Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Edited by Hanna “Asher” Sham

Introduction to Let’s Talk! Autism

Asher: You’re listening to Let’s Talk. Let’s Talk is a digital space for students at PCC experiencing disabilities to share their perspectives, ideas, and worldviews in an inclusive and accessible environment. The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of Portland Community College, PCC Foundation, or our community partners. We broadcast on our home website pcc.edu/dca on Spotify on X Ray 91. 1 FM and 107. 1 FM and KBOO Community Radio 90. 7 FM.

Amanda: Welcome to today’s Let’s Talk! Autism episode. I am joined today by professors Josephine Pino and Heiko Spoddeck. Thank you both so much for being here today to talk to me about STEM culture and just the recent movements in STEM culture.

Meet the Guests: Professors Josephine Pino and Heiko Spoddeck

Josephine: For having us.

Heiko: Yes, thank you, Amanda.

Amanda: No, thank you for being here. so, we’re going to go ahead and just start with introductions. If you could give your name, your pronouns, occupation, and disability, that would be great. To start off with, my name is Amanda. My pronouns are she, her. My occupation is currently a PCC advocate, specifically like autistic and neurodivergent students. I’m currently applying to veterinary school, and I am high functioning autistic.

Josephine: Hi, I’m Josephine Pino. My pronouns are she, her. I am a biology instructor at PCC. And I’m relatively recently disabled with musculoskeletal mobility issues and chronic pain, including migraine.

Heiko: I’m Heiko Spadek. My pronouns are he, him, his. I teach math at Portland Community College, or PCC, I’m using a wheelchair, and I’m also neurodiverse in some various ways that have been unidentified.

Amanda: Thank you. This is going to be a pretty free flowing conversation, so answer however you feel comfortable, and I’m looking forward to having a great conversation with you both. What courses do you teach, and how long have you been teaching them?

Josephine: I, currently, am teaching, the biology series of courses. Biology 1, 2, and 3 for science majors, mostly pre meds and pre vet, other science majors. I’ve been teaching that literally since I started teaching about 25 years ago. But, also a large chunk of my career was teaching biotechnology, career technical education for students seeking careers in that field. And I’ve taught a variety of other courses, including marine biology. So, quite a variety, but all biology related.

Heiko: So, I’ve been teaching at PCC for 18 years, a variety of math classes. The one set of classes that I’ve been teaching this entire time, is actually the self paced math lab classes. Helping students, either refresh after a long absence from math or get some extra support as they’re taking classes. If they’re bored in their classes, to fly ahead, and review to where they can be in the class; where they feel more challenged. Fall term, I’ll be teaching that set of classes. And then in addition, to that, college level math or nowadays it’s called pre-calculus.

Personal Journeys in STEM

Amanda: Thank you. So, my background with STEM is; well, I mentioned I am applying to vet school, and I did finish an animal science degree, from Oregon State, this past spring. Which I’m pretty excited about, because that was a degree I’ve wanted since I was a small child. I have wanted to be a veterinarian since I was a small child. But, my initial run with university, in my 20s was actually a lot rougher. Because I wasn’t diagnosed with autism until I was 34. So, I was not able to access the resources I needed to succeed at university. Not that this is all Oregon State’s fault, I’m responsible for my own actions and I’m not trying to place the blame on Oregon State by any means. But, what I will say is the structure of classes they had was very traditional in the sense of STEM, which is what we’re going to talk about today. So, there were a lot of barriers in place that I wasn’t even aware of. And it was, I basically just couldn’t keep up with the coursework and I was forced to change to liberal studies. So, I’ve been on the side of the art. I don’t want to say art because I’m not an artist by any stretch of the imagination, like, Professor Pino, Josephine here. I’ve definitely talked to Josephine about how much I hated art assignments in biology. I couldn’t draw a cell to save my own life. I can tell you what’s in the cell. I could draw you different phases of the cell division process, especially anaphase. But, I can’t draw it. Anyways, I feel like I’ve experienced a lot of different shifts with STEM, or I’ve experienced very interesting things in STEM as an autistic woman. So, I’m very excited to talk with Josephine and Heiko about, not only their experiences, but also just having careers in STEM.

Shifts in STEM Culture

Amanda: With that in mind, how has STEM culture shifted since you started teaching? What are the biggest differences that you notice now and from the past?

Heiko: I’ve been thinking about that question a lot and one thing I feel that is definitely shifting; though nothing is ever shifting 100%, they’re definitely not there yet, is that more and more people are interested in to invite people into STEM and to have people learn and to believe that everybody can learn it. Send the message out that everybody can learn it, as inclusive as a classroom as possible. So, I feel like the ratio of interest and wanting to do that has significantly increased. The ability to do it has increased, but I feel like we are not yet there, where we should be. What I feel is still lagging behind, is as a society to believe that our children and young people can learn math. That they can learn math, that they can learn science, and that the first thing they hear is like, “Oh, God! I’m so sorry you have to take a math class.”. Well, of course they feel sorry for themselves that they math class. If you said like, “Yay! That’s the most exciting and interesting thing ever in the world!”. that would come as a very different attitude or the expectation like reading, writing; we expect everybody to read and write to some level. In a good way, that expectation I would like to see in math that it’s like, of course, you can learn it and here are the resources to learn. I feel like lots of movement has been happening from the teacher side. I hope more will happen and more also from society’s side.

Josephine: Yeah, Heiko. It’s interesting I agree totally. Things have changed in terms of that awareness and I think it’s a very sincere desire overall to bring more people in and to remove barriers. But, what I find interesting is in many ways; there’s a big conflict between something that’s so inherent with instructor identity. I would speak for myself, when I started in university learning, it was just a given that, you had to be perfect. You had to be able bodied, you had to be able to do whatever it took. Yet to move across the country back and forth five times; that has let up a little bit? But, not in practice and I think there’s an instructor identity that’s so tied to that. For many of us, maybe, maybe not, I think even currently people are being taught in those circumstances. That it’s very hard to go from point A to point B. We know what’s right, but we don’t necessarily have the skill set, or our own personal experience, or our own reflective time to make that leap to do something new. The culture itself is still pushing us towards, “Oh, we’re going to welcome people. We’re going to do things differently.”. It shouldn’t be “innovation”, right? It should be “iteration” and “improvement”. Speaking from my own experience, over my whole career, if I’ve done something a little different, I’ve had varying levels of acceptance among colleagues about whether that was the right thing to do. That is very depending on who I was working with in any given institution.

