About FAU's Bias Busters

Unconscious bias and microaggression is a pressing social issue that can generate significant negative consequences, especially for populations that bear the brunt of stereotyping – by race, gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, family background, and societal and economic status. This is of particular concern in the fields of engineering and computer science, which historically have experienced lack of diversity and where unconscious bias hampers the advocacy of inclusion and diversity in the workplace.

Bias Busters Initiative (BBI) at the FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science was established in Fall 2019 to help combat the harmful impacts of unconscious bias, foster systemic change in our culture, and make our College a more inclusive community. 

Our goals are to raise awareness of and understand unconscious bias, to equip faculty, staff and students with the vocabulary and skills to intervene effectively when situations of unconscious bias occur, and to create a more inclusive community culture. 

What steps are we taking to reach those goals? 

Review research: We are sharing scientific studies that are relevant to unconscious bias and that show how unconscious bias is a natural part of our thinking process. While aspects of “fast thinking” (i.e., rapid, unconscious judgement) may be beneficial when dealing with life-threatening situations, the automatic and unintentional aspects triggered by our brain can generate harmful effects in other contexts. 

Raise awareness: Equipped with scientific explanations of unconscious bias and given that unconscious bias happens naturally to well-intentioned people, most people don’t realize when they have made an unconsciously biased comment or taken action in that way. Hence, we are raising awareness and training people to identify unconscious bias behavior and language, to hold ourselves and others accountable, and to appropriately intervene in situations of unconscious bias. 

Understand ourselves: Part of the training will help participants recognize their own biases – judgments and assessments of other people and situations that are triggered by our own background, culture and personal experience, and understand the negative ripple effects of inaction when we hear or see bias-based non-inclusive statements or actions. 

Take action: The program provides participants with basic intervention skills that can be applied in situations where potentially harmful bias occurs.

 

*FAU's Bias Busters is built on BiasBusters@CMU and Google’s Bias Busting @ Work Programs