is an attempt to connect students with the DEI program. Diversity peer educators, such as Lyons, work towards diversity and inclusion that is tailored to students’ experiences on campus. The NET plan was developed in response to multiple student organization requests, wanting to enhance their diversity and inclusion. Implementation of the NET plan would mean conducting demographic and climate surveys for student organization and establishing an inclusivity plan tailored to that organization. Other resolutions included the Survivor Empowerment Fund, which calls for the allocation of $5,000 to support the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center and other sexual assault empowerment organizations on campus. This fund would sponsor events and guest speakers. LSA junior Izzy Baer, CSG vice president, explained how the Survivor Empowerment Fund is a way to increase survivors’ opportunities, as SAPAC would be able to put on more events and host more speakers. “They don’t have funding for projects that they would otherwise have wanted to do,” Baer said. Public Policy senior Daniel Greene, CSG president, closed the meeting with an announcement about an upcoming mental health event to help students cope with stress during finals. “On Wednesday, Dec. 12 at 6:00 p.m., we will be holding a workshop led by the director of CAPS (Counseling and Psychology Services), which will be titled, ‘10 things you can do right now to reduce your finals anxiety and stress,’” Greene said. The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com News Wednesday, December 5, 2018 — 3A Justices Stephen Breyer and Neil Gorsuch and Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn. For McNeal, winning the Marshall Scholarship represented a unique opportunity to pursue his interest in public policy and its intersections with science and technology. McNeal, who is planning on attending the University of Sussex, said he has been fascinated with physics and mathematics since high school but hopes the scholarship will allow him to indulge in other interests as well. “When I started undergraduate, I had this linear progression in my mind about where I was going to go,” McNeal said. “I was going to go to high school, go through undergraduate, do physics, and then go straight to grad school, then have a postdoc, then keep going along that path. But then, along the way, I have other interests that motivate me and that linear progression kind of excludes those. It didn’t allow for much deviation and so I wanted to look at alternative paths.” During his years at the University, McNeal served as the undergraduate liaison between students and faculty for the Physics Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. He also leads the Society of Physics Students and Japanese Language Circle as president of both groups. McNeal said his experiences working both in physics labs and in student organizations led him to realize that he wanted to incite meaningful change through policy work — he will pursue a degree in Science and Technology Policy starting in September. “Just barreling forward just didn’t seem like the right thing to do,” McNeal said. “These other interests and these other sides of life that I’m interested in, they’re calling me as well to not just become a researcher — because there’s more to life than just physics research. And I wanted to be more impactful outside of that, and part of where I could see myself making a difference would be in some aspect of policy.” After Burcroff spent the summer after her freshman year studying advanced mathematics and combinatorics at the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics program, she became increasingly passionate about understanding the different ways math is taught. As an aspiring mathematics professor, Burcroff tutored high school students in the Michigan Math Circle and Wolverine Pathways program throughout her undergraduate career and found it meaningful to teach younger students about creative approaches to mathematics. “All of these experiences allow me to mentor younger students, and I’ve watched a few of them as they’ve grown and some of them have gone on to the same Budapest Semesters in Mathematics program,” Burcroff said. “Walking them through the process and the benefits of what it can mean to study abroad or what it can mean to learn mathematics from a different culture really reaffirmed for me why I wanted to continue doing it.” The Schwarzman Scholarship recruits students interested in international politics to pursue a master’s degree in Global Affairs in Beijing. Unlike the Marshall Scholarship, Schwarzman Scholars can hail from any country around the world — according to a press release published Monday. The 2020 class includes students from 38 countries and 119 universities. After a competitive application process resulting in 400 semi- finalists, 147 applicants were chosen to receive the award. As the University’s first Schwarzman Scholar, Batista said he hopes to both further his interest in global affairs and represent Brazil, his home country. Batista was a community assistant in Mosher- Jordan Residence Hall his freshman year and currently serves as a residential adviser in South Quad Residence Hall. He is also an intern in the Boston Consulting Group’s Detroit office. For his senior thesis in the Ross School of Business, he is researching the role of trust and corruption in democratic societies. Batista said his experience as an international student at the University gave him a new perspective on Brazil’s politics and culture. “As soon as I came to the U.S., I had a view that was as an outsider of the United States and almost as an outsider of my own country, as well,” Batista said. “I think that allowed me to think more deeply about systems of governance as opposed to just being immersed in that system and not exactly understanding what is going on.” Batista said his reaction to winning the Schwarzman Scholarship was utter shock, especially because he is only the fifth Brazilian to ever receive the award. “My jaw just dropped, and I think it dropped for a solid week,” Batista said. Though Dyson attributed the