Inclusivity in STEM Education

Amanda: So, that’s very interesting, both of your responses. I haven’t taught any STEM courses, this is going to be purely from the perspective of the student, just as a disclaimer. With Heiko’s, answer, I’m not gonna lie, I dreaded math classes completely. Not necessarily because of the difficulty; because interestingly, when I was younger, math was very fluid. But, it was also a lot more simple. My poor wife, she worked with me constantly. Like my wife has always been gifted academically. So, I get where Hiko was saying, where it’s that response of, I feel sorry for you. And a lot of students, even my peers, still feel that way about math. Because, it’s just presented in such a really abstract, really difficult way. I also agree with you too, Josephine. Because, I’ve been in school a long time, like I was at university in my 20s, I went back to school through PCC at first in 2018. After I was diagnosed, it was very interesting to see the efforts of inclusion. I say efforts very loosely because it felt much more like an obligation. I will say PCC is a lot better about that than most institutions I’ve studied in. PCC at least tries to have a culture, at least tries to have a space for disabled students. Whereas, I felt like other universities I’ve studied at, they provide you accommodations if you have the paperwork and if you go through the process, which in itself is a barrier, as all three of us know. But, really, it’s gonna be completely dependent on professor and their own views of disability and whether or not they think the student should succeed in their class, and maybe that’s a little cynical on my end. But, I really find that it comes down to the individual professors themselves and how they not only feel about disability, but how they feel about what class they’re teaching. Because I’ve had professors who are really into their identity. As you said, Josephine, but I’ve also had a lot of professors who, quite frankly, are just there for the paycheck and don’t really care if you succeed or not. So, it’s very interesting. But, at least from my point of view, things have gotten at least slightly better, at least on the student side. Because, I think universities have had to make more efforts to be at least a little more inclusive, otherwise funding gets cut for the lack of a better way of saying it. But, maybe I’m wrong about that. As a follow up question, would you say that there’s like a motivation for universities or STEM to be more inclusive on the funding side or not?

Heiko: I feel like, in general, the disability movement has, basically happened because of lawsuits, right? so, I still hear that till today, that the only thing, anybody is scared of is a lawsuit. So, I think the same is true for most educational institutions. But, as an disabled person who’s working full time, I’m like, “yeah, I’d like to file a lawsuit for this and this and that”. When I don’t have the time. So, that itself is, again, a barrier to where I can just relax and sleep on the airplane. So, all these little things add up. You have a class here, then you have a class here, you have three classes. Then you like have to complain about this, you have to complain about this, and you file a lawsuit. It’s not gonna happen for most people. A few people thankfully have taken the time, and money, and energy with support of others often, to do that and get us to where we are here today. I mean, that’s what PCC also benefited a lot of the work of Kaela Parks, ever since she came on. She’s taken it on a whole different level. If you can explain to them that this is a lawsuit thingy, then they’ll jump. Now, that said, at PCC I do feel there has been a shift. Also, as an employee with a disability, I just am about to change campuses. I need some adjustments and stuff. The ADA team met with me; very different experience than the last time I needed them many years ago. so it’s like, “Wow! That is cool!”. again, that said, there are many years I never needed anybody; because I had wonderful supervisors who just, could do it. I did it all and this time also my supervisor worked with them, but now we have a team who can actually advise and support. It’s no longer, “Oh, what are the legal requirements?”. But, it’s like, “Hey, what do you need?”. And, they know better than my supervisor. So, they helped and supported both of us. That is where I’m hoping ultimately things will go to the students. That as all of us teachers will do that; “Hey, what do you need and how can I provide that?”. But, there are still too many teachers who don’t have the knowledge or the interests to do that.

Josephine: Can I pick up on that? Because I think it goes back to this idea that any institution, even society, can say this should be done. It really is about a collaboration, individual effort, and shared understanding and shared value. That is a culture change and I don’t think we’re at that point of culture change. We know this is what should happen, but does each of us really get what that means? The more I think about this, and this is also from my own experience because I used to teach in a very traditional way and I’ve changed over the years due to a number of reasons. But, what changed me probably the most was teaching in career technical education because the student’s goal was at the forefront. So, I was teaching biotech courses where students were there getting an education for a job. I happen to believe most students are there getting education because they want a better future. But, we, as people, who pursued the more academic paths for the most part, those of us teaching STEM, pursued a PHD or a master’s degree for the sake of knowledge acquisition. We don’t necessarily always know about what jobs are out there, how students could use their STEM learning. Speaking from my past, teaching with the perspective of this person going down this academic path; when I started teaching biotech, I thought, wait a minute, these students all have these wonderful goals they’re able to articulate to me. My job is to help them meet those goals. And that was very transformative to me in teaching. I try to carry that into my non career technical education teaching as a biology instructor who’s teaching in a more traditional pathway. Bringing that in can be very difficult. It’s very dissonant even to me, because my biology learning was very aligned with the way that we expect STEM teaching and learning to be. Very different than the biotech instruction that I could do in a more natural dynamic way with the students goals in mind. I don’t know if that makes sense. But, the contrast between those two types of teaching for me has been, something that causes me to reflect every day. And, it’s hard to bring the practices that are more student directed into our traditional STEM courses. Because, of where they’re going next and just a million other reasons, including the academic politics of the place you happen to be in.

The STEAM Debate: Integrating Art into STEM

Amanda: No, that’s really interesting. Thank you both. There is currently a shift to incorporate art into STEM; sometimes referred to as STEAM. What do you think of this shift, and do you think it will help or hurt STEM’s inclusivity challenges? The reason I’m bringing this question up right now is because both of you are directly talking about the cultural shifts of STEM.

