Month: July 2021

Discussion Questions Week 7/26

1.

In the article “Associations between sexual orientation discrimination and substance use disorders: differences by age in US adults” the authors discuss the study they did to see what trends there were between the age of adults with substance use disorders and how much sexual orientation discrimination they experienced. They found that US adults who are a part of sexual minorities are twice as likely to meet the criteria for many of the different substance use disorders (SUD). They saw that there are different factors that contribute to SUDs than just age. One being minority stress because it increases exposure to chronic stressors that are related to SUDs and other negative mental health affects.

This source connects to my other sources because they all focus on the main point of my argument, LGBTQ+ discrimination. What I have made sure to focus on when finding different sources is that they all discuss a different aspect of discrimination. This article focus substance abuse disorders and what, if any, the trend is between the different abuses, sexuality, and age; where the main cause is discrimination. It comes from the perspective of five professors who conducted this study to better understand the different abuse disorders that 20 million US adults have. I plan to use the data and results from this article to further discuss the effects of sexual discrimination on people and for evidence on the idea that it needs to come to an end.

2.

In the response titles “A Lack of Privacy makes Anxiety worse”, Emily emphasizes the effects that working in an open office had on her anxiety. She is agreeing with the original article and is giving an example of what she experienced in an open office and what she would do to accommodate herself and her needs. She also includes how she encouraged the company to change their office set up in her exit interview so that future employees do not experience the same things that she did. I feel that this was a productive way to address the issue that she faced because she not only explained it and explained what she did to help herself, she also told the company how to fix it and noted that she was not the only female in the office who felt like this.

Overview for Week of 7/26

Your research work continues this week, and will be the primary focus of your writing work. We’ll be doing that against the backdrop of a conversation about office design that intersects with our larger discussions around inclusion and organizational culture.

See, all the work we’re doing individually overlaps with these other conversations–there’s a lot of thinking and writing around these issues, and we can learn from all of the pieces that we bump into.

So, first, please take a few minutes to read through this post about the conversation analogy we’ll be using: 

Rounding out the conversation

Then, move on to this week’s work.

Reading

Writing

  • Complicating your Research–look through the folder of that name in Helpful Links on Blackboard, and then head to the Unit 2 dropboxes for instructions (due Wednesday). This is an important step in rounding out the conversation you will present in your research portfolio.
  • Rounding out the Conversation (detailed in the Unit 2 dropbox) (due Sunday)
  • Complete this week’s discussion work on the blog (due Thursday). See this post for prompts:
Discussion prompts for Week of 7/26

Rounding out the conversation

I’m looking forward to seeing how your conversations are starting to take shape. Let’s take a few minutes to run through this conversation analogy and how this particular assignment is helping you move toward your next project.

First the analogy: we’ve touched on this metaphor a bit recently, and it’s front and center this week as we’re looking at linked sources (that are effectively ‘talking’ to each other). This conversation analogy was introduced by writing scholar Kenneth Burke in 1974. Burke argued that research writing is akin to a conversation at a party. The conversation you’re interested in is already underway when you show up at the party, and as you drift into that room where folks are talking, you take some time to listen to what other folks have to say before joining in to offer your perspective.

Now, in any conversation, when you speak up, it’s generally not your mission to offer the definitive word on the subject, but rather to move/shape the discussion in some way. You say your piece, building upon the ideas that are already in circulation, and then you move on. That conversation continues once you’re done with it, but your contribution has changed it in some way.

Now, just like at a party, “conversations” in researched writing are more interesting –textured, nuanced, insightful–when there are a lot of perspectives represented, not just a bunch of folks sitting around and agreeing with one another. The conversation is more likely to move into new and fascinating territory when people who have valuable first-hand perspectives or data-driven insights are involved, when they’ve got good stories to share. And you’re more likely to have something valuable to contribute when you’ve spent some time taking in what others have to say.

