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Dr. LMGreenhill

5 Feb, 12 tweets, 3 min read

Time for a little #vetmeded on #vettwitter.

Please stop acting like we do not know why this profession isn't racially diverse. Stop it. There is solid research on why BIPOC students are not represented in STEM, health professions & vet med.

BTW--even if there wasn't research, it's not really a mystery. But for the sake of education, here are the biggies:

A leaky educational pipeline that also pathologizes & criminalizes Black and brown students, thus removing them from the pipeline.

K-12 programs in marginalized communities that are so woefully underfunded that students are unprepared for collegiate curricula & are tracked into trade education.

A legacy of purposeful exclusion to higher education.

A legacy of purposeful exclusion specific to veterinary medical education.

We can't just wake up & think that the legacy centuries of dehumanization, marginalization, exclusion, etc are just "old news."

The fact that families from marginalized backgrounds play a stronger role in student career choice than their White counterparts & this influence steers students towards careers w/ higher $$ compensation &/or social capital (medicine, nursing, law, teaching, engineering).

A lack of mentors, but more importantly sponsors who assist with navigating higher education and professional systems.

Seriously, roughly 30% of all DVM students are 1st gen college attendees--folks need guides & sponsors!

A historical lack of outreach and interest in the profession to diversify.

The number of surveys I've seen in the last 6 months w/ vets saying this isn't their issue, why do we have to talk about it or my personal fave: the colorblindness:

"I just want the best candidate," as tho the best doesn't come in a rainbow of colors.

I'm sure some folks expect to rate finances high on the list--sure it's a reason, but trust students who are able to survive this list & earn admission are willing to take it on. No, they don't like that debt, but it is the cost of doing biz in the US.

We can make meaningful change in this profession if we are willing to move away from thinking there is a magical solution or that there is an otherwise easy fix. It's going to take some real effort.

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More from @lm_greenhill

Dr. LMGreenhill

@lm_greenhill

5 Feb

https://twitter.com/awkward_duck/status/1357414034274996224

This is so key to understanding financial decision-making. #vettwitter, when we talk about the need for financial assistance for URVM students, understand that this is sometimes what's going on behind the scenes.

https://twitter.com/awkward_duck/status/1357414034274996224

It's not just that the student may be winging it on their own. It's that the student may be shouldering multiple financial burdens because the whole *family* is stuck in poverty.

Hopes & dreams are riding on success, but so is the light bill.

We have to recognize that students whose families just can't help--they have a burden of self-financing, but they don't have to support family back home.

There's a population of young folk that have to do both-self finance *&* pitch in on sustaining the family.

Read 4 tweets

Dr. LMGreenhill

@lm_greenhill

20 Jan

After voting in 2008, sat in my car and sobbed because I had the opportunity to vote for someone who looked like me.

Me, the granddaughter of folks who survived Jim Crow, who paid poll taxes in order to vote, who made the decision to send my mother to integrate her HS.

I thought about my grandmothers, who were living at the time and how stunned they were that this option would be available in *their* lifetimes.

I thought about the work I do and how it contributes to a larger ecosystem of work that led to that moment.

I sobbed. It was joy, sadness, pride, worry, indebtedness to the ancestors...It was more than a moment.

I sobbed again at both of the subsequent Obama inaugurations because #representationmatters.

Read 11 tweets

Dr. LMGreenhill

@lm_greenhill

18 Jan

Every year, I struggle with watching folks bastardize, sanitize & white wash MLK by sharing quotes that suggest he never called out white supremacy.

Well he did. He also had some critiques about capitalism's role in perpetuating racism & it's off shoot economic inequality.

The truth is, MLK was a radical. My goodness, the fact that he was so upsetting to white folks that he was jailed, beaten & assassinated speaks to just how disruptive to white supremacy he really was.

Folks seem to forget that he was legit KILLED for his work.

So get into a few of his more direct quotes that made him threatening to the status quo. Honor him for these words & not just the ones that are routinely used to let oppressors gaslight the opposed.

Read 20 tweets

Dr. LMGreenhill

@lm_greenhill

9 Dec 20

Recommendations for how colleges should make lasting improvements in faculty diversity (opinion) insidehighered.com/views/2020/12/…

I get a lot of questions about increasing diversity among faculty. Most recently an inquiry stating that we should be shifting focus to faculty.

That's great & all, but where do you think new faculty come from? They come from more diverse student ranks.

We can't shift focus; we must EXPAND focus to look at the entire lifespan of an academic #Veterinarian.

That means: Supporting K-12 student interest, creating pathways that keep URVM students in the pipeline. Successfully admitting & matriculating URVM #vetstudents.

Read 11 tweets

Dr. LMGreenhill

@lm_greenhill

8 Dec 20

Currently reviewing applications for something & have observations...When folks say they have experience working on DEI issues because they worked in African countries and are really concerned about global health...

Listen, there is *great* value in those experiences & I'm sure that you learned some important concepts (hopefully a lot about the ill-effects of colonization), but please know that if that's the lens you are applying to localized DEI work...you have some addtl work to do.

If that's your *whole experience*--flying to the other side of the world--totally bypassing your local community & the Black/Brown/Queer/Disabled/Poor/etc folks there ...then your DEI experience is completely colored by that globalized framework.

Read 4 tweets

Dr. LMGreenhill

@lm_greenhill

7 Aug 20

A thread on #vetmed recruiting BIPOC students in the K-12 space.

In recent weeks I'm hearing so much excitement & energy around the long game of recruiting BIPOC students into vet med. I know many of us have dancing images of exposing littles to animals & animal docs.

I'm soooo supportive of this, but hear me clearly that these efforts already have HUGE blind spots that must be addressed if we want these efforts to even have a chance.

1) Stop assuming Black & brown kids don't also have a "calling" to be a veterinarian like so many of our applicants. Stop assuming that lack of exposure is the why our kids don't want to be vets. Recognize that there are systemic biases that reroute interested kids. #itsamyth