Josephine: So, it’s an interesting one. I think there are two ways that STEM could become STEAM. One is in a very transactional way, like “we’re going to incorporate art now!”. And, people do that even with incorporating equity, right? Or diversity. They’ll say, “today’s our day that we’re incorporating examples of black scientists.”. that is not good. I had that happen in oceanography classes way back when. Where, here’s an example of a female scientist. “Oh, look! Sally Ride is an astronaut.”. It’s more than that. we need to incorporate inclusivity and diversity in a natural dynamic way where we’re respectful and we’re including everybody as belonging there. STEM converting to STEAM can help with that. Because, in my opinion, if I’m doing it right, when I do it right, students recognize they have options. If a student says, “I’m not comfortable with art”, and I’ve given them space to tell me, “I’d rather write a long essay about this”, as opposed to drawing a picture, or they’re showing me, A podcast instead of showing me some art. I have to be open I don’t want to force the art into it. But, I also remind students, “hey! Art is incorporated in how you learn.”. For many students, the visual infographics that we have in our books, and our resources, are very useful to them in learning. It doesn’t mean they’re useful to everybody. But, art is incorporated already, it’s there. It’s also there in their future careers and the applications. For example, they could be working with a graphic designer to help communicate what they’ve learned. I think if we’re open to various ways of doing it and this sort of idea of universally designing it, giving people options and agency. I think it can be a real improvement to STEM inclusivity.

Heiko: Yeah. When I first heard of the idea, I thought, “oh, cool!”. As you were talking, Josephine, I was thinking there are, for me, three aspects to it. One is the one you brought up, individually allow different ways of learning or expression. I did once also like a project and I said, you can write about it, you can sing about it, you can do music about it. And, actually, one of my students, every week, they had to do like, built ups until they had the whole project together. They gave me, every week, a song that they liked and the reasons why and somebody else made a video. And, so people, they took up the idea and clearly had enjoyed it. Another person, once in my 111 class, at the time college algebra class. He would always come and show me in Desmos. if you Google Desmos art, you get like what art you can make out of math functions, using Desmos functions and piece it together. It’s amazing what people do. So, the second part, it’s like, you don’t use art to support your learning or expression, but you’re actually using the STEM knowledge, on this case math knowledge, to make art. Which is also a very cool thing. The third thing. What I dreamt of when I first heard about STEAM, is like an integrated thing. Like there’s something like really bringing in the art and not having like, “oh, you’re either a artistic person or you’re a science major or something.”. I feel like, partially it’s in music. A lot of people do music and math or something. But, it’s always like you do music and then you do math. That integration of like, how can we bring that really in? I feel like I have not yet seen that. I like really believe this would help the STEM. I’ve yet to see something really spike with that idea, but I would love to see that.

Josephine: Recently, I saw an example, and I participated in it. So, I’m a poet and I was in a building in Washington, D. C., and there was an art installation that was scientific poetry. What got me, and I was thinking, “this is strange, what’s different about this?”, it’s that art was bringing in science. As opposed to science being forced to bring in art. It was creative writing and poetry recognizing that science could contribute to its field. And, it’s the opposite of what we often talk about with STEAM and it made me realize it’s out there. When I talk to students at the beginning of the term and I send out a survey, “let’s get to know each other”, and they can share whatever they want about their interests. There’s almost like this hesitation or fear to share that they write poetry or they play the guitar. And, I found when I started sharing more about what I do, there was more of an openness and it helped with connection. With each other and with me. It didn’t have to be art, it might have been someone really loves animals and they wanted to share pictures of their reptiles. Basically, give people options and welcome individuals for who they are and what they can bring to the group. It seems easy, but it can be hard I think in the STEM culture to make time for that or feel okay, making time for it.

Amanda: It’s interesting because to be honest with both of you I don’t know how I feel about the concept of STEAM versus STEM. Not because I have anything against art because, believe me, I can’t do art worth anything. I can’t draw a cell to save my life. I’m not an artist in the slightest. So, believe me, I have a lot of respect for people who actually can do art of any form, music, drawing, poetry, et cetera. But, what I would say about it is, to me, art’s always been a part of STEM, I just think it’s really weird we don’t acknowledge it. Like, we talk about the art assignments drawing a cell. I can’t draw the figure myself, but I can tell you what’s in the picture, I can tell you exactly what’s doing what. To me, there’s obviously going to be more artistically inclined students in the class. So, you can pair two students up; one could be like me, who’s more verbal. Needs things more linear, like a straight line. And, you have another student who’s drawing, and they learn well by drawing, and they just need to visualize the figure. Organic chemistry an infamous class, in my opinion, with STEM. Because, there’s actually quite a lot of art in organic chemistry. It was a very interesting shift from general chem to organic chem, because general chemistry is honestly, I would say, 90 percent math. Like, I would say not even calculus, just algebra. Algebra two, maybe? But, very basic math. Anyways, that’s my point, it’s like, art is everywhere in science and if you go back to historical figures, like Leonardo da Vinci. He’s probably the most famous one. He was “the Mona Lisa”, and you look at all of his engineering designs, he definitely appreciated art. He’s the reason why art is so important and feels like engineering, you have to know what you’re looking at in order to propose a design. For me, It’s kind of pointless to have STEAM because art has always been in STEM. My question is, how do we appreciate it more? How do we normalize it?

Josephine: Oh, yeah. No, I loved listening to that. Because, I think you hit the nail on the head in many ways because the siloing of art. I mean, we silo chemistry, biology, physics, different kinds of math, different subdisciplines of biology. Art is over here somewhere. But, those are artificial constructions they’re not even worldwide constructions, right? If I’m hearing what you said, Amanda, you’re saying; well, let’s let things be integrated and not keep to the siloing by saying, “Okay, now we’ve put another letter in the word STEM and now it’s STEAM. but, these things are still separate, but we’re going to carry them around together.”. Yeah, you got me thinking now on that one.

Amanda: Yeah, and that’s what I mean. It’s to me, if you have a separate designation from STEM versus STEAM, that only is going to make it worse, in my opinion. Because, you’re going to have traditionalists who are really attached to their STEM identity. Like, I have met people like that, both students and professors. I think that’s actually very unfortunate. Because, to me, first of all, they’re very elitist, and I don’t agree with a lot of what they say about academics, or about how they view other people. Because, I think that whole thought process is just exclusionary and there’s multiple types of intelligence, and that thought process by itself excludes all of those. But, I also don’t agree with people who are completely on the art side who say that, silence is soulless and doesn’t take into account the human experience, or just, whatever. I’ve met both people on those sides, but on the other side, or the non STEM side, it comes from a lot of prejudice that STEM traditionalists put on them to make them feel inadequate. So, there’s that bitterness and that cultural clash. Where it’s like they want to be themselves, but they can’t because traditional STEM has really largely taken over academic culture, at least from the public perception of it. If that makes sense. Heiko can definitely talk more on this than me, but fractals are all about making beautiful artwork with math. Even in biology, microbiology especially, and I don’t know if you’ve seen this, Josephine. But, at PSU, when I was taking microbiology lab, there was literally this whole booklet, or slideshow, of art where they were basically stained bacteria cells. And those are beautiful. I’m not particularly interested in bacteria, but I will say that they are beautiful. I can’t draw those either!