You’re at the listening phase of that conversation now–taking in what others have to say and assessing who’s ‘present’ to make sure that you’ve got an interesting range of perspectives. That’s what you’re representing on the Rounding out the Conversation worksheet due this Sunday (8/1)–who’s in the ‘room’ and what roles they might be playing in the discussion. This will help you to identify gaps in your roster, so that you can keep looking for new and interesting people to engage in the discussion.

Your research portfolio (due next Wednesday, 8/4) will represent the conversation that you’ve orchestrated, pulling together at least 6 sources that represent different perspectives and knowledges and that chart a course for your ongoing research and writing work in our final unit. Be sure to review the unit 2 assignment sheet for specific instructions.

Discussion prompts for Week of 7/26

We’re diving into a series of conversations this week–around the physical design of office spaces, around the issues you’re exploring in your own inquiries, and around the very work of research and pulling together a range of perspectives. Let’s continue all of that work on the blog.

For this week, everyone should respond to #1 and then choose 1 of the other 2 questions to answer. Your initial posts are due by the end of the day on Thursday, and then I’ll ask you to log back into read through your classmates’ posts and respond as you wish.

  1. With the due date approaching for your research portfolio, it’s time to start practicing writing about your sources. Please compose an annotation for 1 of your sources, following the guidance on the unit 2 assignment sheet. This annotation should be 2 paragraphs long–1 of summary, 1 of analysis/ discussion of how this source will be useful to you. The draft is good practice for you, and provides me an opportunity to give you feedback on adjustments that you might want to make as you continue to work toward the portfolio (which is due next Wednesday, 8/4)
  2. Choose one of the responses from “Readers respond: open offices are terrible for women,” and consider how the writer builds upon the ideas in the original article (“The subtle sexism of your open office plan”). Use Harris’s terms from chapter 2 of Rewriting to describe what you see this writer doing (i.e. extending, illustrating, etc.) and what intrigues you about that. How does this person open up a new line of inquiry with their response?
  3. In the reader response piece, Katharine Schwab introduces those letters with a brief overview of some of the patterns she detects in their feedback. This segment includes some jump-out links to other related articles, and then segues into a selection of letters that focus on the gendered implications of open office plans (the impacts that disproportionately affect women). Thus, Schwab facilitates a complex discussion with many participants, but it’s by no means exhaustive. What else would YOU want to inject into the discussion? What is an issue/perspective you think is not currently represented here? (You can draw on your own experience if you wish, or conjecture as to what others might wish to incorporate, but offer up another take on this using one of the templates from They Say/I Say, any chapter.)

Please categorize your post as “discussions/homework,” and tag it with “unit 2,” “weekof7/26” and [your name].

Research Plan: Kayla

What question is guiding your research? (What do you want your research to understand?)

All of my research aims to reflect on what it’s like to be a member of the LGBTQIA+ community in professional settings. This is a broad topic that relates to whether or not members of this community are able to obtain/retention a job as well as overall equity in the workplace. I hope to uncover a variety of topics by answering this one question.

Why this question? (Help us understand how it connects to your career/personal interests)

This question allows for me to explore different forms of gender/ sexuality across a variety of professional settings. By using this question, an extensive scope of both secondary and primary sources become available to me. I have also found that while this question allows for me to choose from a bigger selection of articles/texts, I also have to make sure that my writing flows together. All of the personal experiences, statistics, and other forms of writing that I choose to include, must come together in a way that clearly supports my claim.

How will your professional/internship/organizational/course work inform your inquiry? (What connections can you see with the work that you are a part of in the world beyond the course?)

I am an ally to the LGBTQIA+ community and I am also an African-American female in STEM. I understand what it feels like to be a member of a minority group  because of this I am very passionate about advocacy for underrepresented individuals. At this point in time,  I am building my network through internships, career fairs, and other forms of social engagement and have been able to learn more about the types of discrimination in the STEM field alone. There are 2 articles that I included in my preliminary note-taking exercise that connect directly to LGBTQIA+ representation in STEM and I am excited to relate some of the experiences that I have gained with those from the article.

