Within the field of biomedical research in the United States, the proportion of underrepresented minorities at the Full Professor level has remained consistently low, even though trainee demographics are becoming more diverse. Underrepresented groups face a complex set of barriers to achieving faculty status, including imposter syndrome, increased performance expectations, and patterns of exclusion. Institutionalized racism and sexism have contributed to these barriers and perpetuated policy that excludes underrepresented minorities. These barriers can contribute to decreased feelings of belonging, which may result in decreased retention of underrepresented minorities. Though some universities have altered their hiring practices to increase the number of underrepresented minorities in the applicant pool, these changes have not been sufficient. Here we argue that departmental invited seminar series can be used to provide trainees with scientific role models and increase their sense of belonging while institutions work towards more inclusive policy. In this study, we investigated the demographics (gender and race) of invited seminar speakers over 5 years to the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan. We also investigated current trainee demographics and compared them to invited speaker demographics to gauge if our trainees were being provided with representation of themselves. We found that invited speaker demographics were skewed towards Caucasian men, and our trainee demographics were not being represented. From these findings, we proposed policy change within the department to address how speakers are being invited with the goal of increasing speaker diversity to better reflect trainee diversity. To facilitate this process, we developed a set of suggestions and a web-based resource that allows scientists, committees, and moderators to identify members of underserved groups. These resources can be easily adapted by other fields or subfields to promote inclusion and diversity at seminar series, conferences, and colloquia.

中文翻译：

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关于提高演讲嘉宾多样性以反映学员多样性的建议

在美国的生物医学研究领域，尽管受训者的人口统计数据越来越多样化，但在正教授级别上代表性不足的少数族裔的比例一直保持较低水平。人数不足的群体在获得教师资格方面面临着一系列复杂的障碍，包括冒名顶替综合症，绩效期望提高和排斥模式。制度化的种族主义和性别歧视助长了这些障碍，并实行了长期政策，排除了代表性不足的少数民族。这些障碍可能导致归属感下降，这可能导致代表性不足的少数族裔的保留减少。尽管一些大学已经改变了招聘方式，以增加申请者中代表性不足的少数族裔的数量，但这些变化还不够。在这里，我们认为，部门邀请的研讨会系列可以用来为受训者提供科学的榜样，并提高他们的归属感，而机构则致力于制定更具包容性的政策。在这项研究中，我们调查了密歇根大学微生物与免疫学系五年来邀请的研讨会演讲者的人口统计学（性别和种族）。我们还调查了当前受训者的人口统计数据，并将其与受邀演讲者人口统计数据进行比较，以衡量是否向我们的受训者提供了自己的代表。我们发现邀请演讲者的人口统计数据偏向于白人男性，而我们的见习人口统计学数据却没有得到体现。从这些发现，我们提出了部门内部的政策更改，以解决演讲者的邀请问题，目的是增加演讲者的多样性，以更好地反映学员的多样性。为了促进这一过程，我们开发了一套建议和一个基于Web的资源，使科学家，委员会和主持人可以识别服务欠缺的群体的成员。这些资源可以很容易地被其他领域或子领域改编，以促进研讨会系列，会议和座谈会的包容性和多样性。