The Lab Bench Isn’t Level—But It Can Be
The first time I noticed how uneven opportunity can be in STEM, it wasn’t in a lecture about ethics or a headline about equity. It was in the quiet hum of a campus lab: fluorescent lights flickering, centrifuges vibrating like distant thunder, and a whiteboard crowded with acronyms that felt like a private language. I was excited—almost dizzy with it—until I realized how quickly excitement can shrink when you don’t see yourself reflected in the room, in the examples, or in the assumptions people make about who belongs.
I came to engineering believing merit was a clean equation: work hard, learn fast, contribute. But people aren’t variables. We carry histories, identities, and barriers that don’t show up in a syllabus.
Where I Stood in the Room
In group projects, I learned to speak carefully, like my words were on probation. Some classmates seemed to glide through with a confidence I mistook for competence—until I noticed they also had invisible scaffolding: mentors who knew the hidden rules, families who understood office hours as normal, networks that made introductions effortless. Meanwhile, others—especially students of color, women, and students with disabilities—were asked to prove their intelligence repeatedly, as if excellence required constant reenactment.
I didn’t always know what to do with that awareness. I just felt it: a subtle tightening when someone’s idea was ignored until repeated by a different voice, or the quiet resignation when accessibility needs were treated like inconveniences instead of rights.
The Hardest Part Isn’t the Science
The complication wasn’t that STEM was too difficult. I expected difficulty. The real challenge was cultural—how easy it was for institutions to keep running on habits that exclude while still claiming neutrality.
I began to understand that injustice in STEM often hides inside systems that feel ordinary: advising structures that assume everyone has free time, policies that reward constant availability, “professionalism” standards that erase difference, and classrooms designed for a mythical average student. Even well-meaning departments can keep repeating practices that don’t actually change outcomes for historically marginalized communities.
And when students try to push for something better, we’re often told change is “complex.” Which is true—but complexity can become a shield.
A New Story About Change
When I read about a National Science Foundation-funded project led by University of New Mexico faculty in collaboration with Arizona State University, I felt a shift inside me—the kind that happens when a problem you’ve been carrying privately finally has a public name. The project, led by Susannah Davis with colleagues Vanessa Svihla and Nadia Kellam, focuses on increasing the effectiveness of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion-focused institutional change teams through a “community of transformation.”
That phrase stayed with me: community of transformation. Not a workshop. Not a one-time training. A community—built for the long, difficult work that often fails because faculty aren’t trained in organizational change, because broad support is hard to build, and because entrenched norms don’t move just because we wish they would.
What surprised me most was the project’s creative approach: storytelling, fiction, and design activities to help members imagine new possibilities that are more just and inclusive. In engineering, imagination is often framed as a technical skill—ideation, prototyping, optimization. But here, imagination becomes moral. It becomes a way to practice a future before it exists.
What I’m Learning to Carry Forward
This is the reflection I keep returning to: equity isn’t only about letting more people into the lab. It’s about changing what happens once they arrive—whether their ideas are valued, whether policies protect them, whether the culture makes room for them not as exceptions but as essential.
If STEM is supposed to solve human problems, then the STEM community must become more human. That means systems that don’t rely on individual endurance as the price of belonging. It means replacing “sink or swim” with structures that teach everyone how to build boats.
Repairing the Equation
The resolution, for me, isn’t neat or finished. But it’s real. I’ve started seeing change not as a heroic act by one person, but as a collective practice—one that requires community, tools, and the courage to admit our institutions can do harm even when they intend good.
I still love the clean satisfaction of a correct result, the elegant logic of a solution. But now I’m drawn to a harder kind of engineering: building environments where more people can thrive, contribute, and lead.
Because the lab bench isn’t level. And that doesn’t mean we lower standards. It means we finally tell the truth about the floor.
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