Organizing a General Meeting Through ASBME!

The Associated Students of Biomedical Engineering is the quintessential organization for BME majors, hosting corporate, social, mentorship, community service, and research events, among others. As the Public Relations Chair on the ASBME Executive Board this year, I have mainly advertised and helped out at the events put on by the club. However, I recently organized my first general meeting—focused on Diversity and Identity in the biomedical engineering field, a subject that remains very much overlooked and inadequately addressed. I felt that discussing the disparities that exist in this field was a critical first step towards creating tangible change.

 

I contacted Jason Marvin, a Ph.D. candidate from Cornell University that I had met at the Biomedical Engineering Society conference in Orlando a month before, and asked him to be a speaker at the event, as he had hosted a similar discussion on identity at the conference. Luckily, Jason agreed, and offered valuable feedback on the discussion questions I had drafted up for the meeting.

 

 

At the ASBME general meeting, Jason opened up with an introduction on identity, sharing their personal experiences and answering questions pertaining not only to the topic of the meeting, but also to the experience of completing undergrad in BME and becoming a graduate student. Afterwards, we broke into small groups and discussed the questions Jason and I had created, diving into topics such as gender inequality, racial disparities, imposter syndrome, and tokenism, among others. Although I was admittedly a bit nervous to organize my own event, everyone who attended participated in the discussion and made the event awesome (thank you to our members!).

 

I’m looking forward to helping organize other such events in the future through ASBME!