A Call for Being Human in Undergraduate Statistics

There are many calls for humanizing STEM, including statistics. We begin this paper by providing an evidence-based analysis of the ways in which personal experiences, community structures, and power dynamics may shape the data analysis cycle. Next, we introduce an interdisciplinary framework developed at our U.S.-based liberal arts college—namely, “Being Human in STEM” (HSTEM). The HSTEM initiative helps students understand and navigate their identities (and associated privileges and biases) in academia by reflecting on their own lived experiences, engaging with empirical evidence on inequities in STEM, and then developing an action project to enhance STEM inclusion. Finally, we share lessons learned from multiple iterations of this course and discuss how to adapt the HSTEM framework to create a more inclusive, humanized, undergraduate statistics curriculum.