The University of Massachusetts held its annual ADVANCE lecture live via Zoom on Wednesday night. Titled “Science in the Time of COVID and America’s Reckoning with Race,” the 2021 lecture featured Dr. Shirley Malcom, senior advisor and director of SEA Change at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as keynote speaker.

ADVANCE, a UMass program funded by the National Science Foundation aiming to create faculty equity, inclusion and success, also used this lecture to celebrate its eight 2021 Faculty Peer Mentor Award winners, who were introduced by Provost John McCarthy.

Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy gave introductory remarks, acknowledging the reckoning of systemic racism, sexism and economic disparity resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Laurel Smith-Doerr facilitated the lecture and explained the importance ADVANCE at this time. “COVID-19 has exacerbated disparities by gender and race in academia,” she said. “ADVANCE has played a key role in this campus-wide effort and brought visibility to UMass Amherst as a national leader in mitigating the disparate impacts of COVID-19,” she added.

Malcom, the event’s distinguished lecturer, was introduced by Smith-Doerr as a champion of intersectionality and by McCarthy as a leader who “…works to support transformative change in teaching, learning, research and practice to improve quality and access to education and careers in STEM fields.”

Malcom is an international leader in promoting female access to education and careers in science and engineering, and agreed to come to the 2021 ADVANCE annual lecture after her in-person 2020 lecture was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Malcom spoke to the importance of taking the opportunities for change being handed to STEM institutions by way of COVID-19. “In this kind of situation, you really have the opportunity to move forward with things you could have never imagined before,” she said. “It forces us to really look through new frames, new lenses, and I think that’s a major lesson from COVID. We need corrective lenses going forward.”

Malcom believes that being able to build on fundamental knowledge—when the need arises—is a major strength. She used the fundamental mRNA research that was necessary for the COVID-19 vaccine to be created as an example of the importance of acknowledging that humans have the “capacity to respond to national and global needs and to look beyond the traditional signals that we have ‘accomplished’ [something].”

In speaking to the struggles and multifaceted hardships faced over the past year, Malcom emphasized that disruption is indeed a good thing and can present opportunities.

“But we are not all experiencing disruption in the same way,” she continued, pointing to the disparities in experiences during COVID-19 depending upon identity. “COVID has revealed the inequities that were always there… And there are inequities within our science communities but also within our public life. And the unequal care responsibilities uncovered the narrowness of our research agendas [and] it uncovered the lack of diversity among our scientists and engineers,” she said.

In looking for answers as to how to solve this apparent inequity, Malcom pointed to the ways in which the pandemic impacted professionals—whether that be from a disappearing work-life balance, lower efficiency or increased stressors.

The constant feeling of uncertainty, she said, created great hardship in connecting with faculty and students. She saw specifically difficulties in the lives of women and people of color, making her question if the progress once made in STEM and leadership would be lost.

“What are the impacts of the confluence of social stressors, especially as systemic racism adds to these, for women of color? How is the institution going to respond to the loss of productivity that may be real, that may appear disproportionately among women in certain fields?” Malcom mused.

Pivoting to discussion of racial inequities, Malcom stated that STEM is not exempt from blame. “The unequal treatment is not just a problem in the larger society, it’s not just redlining and housing, it’s not just employment, it’s not just policing,” she said.

“Science also has a race problem,” from inability to obtain funding, to disparities amongst values. “Our STEM fields aren’t reflective of the totality of the society and so the voices of how STEM might be mobilized in our communities aren’t necessarily being reflected in the kind of conversations that we have,” Malcom said.

This is an opportunity, she believes, to take advantage of the disruption and let it challenge academic roles. “Transformation is much more possible due to disruption, and once we see the disparities, we really can’t unsee them. And I think that is the notion that progress has often accompanied disruption,” she said. The desire of institutions to respond to equity she hopes will no longer be overwhelmed by uncertainty and unwillingness for structural change.

Though Malcom acknowledged that such power and change can be taken back at any moment. Using examples of WWII that were not necessarily continued post-war—major transformations with the GI bill, expansion of education and increased participation of women in the labor force— she pointed to the possibility of losing progress.

“This is a moment right now where we have to be very careful that we do not lose ground, and that means that we must monitor, we must keep our eyes on the leading indicators to make sure that at the end of the day, we can continue the progress that we have been making,” she said.

“We are warned that in the same way we can see progress, we can lose progress. So, the question is, how do you reimagine an institution?” Through self-assessment, reimagination and building pathways with timelines and a system of accountability, Malcom sees opportunities for, instead of isolated programs within institutions, sustainable, embedded support systems within institutional operations.

In colleges and universities, Malcom sees a chance to create systemic transformation, reflected in her creation of SEA Change—a program guiding that continuous improvement in STEM fields.

Malcom’s lecture was capped by a question-and-answer section, where she emphasized the power of holistic review, sustaining equity work and redesigning institutional patterns and processes.

Ella Adams can be reached at [email protected] or followed  on Twitter @ella_adams15.