Events and Outreach

The Center for Empathy and Social Justice in Human Health (CESJHH) is committed to leveraging the power of partnerships, storytelling, and innovative research to advance the wellbeing, success, and representation of students from marginalized communities along the STEM and healthcare profession pipeline. By bringing empathy and compassion to the work of health and social justice, we aim to support students and educators in the pipeline now, while also informing lasting systemic evolution.

Collaborations

Strategic collaborations provide CESJHH the opportunity to explore and implement empathy- and compassion-based programming and assessment to enrich interfaces between marginalized students and their learning environments as well as support student-driven practices for stress management and personal wellbeing and growth.

Ask A Scientist: Rising Stars Internship Program

In partnership with the School of Biological Sciences, CESJHH is thrilled to fund the pilot launch of Dr. Hiruy Meharena’s proposed Ask a Scientist: Rising Stars Internship Program, a project that is envisioned to engage marginalized K-12 students in STEM at UC San Diego. This program aims to identify high school students with science questions, connect them with a campus faculty member to receive a video response to their question, and provide them with the experience of a summer internship in a campus laboratory to learn more about the subject of their question. CESJHH and the School of Biological Sciences has successfully produced the pilot video for this program and aims to collaboratively support Dr. Meharena and the School of Biological Sciences in identifying funding opportunities to scale the program to engage a greater number of students from local San Diego communities.

BioSci Peer Mentor Program

CESJHH, in partnership with the School of Biological Sciences, is learning valuable lessons about holistically supporting undergraduate students in the BioSci Peer Mentor Program. This program was structured and piloted to complement the widely utilized NASPA CPE Peer Mentor Training, with an objective to bring mindful awareness and self-compassion to peer mentorship spaces in STEM. Our aim is to test this engagement as a model for how TDSI and its Centers can integrate resources, methodology, and research related to Empathy and Compassion to foster the improved well-being and success of students from diverse backgrounds. With mindful awareness and self-compassion instruction over the course of summer training, and continued mindful awareness practice sessions during the fall quarter, mentors have gained resources to utilize these learnings in their mentorship work with mentees, who can then implement the knowledge and practices in their own education and subsequent career. CESJHH is happy to report very positive initial feedback from student participants. CESJHH and TDSI are optimistic about the potential scalability of this model for the improved wellbeing and success of marginalized students in the STEM and healthcare pipeline.

Events

CESJHH is dedicated to providing communications and awareness platforms to amplify rationale and evidence pertaining to the need for greater diversity in STEM and healthcare fields of profession. We prioritize opportunities to bridge networks of STEM and healthcare education stakeholders at campus, local, regional, and national levels with the intent of collaboratively leveraging resources, data, and a shared vision and definition of success.

2023 ASU+GSV Summit

In April 2023, Dr. Gentry Patrick moderated an education panel at the acclaimed ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, featuring U.S. Department of Education Deputy Secretary Cindy Marten, Dr. Freeman Hrabowski of University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Sara King, MA, PhD, of Mind Heart Consulting and Science of Social Justice. The panel, titled “Compassion: A Catalyst for Equal Access” covered the utility of empathy and compassion to define and activate institutional and community wide strategies for building educational spaces and cultures that foster and retain a sense of safety, positive belonging, and purpose for marginalized students and educators in STEM.

You Belong in STEM: San Diego Mini-Summit

CSEJHH and San Diego Squared, with support from the U.S. Department of Education, hosted the YOU Belong in STEM: San Diego local launch and mini-summit on April 18, 2023. This event sought to lift up and leverage the efforts, brilliance, and lived expertise of diverse STEM ecosystem stakeholders across the region, and position San Diego as a model U.S. city for the community-wide, compassion-based catalyzation of increased equity and belonging in STEM education. It featured presentations from local STEM leaders, as well as special guest U.S. Department of Education Deputy Secretary Cindy Marten.

Isabel Wilkerson: Understanding Caste and the Power of Empathy in Human Health

On February 24, 2022, CESJHH partnered with UC San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science and UC San Diego Health in hosting a special conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson to discuss her research into the history of caste in the United States and the resulting No. 1 New York Times bestseller she authored, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. This compelling discussion explored whether engaged empathy and compassion are key to building a more equitable and just healthcare system and educational pipeline. Read more.