Challenges and Initiatives in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Cancer Molecular Imaging

A diverse biomedical workforce is essential to achieve excellence in patient care, clinical translational, and basic research. Diversity, equity, and inclusion challenges in cancer molecular represent a combination of the challenges facing the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) field, and challenges in Radiology and Nuclear Medicine. Although there is a growing awareness of conscious and unconscious bias that negatively affect the cancer imaging world, many challenges remain such as overcoming barriers to entry into the pipeline, avoiding program dropout, and providing long-term career prospect. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a significant setback and further highlighted problems faced by women and underrepresented minorities. In this perspective, we have identified some of the challenges faced and highlighted ongoing and future initiatives to address these challenges.

Staying or leaving? Patterns and determinants of Italian researchers’ migration

This article aims to highlight the dynamics underlying Italian researchers’ migration patterns over the last decade. Building on data gathered through an international study (MORE 3), the analysis focuses on identifying perceptions of working conditions, career prospect and confidence in the national Research and Innovation (R&I) system by Italian researchers in Italy and abroad. It provides a comparative assessment of researchers’ satisfaction with regards to their R&I environment in and outside Italy, across different fields of study and career stages. Results show that Italian researchers working abroad have a faster career progression than researchers in the Italian system and provide evidence of a low confidence of Italian researchers regarding career prospect in their own country. These findings are interpreted as major determinants of the decision to emigrate and develop an academic career abroad. Implications for future science policy in Italy are discussed.

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT GRADUATES’ JOB PREFERENCES: A CASE STUDY ON ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING CENTER TEACHERS

The demands of English as an international language keep increasing along the time. Through time, the needs for learning English vary from for different purposes. Then the realization came to the surface that not all groups of learners need to learn general English. Thus, the design of English courses is developed for specific purposes as they are best known as English for Specific Purpose (ESP). The needs for learning English in specific purpose enable English teachers to pose themselves in different challenges other than in formal education. This paper aims at investigating the motivations of some English Education Department graduates for working as English instructors at English courses. The qualitative data was obtained by conducting the interview on some English instructors in Swift English School in Yogyakarta. After analyzing the data, it was found that despite its challenges, some English Education graduates prefer to work in English courses to regular schools. With all of the privileges of working in an English course, some general motivations underlie their working preferences. Among of the factors are flexible teaching situation, more chances for improving personal competence, higher salary and moderate career prospect.

Between sexuality and professionalism: Experiences of gay workers at Blued, a Chinese gay social app company

Recent scholarship on gay social apps has largely focused on the experiences of their users. In this article, we take a production-side approach to examine the politics of sexuality and professionalism in Blued, a Chinese gay social app company. Based on ethnography at the company and in-depth interviews with its workers, we found that workers at Blued actively weaved their sexual identity into their professional identity. Also, its CEO made use of workers’ personal memory and collective hope as a motivating rhetoric, transgressing the boundary between the private and the public. Nonetheless, the collapse of the private–public division is not total, because such division was continuously re-established by the company’s corporate external positioning and workers’ pragmatic consideration of their career prospect. The case of Blued reveals a highly dynamic relationship between sexuality and professionalism, which sometimes reinforce and sometimes negate each other.

Graduates of Private Schools and the Greek University: Empirical data and sociological interpretations through the period of crisis

Ιn modern Greece, the entrance in higher education is considered a kind of social 'fetish'. In this concept, the Greek family diachronically strives to provide its members with an academic perspective, even if this parental choice is linked to many economic and psychological sacrifices. Private education is often associated with the perspective of a better academic and career prospect which is necessarily linked to entrance procedures at the Greek university. During the period (2001-2011) the representation of private school graduates in the total student population seems to be under "representative normality”. Additionally, private school students appear to have the same overall possibilities (neither less nor more) with public school graduates into higher education. However, a deeper sociological analysis demonstrates significant differences in the representation of higher education between public and private schools. This report focuses on private school graduates and more generally on the interpretation of how their entrance into higher education is portrayed.