Josephine: I have a former student who has an Instagram account that’s all about beautiful images taken under the microscope.

Amanda: yeah, exactly. So, that’s what I mean. It’s like photography. That’s another thing about art at STEM that, to me, isn’t talked about. So, I guess I’m curious on both of your perspectives; art has always been a part of STEM, but why do you think people don’t really talk about that?

Heiko: That’s a very good question. There’s also this whole thing, that we still do to this day, and no matter what I say it’s like people are like, “yeah, I know. it’s what I believe”. what people believe is that it’s genetically predetermined what you are. But, it is just like so not true. It’s just not true. It is like our earliest influences and environment that get us in a certain direction. And, where our liking goes and where we put our effort. Where we spent most of our childhood on is what we will be most good at. So, if that is drawing, then we’ll be great at drawing. If that is singing, we’ll be singing. If that is solving math problems, I will be solving math problems. If that is kicking a ball, then I will be kicking a ball. Whatever it is that we do a lot in childhood, we will be good at later on. when people say, “Oh, you’re born with a talent.”. No, no, no. You just did a lot of that. And, you got better and better and better just by doing it. But, then it seems to be harder to cross over between certain things. So, if you have like painted it a lot, you’re then less likely to go over into suddenly you’ll be studying math. If you’ve done a lot of math, then maybe a little bit more likely on the other way around. But, you’re still not as likely to then become a pianist or something like that. You usually then, go with the math. So, suddenly people are like, “Oh, I’m good at this and that’s good enough.”. Like, in order to be also good at the other, you need to practice a lot. So, that feels like a separation of, is becoming good at drawing going to help me in math. Could be, but we are not encouraging. Like, “Oh, you can draw so well! You’re going to be really good at math!”. You hear that more if you’re like, “Oh, you’re really good in music. You should have easier times at distractions or something. But, these are the thoughts that come to my mind.

Josephine: Yeah, I don’t know, in what grade in this country do we separate the subjects? Middle school maybe? Maybe even younger? Art is a separate time in the day. And, we have everything labeled. Then we have what Heiko spoke about. Telling people or setting things up for people to believe that they are this, they are good at that, they’re not good at the other, and then we enforce that by separating the times during the day, and the classrooms, and the teachers, and the specializations. And, that starts so young. I think another thing that ties to this has to do with this almost tradition or culture of thinking of, well science education I’ll speak to, and I know math has another issue that’s similar. STEM education as being about the content and the memorization. You hear students saying, “oh, I hate taking science because I have to memorize too many things.”, and then what do we do? We teach it that way, and then we assess for the grades that way. Even if we do these other things, again speaking from my own experience, I’m going to bring a little art into it. But, then how do I evaluate what they’re doing. It’s difficult to figure out how to evaluate in a way I was never evaluated before to determine my grade. Especially, because I was someone who got good grades on multiple choice and memorization tests, and that didn’t make me a good scientist by any means, whatsoever. So, it’s a challenge because we have this concept of science education is being tied to content. Knowledge, content memorization, and so it’s really hard to integrate and then evaluate that, because we are also so focused, at least in our culture in this country, on performance and grades. That’s the ticket to the next thing that you need to do. We’re not necessarily matching or marrying how we teach, what we’re evaluating, to how that information is going to be applied and used for that person, or those people, to meet their goals. There’s a lot of change that has to happen. The conversations like this are very helpful to me in trying to make that change.

Heiko: Also, we don’t utilize people’s strengths to teach them what we would like them to get better at. Even when we try, already, somebody told students so strongly that they have to think math now. They can’t think about their bank account. If I ask people, “you have two dollars and you spend five. What’s going to happen?”. Most of them can tell you that they’re three dollars short. If I give them two minus five, they’re like, “I don’t know what to do.”. There’s something also in the education that, you have to think a certain way in order to solve this math problem. No, you don’t. If that was the case, I wouldn’t teach a math and I would definitely not have studied physics. I could never think the way I was supposed to think. But, I could think other ways. But, I see a lot of hesitancy from students to even dare that. They’re like, “oh, I see that.”, and then they will forget all about their bank account again.

Amanda: To the separating of subjects and even to what you just said, Heiko, about different students strengths and how they associate math with their lives. Again, this is just my perspective as a student, there’s never been a separation per se. Because I’ve always seen these different elements incorporated in different classes. We talk about chemistry, for example; people think of Breaking Bad in a chemistry setup. But, the reality is there’s just so much math involved, you have to know how to do measurements, you have to know how concentration is varying. Otherwise, you’re not going to get the product. You have a specific amount of reactants, and you’re going to get a specific amount of product of that, and if any of those measurements are wrong, your whole experiment’s going to be off. So, you have elements of that, and then you’re going back to the art thing; biology, history, they all have pictures. You’re not gonna relate the information without pictures, especially history. It’s like you’re just not gonna care because it’s just a bunch of text. At least for me, that’s the case. I get the idea of separate classes for these things, because I think it’s more of just about breaking up the day so kids don’t have to sit for six hours a day in one place. At least, to me, that’s why they did that. But, just from my own experience and how I learn; if I could focus an entire calculus course on animals, or in some way, shape, or form, I can promise you I’d be a lot more excited about calculus. Physics, I hated the physics series. I’m not gonna lie to the two of you, that is my least favorite STEM course even compared to Stats. And, the reason I hated physics so much, is because a lot of it was just really engineering based and I’m like, “oh, my god!”. Well, Physics 1, not so much. Physics 1 and 2, were actually pretty relevant. Because, you’re dealing with impact, you’re dealing with pressure. Whereas physics 3, it’s all about electricity, essentially. I did not like Physics 3. I just couldn’t find a way to relate that information to what I wanted to study, and I just really had to force myself to actually be interested in it and try to perform. I never did as well in those classes because of that, and it’s just disregarding the student’s individual interests. So, to me, it’s like, “okay, we can have a class. But, why not just let the students learn the concepts in a way that pertains to their interests?”.

