To all workshop registrants,

Thank you so much for registering for our NSF-funded, Beckman-supported workshop on problematizing incivility in STEM contexts! Here are some final details about the workshop.

First, please make sure to sign up for the Slack workspace if you haven’t already – that is a space that people can coordinate travel plans and discuss possible session topics. I will also be checking that space all workshop long for feedback as we go along to help motivate topic tables for lunches, and to inform our debrief exercises. This space will be crucial for any activities inspired by interactions in the workshop – I hope we are able to keep the momentum going and use the space for thinking about our research and practice.

Next, if you are driving, please note that there is limited parking in the small lot to the immediate east of the building. However, directly across Mathews there is a parking garage. There are also plenty of spaces for bicycles along the southeast edge of the building. Here is a website with more complete travel information.

If you are unfamiliar with the Beckman Institute, you can enter through any door, but the auditorium and room 1005 – the main rooms of the workshop – are in the southwest portion of the building on the first floor. There will be signage directing you there. If you are coming from the Hampton Inn please note there is no north entrance – I recommend you cross University at Goodwin then enter Beckman from the east.

A few other smaller notes:

• The workshop starts promptly at 8am, but Beckman’s doors open at 7:30am and you can arrive any time after that. Registration will be open and the food will be out by then so please feel free to get started on breakfast and situate yourselves.
• The first two sessions on the first morning are very important and set the stage for the whole workshop. Please make every effort to be there!
• If you would like to support our efforts at sustainability/not burdening you with unnecessary workshop swag, feel free to bring your own lanyard. (If you forget, no worries, we will have some!)
• Please limit your fragrance use to create an accessible environment for those sensitive to odors and certain chemicals.
• Panelists who have slides – please arrive ready to test your computer and/or slides in the break before your panel.
• We have several attendees with celiac disease, and several more with anaphylactic food allergies. Our caterers will be making every effort to reduce cross-contamination and avoid the allergies we know of. Please help us by being very careful with the food – please use only the utensils intended for each dish so that cross-contamination does not occur. Getting glutened can ruin an affected person’s week, and allergen exposures can be deadly.
• We have been working hard to ensure that the food is as accommodating as possible for as many people as possible. Meals will all be vegetarian or pescatarian. If for any reason you don’t feel like you’re getting enough to eat or your needs are not being met, please just come find me and I’ll make sure you get taken care of.
• We will have an informal listener available for a few hours each afternoon if anyone feels they need comfort or space, or additional time to process their own feelings. This is different from a therapeutic space with a true therapist-client relationship, but still can offer a kind ear should you need it.

I have made some changes to the workshop agenda in order to make specific room to think about and address harm to Indigenous people caused by invoking “civility” and “incivility” in this workshop. One of the goals of this workshop has always been to problematize these terms, and to think about who they get weaponized against. However I (KC) was thinking of these issues generally in terms of how they affect certain racial groups and other marginalized folks. I did not consider the very specific harms they cause because of the way that being “uncivilized” has been a justification for genocide in the US and in other colonized countries, and that the term “civilized” has been used to pit different Indigenous peoples against each other.

For more feel free to check out the Twitter thread I wrote on this earlier this week here. I don’t want to name the two folks who came to me with their concerns about this term because to do so risks their own emotional harm, but I do want to deeply thank them for coming to me and giving me the opportunity to address this.

One of the changes I have made is creating a session immediately after the opening remarks to address the historical and racial harm of the term “incivility,” particularly to Indigenous peoples. I have also spoken to the advisory board so that we can think on how further to address this concern, and I will be discussing this with the moderators of the sessions in a call next week.

Below is the revised agenda for the workshop. I welcome additional thoughts and feedback, especially in Slack. Please note that registration ends very soon!

DRAFT AGENDA