What fields (academic and professional) matter most in your inquiry? (Where are you going to be looking for source material?)

Most of my sources are primary sources coming from members of the LGBTQIA+ community. The second most used sources in my research are from allies of the community that strive to advocate for equity. The third type of field I am pulling from are purely statistical articles that will support my stance through unbiased data and help the reader visualize the magnitude of my argument.

Research Plan

“How can a workplace be more inclusive of and equitable to Black workers?” I started thinking about this as a research question for a myriad of reasons, one of which included my interest in the work Dylan and Edward did on the roles company leadership plays in workplace diversity and inclusion practices. This question also connects to me personally, not only because I am a Black woman who works, but I am a union representative who is in a position to advocate for people in the workplace.  

Over the years I’ve seen inequitable treatment of workers in all underrepresented groups, however in my experience, the people who seemed most overlooked, underutilized, misunderstood, underpaid, underemployed and excluded from workplace culture have consistently been Black people. I have seen younger professional Black people start working with lots of enthusiasm and innovative ideas only to be ignored, told they should stay in their lane or that they were too aggressive. Sometimes they have been told to “relax” and that they were too “detail oriented”. Many found themselves in a “damned if I do, damned if I don’t” situation. I could see their enthusiasm wane over time. Numerous Black employees were asked to jump through hoops that their white peers were not asked to go through, yet those same peers were often promoted above them. Too often, no concrete indicators were established that indicated how to move up in the company. No upper-level managers took them under their wing like they did with other junior employees. Black staff was never seen as leadership material.

Two years ago, in my capacity as a union official, I had to gather data (job descriptions, performance evaluations, the amount of revenue generated based on work done and promotions) for both Black female employees and their white female counterparts in several departments at my job. I presented this data, along with personal statements from Black female employees to our CEO because it showed a glaring disparity in how white women were being promoted versus Black women, in multiple departments. Earlier, several Black women had come to me complaining that they were not being recognized for their work or considered for promotions. In some cases, other people took credit for their ideas. Some of them had asked their bosses directly what they could do to be promoted. Many were given vague answers. Some were in fact given specific answers, so they tailored their work to meet those expectations, but when new promotions were announced, their names were never among the promoted. To his credit, the CEO (who has since left the company) really listened and heard these women. Some of them were promoted shortly after our meeting. Our current CEO, however, has a bit of a way to go in getting to the same philosophical place as the former.

The experiences at my workplace are not unique. A friend of mine says her brother, who attended an ivy league school and had an MBA, felt othered by his finance co-workers and managers. He worked well into the night every day, he took golf lessons so that he would fit in at company outings, he worked above and beyond, yet white co-workers who didn’t put in as much effort were promoted and he wasn’t. His manager’s manager knew the names of the white junior employees and didn’t know his. He stopped being invited to golf trips. Ultimately, he quit.

I hope to use sources from the fields of Human Resources, Diversity Equity and Inclusion, Data Analysis, Organizational Psychology, Black Studies and even Journalism to provide some context on how Black people are perceived in society and how this perception informs how they are treated in the workplace. I will also use some of these sources to demonstrate first hand experiences and how Black people cope in those situations. Finally, I would like to include some concrete solutions on how organizations can be more inclusive and equitable to Black employees.    