Personal Experiences with Learning Styles

Amanda: I’ve always been interested in animals, so I definitely would have been one of those kids that categorized as being really good with animals. But, I also would have been categorized as not good at science just because of my undiagnosed autism, and just the different way I learned math. I just couldn’t learn math the traditional way like Heiko could.

Heiko: There’s something you just said, that you don’t want to learn something, right?

The Role of Animal Science in STEM Education

Heiko: So, this is something I’ve noticed that, understandably, students think like, “oh, those physicists, or those mathematicians, make me take a physics class or math class.”. It’s actually not true. It’s actually your animal science people who make you take this class. They say, “we want you to know this.”, and then we just say, “okay.”. We offer them because you tell us. that your students need them and at this level. Now once in a while we’ll also challenge them. It’s like “why do they need it?”. But, for the most part it’s the people that are actually doing the work that need to say to those educators, our students don’t really need that. They need more of this or more of that.

Engaging Students in STEM

Heiko: The other thing is, when you ask me, “what is interesting? Isn’t there anything more exciting than having a slide and having like a ball go down the slide?”. Or, it’s like, “Oh, what’s it about electricity? I’m seeing all these electrons running through the wires.”, and, “Wow, look at all the electricity we are using. Look at computers and all these electrons running around and doing their work for us.”. Like, “I want to know how that works. Why can I use my computer? Why can I do all this stuff?”. I feel like different instructors have different capacity to look at it from their students perspective. But, I’ve said my share and now we like learning and I try to make it exciting for them, and look at it from their perspective. But, I think a lot of people say, “I thought this is really cool. I think this is really important. So, I’m going to teach that. Because, others say that you should be in my math class. Now it’s my duty to give you this knowledge.”. So, it’s a complex system of like, who’s putting up the barrier. And, a little bit all of us.

Barriers in STEM Education

Josephine: Heiko, you’ve brought so many things into my mind that I’ve been reflecting on in the last couple of years, and one of them is, “what is the science class for?”. Basically, if there’s something like animal science that leads to veterinary medicine, that’s a very applied science. There’s a lot of technology and one could, and should; in my opinion — we in the academy, in STEM education– should map, “why is this course there?”. Map it to why the animal science people 40 years ago, 50, 80 years ago decided that particular course… There are reasons, there are probably very good reasons. But, we do not make ourselves aware of them, we do not help our colleagues be aware of them, we do not help our students be aware of where those are. I think we’re at a point where it’s hard to do that just because of barriers that we encounter as professionals in our own institutions. Some advice that I got early on as an instructor, from one of my mentors, I was very lucky to have mentors, was whenever you run up against a wall, let the students do the work. So, one of the things I’m thinking right now that could benefit both me and my students is to have a guided activity where students are mapping what they’re learning in my course to their future goals. That is a very scary prospect, which I think is part of this culture thing, right? Am I going to try something like that where it could totally fail? And then, I’ve lost all that content time. We have these competing goals, as instructors, that we have this pressure for the content. But, at the same time, what if I spent a week of class time where students were actually mapping what we have in our curriculum to what they as individuals plan to do in their lives? I think that would be very powerful and it’s probably a better thing to do. But, it is scary.

Heiko: I’ve been teaching, pre calculus Online and so I do some discussions of like go out and find somebody to talk to either in your field or Google, or whatever you do, and find out where do we need functions in your field and where you are interested. Where do you need exponential functions, where do you need logarithmic functions? And people are like, “wow! I had no idea!”. So, more pointed. I don’t say it for mapping for the whole thing, but these key points that are our key topics. Where people are like, “wow!”, or even they’re like, “well, not in my field. But, I found in that field. Now that sounds cool that they need this and how they’re using it.”. So, then it’s not like a big one week thing, but a little assignment. You can warm it up. Tell your colleagues “look how exciting that was for my students!”, then maybe make it bigger.

Josephine: Yeah.

Amanda: So, from the student perspective, at least in the veterinary medicine perspective, it’s an open secret that calculus one is just kind of uses as an application barrier, to be honest with the two of you. And yes, I am aware that it’s not the physics teachers or the math teachers setting the barriers. It’s like the DBM programs or, wherever I’m applying to. So, yeah, I think Heiko’s point about, real live applications. About how functions are used, like, I actually have no idea how functions are used in veterinary medicine, to be honest with the two of you, beyond research, or biomedical science, or technology even. But, it’s like, my primary interest is surgery. So, yeah. That is something interesting to think about. Thank you, Heiko.

Heiko: you know that a vending machine is a function?

Amanda: I did not.

Heiko: You have one input, then you’ll get an output. you have multiple possible, but if you give an input, something comes out as a function.

Addressing Ableism and Elitism in STEM

Amanda: STEM classes often come with an elitist and ableist reputation. Do you believe this is true, and what is the most common misconception the public has about STEM?

Josephine: So, this might be about STEM; who can become a STEM professional? I think there is a common misconception that unless you can go all the way to becoming the lab coat scientist, you may as well not bother in STEM education. that one is the most heartbreaking one for me. Because, anybody can learn STEM. Anyone can become a STEM professional. If I wanted to go study STEM at my age and with the physical barriers I have, I could not become a volcanologist or something like that. Somebody that’s going to climb volcanoes. I’m not going to do it. There are real barriers, but it doesn’t mean I can’t learn about that field. A person who can’t see can still learn about microbes, tiny microorganisms. A person who can’t stand in a lab for three hours twice or three times a week can still engage in the processes of science. They can still apply the scientific method to asking questions and understanding the natural world. It’s such a loss of so much talent and skill and curiosity that we don’t acknowledge that, and we still have systems that keep those barriers. a lot of it is a mental barrier. how does someone learn about microbiology if they’re told they don’t have the physical ability to go in and learn about it, for example. I happen to be teaching courses online remotely with some synchronous time and my students are very scientific. they’re not walking around in a laboratory and they haven’t learned every technology, but they’re still learning science. this misconception, you can’t learn science without the physicality of it, I think is a shame.

