see the results and adjust and try something new. We have had success with increasing representation of women but are continuing to work on strategies to increase representation across other groups with low representation and to increase geographic representation.
Are there other initiatives within the National Academy to help increase representation?
My focus is the membership and elections. Our president, Marcia McNutt has focused on the other components of the NAS especially staff and the National Research Council
Changes in representation are often very gradual in universities and organizations, how do you see the rather rapid changes occurring in the NAS impacting dynamics outside of NAS?
My focus in membership and elections is to change STEM leadership. When you’re elected into the academy, it really propels you into leadership roles either within your university or within your discipline. I hope that this positions those newly elected individuals from diverse backgrounds into leadership roles.
As an HHMI professor you were able to create the highly successful Dynamic Genome course, what new things do you have in the works for that course?
The course is designed for incoming first year students. Recently our focus has been to provide similar enriching hands-on research experiences to transfer students. We also want students to continue to have research experiences throughout the major, so we are currently working with Katie Burnette, the academic coordinator for Bio 5A, to shift some of the labs to a more inquiry-based research activity.
Read more about this new NAS class in this Science article