Research Plan

When I began exploring ways I could contribute to the conversation about organizational culture and diversity and inclusion, my first instincts were telling me to focus my research on the most obvious problems like race, ethnicity, and gender. I wanted to see if I could identify new lines of inquiry, new solutions, or connect the dots in ways that others haven’t connected them before. Without even going too deep into the existing literature, what I found was decades of research and thousands of great ideas and potential solutions, but hardly any real progress where it matters most. After reading Ian Bogost’s article “The Problem with Diversity in Computing” and the contributions of my classmates, especially Sherri’s post on Algorithm-Driven Hiring Tools, I was inspired to turn my focus in a new direction to investigate the hidden biases that we might be building into today’s HR technologies. Coincidentally, I had recently taken an online personality test as part of an application for a job at my local golf course, which struck me as an odd requirement. Although the problems of the past are still with us, I fear that we might be creating new problems as organizations adopt new technologies without understanding how they work or what the risks are. After watching the documentary Persona and getting a good look at the personality testing industry, my decision to investigate this further was solidified. So the question I am trying to understand is: Are artificial intelligence technologies in human resources going to make organizations more diverse and inclusive, or will they make things worse?

There are several reasons why this question interests me. On a personal level, I have always thought of myself as a square peg, because of a birth injury, my ethnicity, my struggles with learning, and other aspects of who I am. Like most young adults, I want to fit in but I also want to be myself. I worry that artificial intelligence algorithms are being built that will limit opportunities for people like me before we even have a chance to prove ourselves in the work force. As a business major, I also want to understand how “people technologies” work and how they can be ethically used, the same way I need to understand how finance, accounting, marketing, investing, and other business technologies work. As the world gets more data driven, I want to understand the ramifications of artificial intelligence so I can be a better decision maker in my future career.

This inquiry connects directly with material from a Fundamentals of Management course I took last semester. In that course, we did three separate units on organizational culture (which focused on vision and values), diversity and inclusion (which focused on hiring practices and company policies), and personality (which focused on the advantages and limitations of personality tests). At the time, I did not see the linkages between these topics, which were spread out over 14 weeks. Now I clearly do. Last semester, the focus was mainly on improving performance, and technology was not discussed in depth regarding the three units above. But from the research I have done so far, I can see technology is going to change everything about human resources, and that means it’s going impact everything about an organization’s culture. With two years left at Whitman, I believe what I learn because of this research project will help me be a better student in my future business classes, and ultimately a better employee after I graduate.

My research takes place at the intersection of human resources management, organizational culture, diversity and inclusion, artificial intelligence, data analytics, personality assessment, and employment law. To begin my search for sources, I used SU library’s Summon Search to locate scholarly as well as professional and trade journal sources. Using Google, I was able to locate additional sources, including articles in newspapers and on trusted industry websites for the American Bar Association and Society for Human Resources Management, for example. By using LinkedIn, I found some articles, blog posts, and TED talks by faculty or industry professionals that didn’t appear in any other search results. While watching Persona, I took notes to capture potential quotes I could use, as well as noted the names of people to do further research on. I have also searched on YouTube to find relevant videos, which I plan to watch to gather more subject matter expert quotes. And finally, my searches have also led me to firms selling the artificial intelligence technology products for human resources. I have found it interesting to see the language they use when they market their products and may be able to use some of it. Overall, I have found lots of great material. The next steps of my research plan are to carefully review my sources, take notes and annotate them, and then organize them for easy access.

Research Plan : Oumou

What question us guiding your research?

I personally have several questions that I hope can be answered at the end of my research. Firstly I want to gain even more knowledge on Diversity and Inclusion individually because in my experience one is never mentioned without the other, so I’d like to research each individually. Secondly, I want to determine whether it is best for diversity to come before inclusion, or if it is best for inclusion to come before diversity. As of now I think it is best if diversity comes after inclusion because this way there won’t need to be more trial and error and potentially making people feel excluded. Although I’ve been coming across articles which say otherwise.

Why this question?

Aside from the reasons I mentioned in the previous question, these questions are interesting to me because I am a woman in STEM which is a predominately male dominated field. I’ve heard a lot of stories about gender inequality in the workplace so I want to make sure I know as much as possible about the topic of diversity and inclusion and how it relates to this, as well as methods to rectify this issue.