Heiko: You made me remember, a presentation I once saw, a YouTube video, where a guy is taking a piece of paper, and he said, like, every baby is a scientist. it’s like, what do they do? You give them a piece of paper, they grab it, they tear it, they taste it, and crumble it up, throw it away. Like, we are born to investigate things. kids look at little bugs, and I can spend hours to just investigate the grass and all of that. So, somewhere it’s more the question; where along the education are we training it out of our Children, and our young people, to no longer be curious, no longer be interested? I do feel lot of it is that children don’t get their questions answered. if you answer children’s questions, and where their brain is at and what they’re curious about, you will keep their curiosity that they will get more questions than a lot of adults. We had sometimes like, “Ugh! Another question? Another question?”. But, any answer could generates more questions. So, where the elitism comes in, for me, is; if you ask the right questions, then you can be in the club. If you don’t, or you look at it from a different viewpoint, you ask the wrong question– I’m putting quotation marks– then It’s so harsh, the judgment. It’s like, “you’re never gonna get this. Don’t worry, don’t bother.”. then of course that’s where all the sexism and racism comes in. If your gender is a female, and, or, your color is not perfectly white, it’s automatically very likely that the question doesn’t get answered, period. Like automatically your question is invalid. So, ableism comes in there then as well, right? Anybody can know we are teaching children from very early age on who is allowed in. And we are very specifically in training children not to ask questions, or don’t ask that many questions. if we actually, from early age, like from the moment that children can ask questions, answer that question, or do our best to find somebody who knows the answer, as parents, as teachers, I think things will change. we don’t have to know. We can go take our kid to the library. We can Google together. as an instructor, I can like, “I don’t know the question. Let me go to a colleague and ask that question and find your answer.”. if we just did that, maybe we could make headway and invite people really back and not having that whole thing; “You should know the answer.”, or ” that’s irrelevant.”. The brain disengages, the person disengages.

Josephine: Yeah, I think there’s a real common habit, in STEM, that if someone asked the wrong question, as you said, Heiko, or they asked it at the wrong time, or they tried to engage and get an answer and they failed, or got it wrong, or made an error. That’s it for them. People have studied this phenomenon where a lot of times students will just quit, especially students of color will often quit after the first bad grade, or the first failed test. one interesting thing I read about one of the studies was they showed that, those students weren’t lost from higher ed. They just said, “hey, that STEM culture is not for me.”, and they went and pursued something different. So, that’s the loss to the STEM field and a gain, to another field, probably. But, it’s also sad because that was the chosen field of those people that did that. I think this is one of the big ironies of STEM to me is that doing science, doing math, doing engineering, you’re not going to be successful unless you make a mistake and fix it, it’s an iterative process. Failure is an inherently extremely important part of it and that’s not congruent with how we teach and evaluate students. We don’t say, “Oh, you made a mistake. Let’s go back.”. there are some very real barriers for us as instructors. We don’t have all the time in the world, because many of us didn’t learn that way. We don’t know how to engage in doing it. Like, at PCC. We have a 10 week term and a finals week. So, everybody’s on this treadmill that’s going faster and faster. We’re not really on a trip. We’re on an academic treadmill, and we can’t stop and appreciate what we’ve learned and how we might have fixed an error. As an instructor, I don’t always feel like I have the comfort and the time to do what I would be doing if I was teaching someone one on one over the period of time that individual needed. So, we’ve got some barriers just related to how the system is set up itself. in my worst moments, those make me very sad, because I’m not sure how we address those.

Amanda: So, I definitely agree with the points both of you have made. And, again from the student perspective, I did not have the right brain. So, it’s very much kind of like what Heiko said, where if I didn’t have the right brain, I was basically forced out of STEM and, I want to say 19 or 20, when I was forced to give up veterinary medicine. I was like super sad and depressed because I was like my lifelong dream. that was because I just could not learn in the way the instructors were teaching. And for the longest time, I actually believed I was stupid. Because, it wasn’t just them, it was like other people in my life, just based on how my brain worked and how they didn’t know how to teach me math, that said, “there’s always like a vet tech. You could always be a vet tech.”. Which I find ironic because I think the vet tech program at PCC is very intense, I think that’s a very difficult program. So, I think that’s actually pretty insulting in and of itself. to the program, not me. But, anyways, I do think there’s a lot of elitism. like, I’m able bodied, I’m white, and I’m female, but the interesting thing about animal science is that, It’s actually majority women, believe it or not. I’ve seen a couple of students of color there, and from what I can tell; I didn’t ask how their experience was, obviously, because I didn’t really know them beyond class. But, from what I can tell, at least the teachers I’ve had, They weren’t trying to make things difficult for students in particular, but they just did not want to accommodate students when it came to online difficulties. or they just didn’t want to adjust their schedule. To what Heiko said, and to what you said, Josephine, about asking the right question. Even in the calc course I’m taking right now, I think this professor’s honestly terrible for several reasons. It’s not just that he’s dry, and he’s gotten a little bit better about this next point I’m gonna make, but at the beginning, he was actually very condescending. Whenever someone asked him to clarify something, he would just say, “Oh, are you talking about the thing I talked about five minutes ago?”, “Oh wait, are you talking about this? You should have learned this in Algebra 2.” or, “are you talking about this? You should know, I already talked about this.” Basically. he just made it very uncomfortable to answer questions, like, I only went to office hours with him once to talk about difficulties I was having, and We got so frustrated with each other that we ended the session amicably. But, I made the decision to just go to PCC online tutoring after that. Cause, I could just tell this was not going to work. So, it’s not just about asking the right questions it’s about also, just the instructors, what attitude do you have? Like, what attitude are you bringing to the table here? Why are you so against students asking questions and not remembering everything from every single math class they ever took? Cause some people just forget. for example, some of the questions I had; I’m taking Math 251, and I took Math 112 in winter, but there was like, a gap between terms. So, it’s not that I couldn’t learn the material and it’s not that I hadn’t learned the material already from Math 112. But. I just didn’t remember every single thing. So, I really feel like part of the elitism issue with STEM, at least from what I’ve seen with instructors, is just the attitude. Where it’s like, students have to remember everything from every previous class, students have to learn everything streamlined from what they teach in class, and they have to somehow generate this interest in a topic they know nothing about. Like, I actually hate it when professors ask a student, “what are your questions about? What I just talked about, or this research project that I’m gonna force you to do?”. I’m like, “we know nothing about this. We don’t know what questions to ask, and to ask a question that means that we have to have an interest in it. If there’s no interest in this, the only thing you’re going to get is a lot of artificial stuff that doesn’t mean anything. So, that’s my take on the elitism issue in STEM. Maybe this is a little unfair of me to say, but I feel like at least some professors or students, really pride themselves on the fact that STEM has such an elitist culture. Because, to them, it’s like they’re the best and the brightest and they’re going to succeed the most in life. So, I feel like that kind of feeds into the public misconception of STEM as well. My experience is, like what you said, Josephine; I think anyone can learn STEM, absolutely. Because, to me, the material is difficult but it’s not impossible. It’s about accommodating each other, and respecting each other’s different abilities. I don’t know when instructors, and students, lose that ability to respect each other. But, at some point it happens, and I don’t know how to get that back.

