About the ACCESS Organization

Despite increasing awareness of the benefits that come with having a diverse STEM workforce, efforts to increase the number of URM scientists have met with limited success. In professional scientific societies, diversity-focused committees continue to play essential roles in the efforts of scientific societies to foster inclusion and facilitate the professional development of underrepresented minorities (URMs) in their respective scientific disciplines. Until recently, the efforts of these committees remained independent and disconnected from one another. Funding from the National Science Foundation has allowed several of these committees to come together and form the Alliance to Catalyze Change for Equity in STEM Success, herein referred to as ACCESS. The overall goal of this meta-organization is to serve as a community in which diversity-focused committees can interact, synergize, and have a unified voice, enabling them to better address the needs and concerns of URMs in STEM disciplines based on their collective experiences. To accomplish this, ACCESS meets regularly to share data and best practices in programmatic assessment and structures. Our ultimate goal is to broaden ACCESS to encompass additional societies, including those wanting to develop programs for diversity and inclusion and those with existing programs.