25: Advancing Chemistry Research and Science Education - Interview with Dr. Raychelle Burks, Assistant Professor at St. Edwards University Department of Chemistry
STEM Diversity Podcast
English - January 25, 2018 05:34 - 49 minutes - 46 MBTechnology Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Dr. Raychelle Burks is Assistant Professor at St. Edwards University Department of Chemistry. Dr. Burks is an analytical chemist. She does research in color sensors, fluorescence sensors, chemiluminescence sensors, and in general, systems to find chemicals. This work has a wide array of applications, such as field tests in natural disaster scenarios.
Dr. Burks is an active science communicator. She's the manager of the DIY Science Zone at GeekGirlCon. She writes for Chemistry World in the area of forensic science, aimed at lay people. She's on a television show called Outrageous Acts of Science on the Science Channel.
Dr. Burks is the only scientist in her family. But her family are big consumers of education in general. At a young age, she was already in a book club. She spent a lot of time in the library. In her family, knowing things and having an answer is really cool. She was encouraged to work hard and make progress. Because on a school trip she got to interact with some FBI science people, she got interested in science. She did her Bachelor's at University of Iowa, her Master's at Nebraska Weslelyan University, and her PhD at University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
In regards to diversity and inclusion, she says that often times institutions and try to hire more diversely and ask those folks to solve the problem. She doesn't think that's the right way to address it. The responsibility should not be solely on these folks. She says that there is a lot of work to do. She says there's two problems: Retention and recruitment. She says systems of oppression have to be removed. Cannot just tinker. Also she says this is an area of scholarship in itself. She says that for diversity and inclusion in STEM, we need to listen to our colleagues in the humanities to help us, since they are doing very good work in this area to identify the problems and collect the data.
linkedin.com/in/raychelle-burks-0a532b147/
stedwards.edu/directory/employees/raychelle-burks
St. Edwards University Department of Chemistry
DIY Science Zone at GeekGirlCon
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
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