Josephine: Yeah, so in some academic communities. Instructors who have, quote unquote, too many high grades are suspect. Vilified in some cases, which is very ironic, right? If your students are getting a high grade, you’re doing your best at evaluating their knowledge, and you’re teaching well, they’re going to get higher grades. At least, that’s our goal, right? That’s what we say our goal is. But yet, this is documented in the literature, that there is a culture in STEM often where Entire academic communities, I’m not talking about PCC. But, maybe at a university, and I’d say, “well, you got to adjust your grade to curve if your grades are significantly higher than your colleagues grades.”. I have a friend who wrote about this happening in high schools too, this idea that you’re not a good instructor unless you have a certain fail rate. Which is you’re not, quote unquote, rigorous enough. Which is absolutely ludicrous, because you’re failing if your students are failing. So, that came from somewhere. It’s hard to get past that, in that it’s embedded in our minds so young when we’re first learning that the STEM instructor is the enemy and your goal is to just work hard and pull yourself up by your bootstraps to get that A, to grab those points. It’s really bizarre when you step back and look at it, in my opinion.

Heiko: Yeah. Like, imagine all your students get full points. You still want to grade on a curve and say a certain amount of people can only get Fs. it’s also like, what do you tell your students? You say what you need for an A, for B, for C, and then if you achieve that, you’ve achieved that end of story. But, there are still instructors who still do it. what I also then heard from other instructors, other institutions, we still have a long way to go.

Amanda: Relating to the high failure rate, this actually relates to the next question. what do education administrators or officials need to understand about teaching STEM in order for these courses to become more accessible? I’ve heard what Josephine said too. And, I think that’s preposterous as well. I just want to know where that comes from, it’s like, do officials and administrators want STEM instructors to have a high failure rate, or is that just something from someplace else?

Heiko: for us, the push is to have higher pathway, for math. so, I’ve had moments where not all my students get an A, but all my students have passed. I mean, not all. So, “all”, for me, means the ones who actually took the finals. there are some people who dropped out, in my classes, usually due to life circumstances once in a while. they don’t agree with the class, or it’s material early on. So, there are some withdrawals. I also feel from administration that there’s a certain, “we don’t like math.”. I don’t know if it’s the same with the rest of STEM? The “STE” part. but, with math, I feel not all. There are also some who are, like, comfortable with math. But, there are a lot of things we need to change. So, don’t get me wrong, there’s this underlying thing of, how is it said that students have to do math? We should go like, “students get to do math.”. We need to acknowledge that there’s been a lot of trauma and horrible things done in the name of math. And yet, bring encouragement and bring excitement in about STEM and what it has to offer. I’d like to see that from administration also, not just constantly going like that to us, what they don’t want us to do to instructors by saying this is wrong, and this is wrong. I’m not saying everybody, we have a wonderful provider and also wonderful VP. So, it’s not everybody who’s doing that, but there’s still a general thing I feel also needs to change and needs to be a general, more positive, hopeful vibe about STEM. Let’s come. Let’s together. Anybody who wants to, should be there and will be with you. Tell us what you need to make it happen and hear the things we’ve done already.

Josephine: Yeah, I need time to hear Heiko talk about these ideas and the new things that are happening. we don’t have a culture of doing that. I’ve been in institutions that are smaller. Where it’s a lot easier. I mean, I started 25 years ago and I was at a smaller community college and all the STEM people were in the same building with offices next to each other. it was very natural to go down the hall and say, “Oh, I tried this thing with my class today and it worked!”, Or “it failed! Do you have any advice for me?”. And, so it was really a cultural situation where there was a shared value around the good stuff and the excitement. there was less of my own fear in talking to my physicist friends and my mathematician friends. Because, I had some bad experiences myself in undergraduate years. that’s where I kind of grew to really understand, “wow! Music and physics go together! That’s really cool!”, And that’s because I had this natural ability to talk to colleagues. So, I guess I feel like we need leadership and space and time to recognize that working together and having time to learn together is really important and there has to be a way to bake that in. I know it costs money and we have a lot of people who are teaching part time who choose to learn more and work with colleagues, and people are teaching full time that do the same. But, there’s still a lot of, choice on the individual instructors on whether to do that. I don’t think mandating it is the answer, because then it just becomes rouge and performative. But, what I do feel is the answer is; giving that time and space for the joy to be found and for incentives. Motivations. sometimes the incentive could just be, it’s the right thing to do, but people don’t know it’s the right thing to do because their own experience has been so limited. At our institution right now, at PCC, there’s no incentive in terms of moving up in your professional title. I’m not going to argue the pros and cons, but that’s something that some institutions use that we don’t have. You can pretty much continue on your job doing things the old traditional way, or innovating and doing things that are new. It’s going to cost you more time and effort to do the latter. So, these are issues that I would love to discuss with institutional leaders, administrators. I don’t think they’re easy answers, but just recognizing what some of those barriers are. For example, I’ve been in rooms where I’ve heard administrators say, “well, I don’t understand why faculty don’t just do X, Y, and Z.”. “Why don’t they use equitable grading?”. It takes time, and money, and conferences, and reflection to do those sorts of changes. And, we do not always have that. We have to do it on our own time and often, on our own time, we need to be tending to our own health, just to be honest.