How will your professional/internship/organizational/ course work inform your inquiry?

I think my own experience will inform my inquiry someway because although I’ve only completed two semesters so far, I am an engineering major and more often than not I have been one of a handful of women in my classes. I feel like the men in my classes have been a bit too comfortable with interrupting the women in these classes while we speak and oftentimes try and dismiss our ideas (at least from what I’ve observed). I think there should be more emphasis placed on inclusion in courses like these especially since the diversity is somewhat there already.

What fields matter most in your inquiry.

I don’t have any specific fields that I am going to be focusing on. I will be using both professional, and academic articles (whichever I find) and I will also be using Ted-Talks and journals since I think they give good first person accounts.

Research Plan- Caitlin

My plan for my research project is to bring more awareness towards the misogyny women sometimes face within the medical field, either as doctors and nurses or as the patients.  The questions that I am primarily asking are related to why this sexism is so prevalent, especially within the healthcare field.  I really want to know the reason behind the unconscious biases that many male doctors have against women who go to hospitals with ailments.  The reason I want to research the misogyny against women is because I have heard many stories, either online or from my friends, that are firsthand accounts of their experiences with doctors who do not believe their pain or look past the real issue just because of their gender. 

I do not have any interesting reason related to why I chose to research this topic.  Personally, I just want to make this problem more well known to others that might not have been aware of it.  Sexism is prevalent in most places and careers so healthcare is not much difference in that sense, but in all those other instances, those prejudices are not in trouble of being life threatening.  Many people can and have died due to the thoughtlessness and biases of doctors who ignore issues regarding women. 

I think something the fields that will help me the most for this assignment are professional articles because they will solidify my arguments and help make my research more well-rounded.  In addition to the professional fields, the aspect of my project that will be the most appealing with be the personal anecdotes from a primary source that shows a firsthand example of their experiences with this issue.  This source will help counteract the logos of the articles and add an aspect of pathos to my writing.

Research Plan- Kate Mehne

When it comes to my ongoing research, there are a few questions I want to address that play into a larger picture. First, I want to ask, “how does pre-conceived or subconscious bias affect those who are marginalized, and how does it affect them at an intersectional level?” Subconscious bias towards particular groups, specifically women, takes many emotional and physical tolls for them. Not only are women seen as the subordinate gender lower than men, but when race and sexuality come into the picture, women are even more oppressed and misunderstood. Second, I want to study if somehow bias was reversed if these intersectional factors would still feed off each other.


Intersectionality is the interconnected nature of social categories, such as gender, race, class, and sexuality. The interconnected/ overlapping nature is due to systems made from discrimination or disadvantages towards those who are marginalized. So, I want to understand how bias came to be towards different social categories. If taken away or reflected upon, could intersectionality have less of a damaging impact and rather be understood? Could our corrupt systems be reversed, therefore creating an appreciation for women and all of the social categories they fall into?


I want to ask these questions because I have been curious about them since I took a Women and Gender Studies class with Dr. Depietro. Their class encouraged me to push the boundaries of my thinking and understand intersectionality and its massive toll on our lives. In this class, I have been very interested in bias, whether towards those with disabilities, or those within different social categories, which we have seen through various readings. I thought it would be fascinating to combine these two aspects and see how they bounce off each other. I want to challenge intersectionality and bias together and see how they overlap.


My course work will inform my classmates very well since I have recently learned a lot about intersectionality and its impacts on women of all social categories, so I am very eager to share my thoughts. Not only am I keen to share my thoughts, but my other professor’s, as well as ideas from scholars and marginalized women themselves. To see the clear picture, I believe it is crucial to hear real accounts from women and professional claims to help understand the reality. What excites me about this topic is that all readers can carry it with them in their lives, and I hope my work can create this impact. This way of thinking is crucial when it comes to understanding the systems that have led us here. By understanding the systems and how they started, perhaps with bias, we can hopefully dismantle them.