Engaging Stakeholders Beyond Amherst College Envisioning a 2020 National Conference
This semester, we began the process of planning an HSTEM conference here at Amherst in 2020. We started by interviewing faculty and staff members at Amherst to learn about their ideas of the purpose and goals for the conference. We also researched other conferences that deal with issues of diversity and inclusion in STEM and evaluated them to compile a list of things we like and dislike. We saw trends from evaluating the conference and decided the most important aspects were an emphasis on students rather than faculty, low barriers to participation, and a quality website and social media presence. From interviewing faculty and staff we were able to incorporate many ideas from different parts of campus, we aim to organize an inclusive and accessible conference.
We have attached our poster summarizing our goals and recommendations, as well as a handout that describes the process of assessing different conferences in detail.