Amanda: Yeah, and my question comes from the fact that, again, there was that whole culture of high failure rate, or you’re not a good professor if you’re not failing like a certain amount of your students, or whatever. But, I also have heard the term equitable grading and universal learning design. And, to me, those are two separate conversation. And I have my own pretty strong opinions about both. I really wish administrators and officials would take the approach, I talked about earlier, by just recognizing the fact that the subjects are integrated with each other. Math is integrated, and chemistry, and obviously, physics, but chemistry especially. Biology is interesting because there actually are a lot of physics in biology as well. That’s like another element I wish administrators and officials would kind of give space for, just implementing the subjects in a way, or at least allowing the students to explore the subjects in a way that allows them to explore their natural interests and how it pertains to them. Like Heiko’s idea of, looking at how functions pertain to each student’s specific career path or interest. That’s brilliant. But, to me, it’s just always been a little odd, the fact that each subject has been treated as its own entity in STEM. I feel like a lot of people are really overwhelmed by biochem because of that. I liked biochem, but I will say the way I took biochemistry, I do not recommend it for anyone. Because, it was a four week accelerated program. That’s kind of my perspective on it, I just really wish officials and administrators would just stop treating STEM as a separate entity from all of academia and stop treating each course as a separate entity from each other. Because, really they’re all interrelated and they all have different talents and attributes they bring to society.

Josephine: so, Amanda, the styling of the subjects, I think it would be really helpful if all instructors knew more about the history of why science is Separated the way it is. There’s a history of colonialism that has really led to how academics has emerged and just stepping back and understanding that is a very powerful thing. So, as far as the role of administrators give people time to learn that and reflect on it, I think that can go a very long way to get people to start reflecting on everything we do. Why are we doing this? Is it because it’s the right way for all the students here to learn in an equitable way, or is it because there’s a tradition of doing it that way? That came from these very real events of the past that weren’t always morally right? to put it gently. I think the other thing; I just wish institutional leaders, or even at the higher level, the state, anybody who’s making the rules. The creditors, would just stop and think; instructors in higher ed, for the most part, haven’t been trained as teachers. We come from the long traditions, many of us. We come from wherever we come as individuals. But, instructors, for the most part, on day one, in my experience, teach the way they were taught. What else are you going to do? If you’re lucky and you had some mentorship early, you can change. You might use some more modern practices that are equitable, that are accepting and not ableist. But, your instructors are surviving in our roles as well. So, change can’t be instant, and it’s going to take some support. That requires culture change, and it’s not easy. That’s what I think people need to realize.

Amanda: Yeah. That’s another reason why I feel like STEAM and STEM being separate as well is also counterproductive. Because, to me, it’s better to take advantage and leverage a system that’s already in place, acknowledge what’s already there. Like, the whole art’s always been in STEM. We just don’t really give it space or appreciation or discussion. So, to me, just taking advantage of that will increase inclusivity automatically. I’m not saying it’s going to be a perfect system. To me, instructors also need training on how to teach, like you said. But, I think at the very least it will make it less scary to students, who either find STEM very intimidating or, wanted to pursue STEM and were put off by a different subject in STEM or something. It’s like STEM, to me, is open to all students. That’s kind of my two cents on it.

Advice for STEM Students

Amanda: So we’re coming up on the end of our discussion. But, before we leave, I wanted to ask both of you, what is your advice to students thinking of pursuing a STEM career?

Heiko: The advice is always for what we have now for the system, right? So, one of the things, based on our discussion, believe that you can do it, and then gather what you need for that. So, number one. Find people who can explain it so that you can understand, and then, alongside that, study according to your own learning style. Find what you need, find that out, and just stick with it and believe that, that’s the right thing and that, that is enough to get you what you need. You need to know what you need, and that’s the right thing, and that you can do it. And then, practice, practice, practice. It’s a system we have now. Ideally, you will all help us build a better system where it’s way more inclusive and everything. But, right now, I think that would be my advice.

Josephine: I agree with everything you said, Heiko. I guess I’ll add to that, advice to a student would be trust your instincts and your intuition about your learning. If you’re not learning and you feel it’s because someone explained it a certain way, remember they’re human. Your teacher, your instructor, your tutor is probably doing their best. So, remembering that your instructors are humans who give them the benefit that they’re trying. But, also trusting your instincts if they’re not and getting your help where you need to and advocating for yourself. I think that is, really important and, along with that, I think this overlaps with something Heiko said, but setbacks don’t mean that you can’t do it. You can do it.

Amanda: my advice, again, this is purely from the student perspective, not the instructor perspective. But, I would say everyone’s learning style is different. learn what your learning style is and own it. There is nothing wrong with you or your brain. So, if you have to, basically, translate what your professor says or convert it into a form that your brain understands and processes, then do it. It’s definitely going to take practice, especially math. Like to me, you have to practice math. You can’t just memorize things, or maybe you can and congratulations if you can. But, it is going to take work regardless of what subject or area of focus you’re pursuing. Because, practice makes perfect. The nature of STEM is even though it’s of elitism and perfectionism the reality is it’s not. It’s the opposite. We’re constantly learning and, as professor Josephine said, failure is an integral part of STEM and that’s how we progress. So, don’t feel bad if you don’t get an A, or B, or even a C In the class. It’s just about learning how your brain works and being more prepared for next time. So, don’t give up. Be prepared to work hard, own your learning style, and just be proud of it.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Amanda: So, thank you professors Josephine and Heiko for joining me today.

Josephine: Yes, I had a great time and appreciate the chance to speak and to listen to Heiko’s ideas as well as yours, Amanda. Thanks.

Heiko: Yeah. Thanks, Amanda, for bringing us together. And, Josephine also. Great to hear both of you and have a discussion about these very important things. Thank you.

Amanda: Thank you for listening to today’s Let’s Talk Autism episode. I hope that STEM was demystified to some degree. As Heiko and Josephine mentioned, any student is capable of learning STEM and that these subjects are naturally integrated into their daily lives. Thank you for listening and be sure to tune in for the next episode.

Michelle: Thank you for listening to Let’s Talk, Portland Community College’s broadcast about disability culture. Find more information and resources concerning this episode and others at pcc.edu/dca. This episode was produced by the Let’s Talk Podcast Collective as a collaborative effort between students, the Accessible Education and Disability Resources Department, and the PCC Multimedia Department. We air new episodes on our home website, our Spotify channel, X Ray 91. 1 FM and 107. 1 FM, and KBOO Radio 90. 7 FM.