About

The goal of this project was to teach undergraduate students in STEM majors the social psychology of gender bias and sexual harassment in STEM disciplines. Despite the pervasiveness of gender bias and sexual harassment n STEM, prevention and remediation efforts often occur via professional development workshops and mandatory trainings with limited effectiveness. Social psychological research has made significant advances in revealing the nature of explicit and subtle gender bias and the causes, contexts, and reduction of sexual harassment in STEM. Educating undergraduates about these processes early in their training by integrating it into the curriculum signals its importance as form of ethical responsibility of researchers and provides more sustained, deeper learning than one-off workshops and trainings. Over the course of this grant, we developed two educational modules – one on gender bias and the other on sexual harassment – and customized the material to STEM disciplines. The modules were presented in upper division undergraduate STEM courses at Sonoma State University. We then administered an evaluation survey which measured content knowledge, detection of subtle sexism, and identifying and responding to sexual harassment. Responses were compared to STEM undergraduate students who did not receive the modules. Due to recruitment barriers stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, our samples lacked the sufficient statistical power to detect significant effects. Despite this, we created a suite of high quality, “ready to go” educational materials for both modules that include presentation slides, active learning exercises and exams questions that instructors can use in their courses.

Professor Matthew Paolucci, Psychology

Prof. Matthew Paolucci received his Ph. D. in Social Psychology from the Pennsylvania State University in 2008. His research focuses on factors associated with bias toward social groups – sexism, racism, heterosexism, transgender prejudice and anti-immigrant sentiment, and factors that reduce prejudice – empathy and perspective taking. His work has been published in psychological journals such as Social Issues and Policy Review, European Journal of Social Psychology, Psychology of Women Quarterly and the Journal of Homosexuality. The courses he teaches at Sonoma State include The Social Psychology of Gender, Research Methods in Psychology, Social Psychology, and LGBT Psychology. In addition to his position of Professor of Psychology, Prof. Paolucci serves as the Faculty Fellow for Teaching and Learning at the Faculty Center at SSU. He leads workshops across the University and the CSU on teaching and learning topics such as outcomes assessment, diversity inclusion, gender bias in STEM, active learning and course design.

Professor Lynn Cominsky (Physics & Astronomy) and EdEon STEM Learning

After receiving a Ph. D. in physics from MIT in 1981, Prof. Cominsky worked at the University of California, Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory managing software and hardware components for the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer satellite mission. She joined the faculty at Sonoma State University in 1986, and served as Chair of the Physics and Astronomy Department from 2004 - 2019. Prof. Cominsky founded SSU’s Education and Public Outreach group in 1999 (now renamed EdEon STEM Learning) and is the award-winning Project Director, Principal Investigator or Co-investigator on over $43 million in grants and final technical reviewer for all products. She is an author on over 225 scientific publications in refereed journals, has given over 210 invited talks, and authored over 170 conference presentations. In 1993, Prof. Cominsky was named SSU’s Outstanding Professor, and the California Professor of the Year by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. She is a Fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology (2007), the American Physical Society (2009), American Association for the Advancement of Science (2013), Legacy Fellow for the American Astronomical Society (2019) and Sigma Xi (2024). Recent awards include the 2016 Education Prize from the American Astronomical Society, the 2016 Wang Family Excellence Award from the California State University and the 2017 Frank J. Malina Education Medal from the International Astronautical Federation. As a senior STEM scientist who develops curriculum to train other STEM students and professionals, Cominsky has a personal interest in issues of gender bias and sexual harassment with considerable lived experiences in both areas.