tychen
Diversity Statement
 
Inclusion, equity, and diversity are critical values and essential elements of any university’s public service mission to promote social justice. These values resonate with the philosophical belief I received as part of my culture since childhood, that all lives are created equal. Such cultural belief philosophically treats everyone as an equal being, and no one should be discriminated against or marginalized based on attributes such as race, gender, ethnicity, age, or place of origin. While working on my master’s degree in Athens, Ohio, I learned more about, and became better aware of, social justice issues from my professors in critical theories and from interacting with the local communities; which led to my later involvements as a human rights non-profit worker in Cambodia, as a faculty member organizing ICT digital divide development projects in Taiwan and Southeast Asian countries, and as a non-profit STEM training educator serving the local disadvantaged schools when I arrived at Tallahassee, Florida in 2016.
Being an international student and university employee for years, I have been blessed with great colleagues and friends, but I have also had my share of experiences about the barriers faced by minorities. As an educator, I contribute to social justice in my professional capacity through culturally responsive teaching. For example, female and monitory students in STEM fields are known to be culturally disadvantaged. In the regard, exposure, fair representation, and collaborative pedagogy in the classrooms are to be employed. Culturally disadvantaged students are less confident about technical contents, which usually comes from the lack of exposure before college. These students could leave STEM before they realize their talent because of the cultural disadvantages. I therefore strategically design my instruction to 1) providing live demons and hands-on practices for exposure, 2) presenting profiles of scientists and technologists (e.g., Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper are female, and Brian Fox is African American), and 3) encouraging collaborative problem-solving. With in-time feedback and encouragement as support, my strategy has always produced rewarding and satisfactory results.
The community front for fighting for inclusion, equity, and diversity is a long-term endeavor for a needed cultural evolution, and educators and STEM students can play a role in this through service-learning projects. In my former university of employment, the department had service-learning projects to provide ICT development support and training to rural areas in Taiwan and Southeast Asian and African countries, which later became an NPO (yestaiwan.org) and I have chaired the board of supervisors to facilitate the projects. For years, we worked with Dr. Cynthia Maung’s Mae Tao Clinic in Mae Sot, Thailand, who has provided healthcare service to displaced populations at Thai-Burmese border. Upon arriving at Florida State University, I joined TechWISE, a local NPO project to provide IT and coding workshops to local underprivileged communities, in which we partnered with the university student groups to offer the services.
The community front for fighting for inclusion, equity, and diversity is a long-term strategy for a needed cultural evolution. In the first year of coming to Florida State University, I joined a local NPO project called TechWISE to provide IT and coding workshops to local underprivileged communities. One good thing to mention is that we partner with the university student groups to offer the training services. To go back in time, I chaired the board of supervisors of an NPO (www.yestaiwan.org) working on bridging digital divide in aboriginal tribes in Taiwan and Southeast Asian countries, including Dr. Cynthia Maung’s Mae Tao Clinic in Yangon, Burma.
As an information scientist, part of my current research program addresses racial and sexual stereotypes in online health information seeking in terms of the detection and reduction of social stereotypes. In summary, my personal philosophy and engagements are fully aligned with the public service mission in diversity of the higher education community to promote social justice, and I will continue my devotion to inclusion, equity, and diversity through culturally responsive teaching and community services.