award winners’ success to their incredible academic achievements, he also mentioned how the scholarships also reflect the students’ personalities, interests and character. “I don’t want to set up a stereotype of what a Rhodes Scholar or Marshall Scholar or Schwarzman Scholar looks like,” Dyson said. “I really think it’s about your story — so who are you, where you’re going in the future, how this scholarship moves you forward.” Each August, students complete the first step of the Marshall Scholarship application by seeking institutional endorsement from the University. According to Henry Dyson, director of the Office of National Scholarships and Fellowships, applicants are required to submit an online application and four letters of recommendation in a competitive nomination process. Once nominated, Dyson oversees their applications as they move to the national level and begin interviewing with the scholarship program itself. “It’s quite prestigious and competitive even to be nominated for these scholarships,” Dyson said. diversity statements and how higher education institutions use them to evaluate candidates. The authors were able to find better ways to elicit thorough statements from candidates, which Chavous said would make the practice more effective. “We think that this is a really promising practice and tool,” Chavous said. “One part of our University DEI initiative is enhancing diversity, equity and inclusion in our campus environment and part of that is through the faculty that we hire. So having tools that allow us to both understand and assess the different types of work and contributions that faculty have made allows us to be more thoughtful and purposeful about selecting faculty who contribute to our academic mission and who contribute to an inclusive and equitable environment.” The diversity statements are not a required part of hiring through the entire University, but several colleges within the University have recently begun using them, including the Ford School of Public Policy, which mandated in May that the statements be used in all future hiring. Paula Lantz, the school’s associate dean for academic affairs, said the diversity statements simply serve as additional information for consideration in the hiring process — information that is especially important given the subject matter taught in the Public Policy School. “Issues related to diversity, equity and inclusion are really central to everything that we do here,” Lantz said. “There are not very many issues in public policy that don’t grapple with issues related to social inequality, to political difference, to how policies affect different groups of people across society. So when we are looking to expand our faculty, we really do want people who we think can contribute to how we teach in 2018 and going forward and also how we engage in research and policy.” Lantz said the practice of using the diversity statements will enrich the student experience by bringing in a more capable and holistically valuable faculty. “Students gain from a process in which we are making sure that when we bring new faculty into the school, they’re going to really be contributing to all parts of our mission,” Lantz said. “Our entire community benefits when we bring in new faculty who we are sure are going to be contributing to all of the work that we want our community to be contributing to the world.” Music, Theatre & Dance junior Saawan Tiwari echoed this sentiment, saying faculty with more diversity of experience offer students more ways of thinking that can aid them in a wide range of disciplines. “Having more diversity on staff and diversity in teaching obviously helps because it’s being told something differently,” Tiwari said. “The more staff you have teaching in different ways, the more that the student can figure out what staff they like, figure out why that is and then figure out how to apply how that staff is teaching them things to other courses.” Chavous noted there has been criticism of the practice of using diversity statements among the higher education academic community. Some educators have said the statements amount to required professions of political beliefs, which would have ambiguous implications for the academic freedom of the applicants. However, Chavous said this is a misperception and added it is necessary for institutions to be specific about the purpose of the statements — they are intended to be used to gather information about candidates’ skills and strengths, not their political beliefs. One of Chavous’s general findings from the study was that diversity statements tended to be more useful when the instructions were more explicit. She emphasized there are numerous ways for faculty candidates to consider diversity in their work and contribute to the University environment. “We have to be thoughtful about the way that we ask for the information,” Chavous said. “Thoughtful and inclusive about the ways that we consider different ways of expressing diversity commitments — through scholarship, through teaching, through mentoring, through service.” Chavous also said some academic units that request diversity statements have reported they are yielding more diverse applicant pools. Chavous believes this is happening because the practice of using the statements signals these institutions value diversity, which may attract more diverse applicants. Chavous is now sharing the findings from the study at national conferences and using them to improve the practices of universities across the country. She believes the practice will directly affect the education students receive at the University and elsewhere. Overall, Chavous expressed optimism about the tangible effects that the practice will have in the future. “We think this is a start,” Chavous said. “But we really think this is a promising start of a practice and a set of practices that will have a high impact for our campus. SCHOLARSHIPS From Page 1A DIVERSITY From Page 1A income backgrounds were struggling with the hazardous environmental exposures. Ferris said these findings inspired her to dedicate her work to equity and inclusion. In her role at the National