Learning Communities
The STEM-IEC is delighted to offer opportunities to continue our own learning and to join together as a community to discuss books! The STEM-IEC library has copies of the books we are exploring—reach out to the facilitators or email stem.iec@unco.edu for the book, or additional information. We hope you can join us.
Fall 2023: Let's Banish Impostor Syndrome!
(facilitator, Dr. Sharon Bywater-Reyes)
Dr. Valerie Young joined us on campus for a workshop on Monday, October 30, 2023
Learn to take ownership of your success, overcome self-doubt, and banish the thought patterns that undermine your ability to feel—and act—as bright and capable as others already know you are with this award-winning book by Valerie Young.
It’s only because they like me. I was in the right place at the right time. I just
work harder than the others. I don’t deserve this. It’s just a matter of time before
I am found out. Someone must have made a terrible mistake.
If you are a working woman, chances are this internal monologue sounds all too familiar.
And you’re not alone. From the high-achieving Ph.D. candidate convinced she’s only
been admitted to the program because of a clerical error to the senior executive who
worries others will find out she’s in way over her head, a shocking number of accomplished
women in all career paths and at every level feel as though they are faking it—impostors
in their own lives and careers.
While the impostor syndrome is not unique to women, women are more apt to agonize over tiny mistakes, see even constructive criticism as evidence of their shortcomings, and chalk up their accomplishments to luck rather than skill. They often unconsciously overcompensate with crippling perfectionism, overpreparation, maintaining a lower profile, withholding their talents and opinions, or never finishing important projects. When they do succeed, they think, Phew, I fooled ’em again
In The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women, Young gives these women the solution they have been seeking. Combining insightful analysis with effective advice and anecdotes, she explains what the impostor syndrome is, why fraud fears are more common in women, and how you can recognize the way it.
July 2023 Book Club
In person Wednesdays 9-10 am (facilitator, Dr. Sharon Bywater-Reyes)
Online Thursdays 2-3 pm (facilitator, Victoria Duncan)
The New York Times and USA Today bestseller! This eye-opening book challenges you to do the essential work of unpacking your biases, and helps white people take action and dismantle the privilege within themselves so that you can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color, and in turn, help other white people do better, too.
Based on the viral Instagram challenge that captivated participants worldwide, Me and White Supremacy takes readers on a 28-day journey, complete with journal prompts, to do the necessary and vital work that can ultimately lead to improving race relations.
This book will walk you step-by-step through the work of examining:
- Examining your own white privilege
- What allyship really means
- Anti-blackness, racial stereotypes, and cultural appropriation
- Changing the way that you view and respond to race
- How to continue the work to create social change
Spring 2023 Book Club
Facilitators, Dr. Sharon Bywater-Reyes and Victoria Duncan
It was a fight club—but without the fighting or the men. Every month, women would gather in a New York apartment to share sexist-job frustrations and trade strategies for how to tackle them. For years, these meetings were kept secret. But the time has come to talk about the club.
In Feminist Fight Club, acclaimed journalist Jessica Bennett blends the personal story of her real-life fight club with a studied assessment of the gender gap that continues to plague the American workplace. With equal measures wit and rigor, Bennett provides the tactical strategies—and the camaraderie—every woman needs to fight back, as well as tools for the men who support the cause.
