Uncharted: Navigating Disabilities, Chronic Conditions, and Potential Bias in STEM Careers

Abstract

While cultivating her career as a scientist, Dr. Skylar Bayer has developed a career in science communication, dabbling in a diversity of activities including an appearance on The Colbert Report in 2013 about a case of missing scallop gonads. Since 2014, she has worked as a producer for The Story Collider, a non-profit dedicated to storytelling in STEAM by giving researchers, doctors, engineers, poets, comedians, and more, an opportunity to share their personal experiences. She has co-authored several papers on the importance of storytelling as a science communication tool, taught science storytelling both in Story Collider workshops and as a professor at Roger Williams University. She has also performed stories at Moth story slams, Story District, Perfect Liars Club, Risk!, Soundbites, Mudrooms, and The Story Collider. She is currently on Juneau’s local Mudrooms storyboard, leading storytelling workshops for the organization. In her dedication to storytelling in science, Skylar is a co-editor of the recently published book “Uncharted: How Scientists Navigate Their Own Health, Research, and Experiences of Bias.” This book is a collection of first-person stories by current and former scientists with disabilities or chronic conditions that have impacted their careers, highlights the experiences of people representing different demographics as well as a diversity of medical conditions and the challenges, ideas, and some solutions to how they have addressed the accessibility problem. She started this project with her co-editor Gabi Serrato Marks because they both told stories for The Story Collider about being limited in their respective fieldwork after being diagnosed with medical conditions. Each share their own unique stories within Uncharted. Using their background in marine science and oceanography, they arranged the book with a nautical journey in mind, making parallels between the uncharted journey on a ship, as they both experienced in graduate school, with the uncharted journey of science and medical diagnosis. Dr. Bayer started this project with Gabi because sharing stories from the perspective of scientists with medical issues and disabilities are important for everyone to hear, especially younger audiences, like students, who may be really interested in a career in STEM and are likely looking for examples or models to whom they can relate and understand. Sharing stories is also important to community building to show each other that we are not alone in our experiences in STEM and by opening up, we can work together to make STEM a more accessible, inclusive and welcoming space for all. With her extensive experience and rigorous training as a scientist as well as sharing stories with a variety of audiences, Skylar is adept at engaging diverse audiences, drawing them in using narratives that speak to common experiences.