Building our community
By Rachel Fowler, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief | TLT Publisher's Pen December 2024
It’s important to build more insightful awareness within our society.
In December 2022, I completed a certificate course related to inclusivity and equity, mostly to gain more insights on the topic. The goal of the certificate course is to educate leaders on the essential practices and tools designed to increase employee diversity and to create a business model that embraces equity and inclusion. I thought I’d share a few things I learned in this certificate course.
Self-awareness and empathy are core to any leadership strategy. Emotional intelligence is critical with any group of people, and it is the capacity to be aware of, control and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically. We all have unconscious bias, and it’s important to try walking in someone else’s shoes and be willing to see things from a different perspective. It’s good to have those uncomfortable conversations.
It’s important to build more insightful awareness around biases and systematic discrimination against any group of people. Human perception is wildly selective. How we see others can have a big impact on our world views, and it’s good to establish an inclusive culture.
That was just a preview of everything I learned. As for STLE, there’s an official DEI Committee that recommends policies, programs or activities intended to guide STLE’s commitment to our community. The committee helped create the Women in Tribology Panel at the STLE Annual Meeting this year that had great discussion. The committee also created a Community Moment to be held at the beginning of meetings. It’s a short activity or discussion centered around bringing people together or idea sharing. Starting a meeting with a Community Moment is a simple but effective way of creating a structured space for safe conversations.
The committee also is helping organize a career pathways panel at the 2025 STLE Annual Meeting, May 18-22, 2025, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Atlanta, Ga. The panel will look at diverse career paths of professionals who have successfully transitioned between industry and academia. If you are interested in contributing to the panel, feel free to reach out to me.
Our community is changing on a regular basis, and I learned that everyone should try to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. Let’s build our community and be more aware of everyone around us. I encourage you to find someone outside of your group and connect with them in 2025. If you are on an STLE committee, reach out to someone you don’t know well. At the 2025 STLE Annual Meeting, introduce yourself to someone you don’t know. If you currently don’t volunteer for STLE, visit
www.stle.org/volunteer to look at opportunities and put yourself out there. This could help shed new light on your life personally and professionally.
The STLE DEI Committee would like to let everyone know that they have resources as well. To send questions, issues, comments, suggestions or feedback to the STLE DEI Committee, email
community@stle.org.
You can reach TLT publisher/editor-in-chief Rachel Fowler at rfowler@stle.org.