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Patricia Castruita was chatting with her mentee when she experienced one of those role-reversing moments in which teacher becomes student. After recently earning a bachelor’s degree in biology, Castruita had landed a research position at the University of California, San Francisco. Her mentee, a Latina undergraduate student majoring in biology, was seeking opportunities for lab experience, and shared that she was struggling to find the courage to request a letter of recommendation from a course professor. Her reason, Castruita recalls: “I just don’t feel like my professor thinks I deserve it.”
It dawned on Castruita that, as a minority in STEM, she, too, could be hamstrung by doubt about how she felt people perceived her. Coming to a lab at a top-tier research institution with her own funding, Castruita, a Latina herself, says she’d figured she was immune to the stereotypes and biases that often plague ...
