MCDB Assistant Professor Ariangela Kozik is one of six faculty members from the University of Michigan’s campuses to receive an Anti-Racism Research & Community Impact Faculty Fellowship from the National Center for Institutional Diversity at U-M.
The fellowship provides instrumental support to early-career faculty to advance their anti-racism scholarship. The fellowship aims to address a critical need — to successfully advance in the tenure and promotion process while concurrently supporting recipients’ efforts to use their expertise to fight systemic racism through policy advocacy, practice, teaching or community partnerships.
It provides funding to support research and public engagement that align with the aims of the initiative.
Kozik, who is also an assistant professor of internal medicine, Medical School, will be developing a course aimed at the misuse of socially defined ‘race’ as a biological category.
"I am grateful for the support of NCID and MCDB in this important work. I am excited to engage with students as they explore how microbiology connects the biological, environmental, and the social in critical ways," she says.
Her research proposal is: Addressing Knowledge Gaps in Biomedical Science Training: Uprooting Scientific Racism from our Understanding of Human Variation & the Microbiome.
The misapplication of race within the realm of scientific and medical research has significantly impeded groundbreaking advancement while perpetuating racial biases and systemic inequities. This proposal recognizes the urgency for transformative change in the teaching of biomedical sciences. Aimed at recontextualizing the historical and present-day misuse of 'race' as a biological category, I propose to develop an interdisciplinary course specifically designed for upper-level undergraduate and graduate-level students. The course includes a critical examination of race's inception and application during the Enlightenment period, its entanglement with biological determinism, and its misguided operationalization that taints contemporary scientific endeavors. Enrollees in this course will delve into a journey of intellectual unlearning and re-learning—debunking myths of biological racial differences, dissecting the impact of such misconceptions on scientific practices, and fostering an informed dialogue about racism’s role in shaping health disparities. Emphasizing the importance of a rigorous understanding of scientific history, students will develop the skills necessary to discern the nuances of ancestry, ethnicity, and genetic diversity. The funding requested will not only facilitate the creation of this pivotal coursework but will provide for a graduate student assistant and enable subsequent assessment of the course’s impact on students' understanding and attitudes. Through educating the scientific leaders of tomorrow, this course will establish a legacy of critically minded scholars equipped to dismantle entrenched racial biases in healthcare and research. It is a first step towards a future where science and medicine honor the rich tapestry of human diversity in the quest for global health and well-being.
What kind of impact can be made through scholarship?
“It is often assumed that scholarship can make an impact on the personal lives of the individuals under study and in the public more generally. That assumption is often untested and unexamined, even by those who produce scholarship for that purpose,” said Alford Young Jr., faculty director of the Anti-Racism Collaborative and associate director of the Center for Social Solutions.
“In supporting early-career scholars who are intentional about impact, this initiative establishes a foundation for examining precisely what kind of impact can be made through scholarship, how effective that impact might be, and how future scholarly efforts might build upon these early achievements.”
The NCID is home to the Anti-Racism Collaborative, a space created to facilitate U-M community engagement around research and scholarship focused on racial inequality, racial justice and anti-racist praxis.
The other 2024 Anti-Racism Research & Community Impact Faculty Fellows and their projects are:
- Yousif Hassan, assistant professor of public policy, Ford School; Data Governance in Africa: Decolonizing data infrastructures and imaginaries of the future.
- Nancy Khalil, assistant professor of American culture, LSA; Mitigating Inequities in Accreditation of Religious Institutions.
- Jennifer LaCosse, assistant professor of psychology, College of Arts, Sciences and Education, UM-Flint; A Community-Based Approach to Supporting Flint Parents’ Knowledge and Promotion of STEM.
- Lisbeth Iglesias-Rios, research investigator for epidemiology, School of Public Health; Precarious employment as a social determinant of cardiovascular disease in farmworkers.
- Amny Shuraydi, assistant professor of behavioral sciences, College of Arts, Sciences and Letters, UM-Dearborn; Observing Arab American, Middle Eastern, and Muslim Experiences in the Context of Greater Diversity on Campus and in the Community.
--from University of Michigan Record and NCID