Audubon Society, Ferris’s work is focused on equity and inclusion of racially diverse groups that are currently underrepresented in the environmental conservation field. Ferris’s initiatives are directed toward diversifying the workers at Audubon as well as shifting the work of the organization itself. In order to advance DEI initiatives, Ferris said Audubon is currently curating their first comprehensive report which gives a historical record of investments and initiatives that are advancing equity and diversity at Audubon. Ferris drew attention to the Audubon’s Statement on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, which reads, “Just as biodiversity strengthens natural systems, the diversity of human experience strengthens our conservation efforts for the benefit of nature and all human beings.” “I think it’s important to draw parallels to what is going on in the conservation world and our aspirations,” Ferris said. “Just as we recognize, herald and acknowledge biodiversity of species we also need to be heralding and supporting social diversity in the work that we do.” The organization is 114 years old, and diversity, Ferris said, was necessary for its survival. “Our aim is to be more representative of groups that are currently underrepresented so that we can be around for another 114 years,” Ferris said. “The United States has been racially and culturally diverse for a really long time ... What we have now is a game of employer catch up.” Sonia Joshi, the SEAS DEI program manager, explained how the DEI speaker series coincides with a new DEI seminar course that is offered in SEAS. In the past, the DEI speaker series usually consisted of one to two speakers per semester. This year, there have been one to two speakers per month. “The premise (of the speakers) was to bring in environmental professionals of color that are doing impactful environment and conservation work, to really put the lens to people that might not realize that there are people of color that are working in the environmental space and are in leadership positions,” Joshi said. Joshi also said the DEI course is supposed to highlight that diversity, equity and inclusion is a growing field, and many environmental organizations are now creating positions and departments solely dedicated to this type of work. Environment and Sustainability graduate student Zoe Fullem is enrolled in the DEI seminar class and said this speaker was more informative than previous ones. “We’ve had a lot of speakers but this was cool because she actually touched on what she’s done at a huge organization,” Fullem said. “We haven’t had someone from such a big environmental organization.” Environment and Sustainability graduate student Joy Yakie said the seminars that coincide with the DEI course are helpful in comprehending the material. “Taking the class with the seminar, that’s when you feel the impact more,” Yakie said. “If I had taken the class without this seminar, it would be purely just theoretical reading journals.” Fullem believes the one- credit class is not enough to fully delve into the topic of diversity, equity and inclusion. “We wish we could get deeper into things,” Fullem said. “I feel like it’s not enough. But it’s a great pairing to come to these speaker series.” A University of Michigan study published last Friday found anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of patients are not completely truthful with their doctors. The study, led by Brian Zikmund-Fisher, associate professor of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University, examined the frequency of patients failing to disclose relevant information to their clinicians. The study used an online survey to assess participants’ interactions with health professionals, asking them to answer about what aspects of their lives they failed to tell the truth about, such as how often they exercise and whether or not they take their prescriptions correctly. Researchers found the main reason patients withheld information was a fear of being judged. Zikmund-Fisher said clinicians did not wish to make patients feel embarrassed or judged. “There’s certainly part of it that’s internal,” Zikmund- Fisher said. “They didn’t want to take up more of their health care providers time, they didn’t want their healthcare providers to think they’re stupid, they didn’t want this information to be in their record (and) they didn’t want to hear how bad the behavior is.” The study found young people were roughly 20 percent more likely to lie to their health care providers than older generations. In particular, younger female participants with worse self-rated health reported withholding information from health care professionals more often. Researcher Aaron Scherer, an associate professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Iowa, said he wants to know if more honest relationships could occur if a doctor shares similar identities to their patient. “One interesting way to build off these findings would be to test whether the extent to which a patient shares similarities with their doctor (e.g., they share the same race or gender) influences their tendency to tell their doctor potentially important health information or not,” Scherer wrote in an email interview. In order to lower the rate of patient dishonesty, Zikmund- Fisher said greater verbal compassion from the health care provider is necessary. “This is speculation, we do not have evidence for this in our study, but my speculation is that now that we know that this is in fact quite common it may be important for healthcare providers to acknowledge that,” Zikmund-Fisher said. “Just say to patients, ‘I know that it is difficult sometimes to share with me if you don’t understand me, if you aren’t following the instructions, if you are engaging in behaviors that you know you probably shouldn’t be.’ Acknowledge that sharing that type of information is hard … and to try and reassure patients that.” Scherer said empathy is important from the patients as well. “I think one solution to this problem is the development of increased empathy from both doctors and patients,” Scherer wrote. “On the patient-side, I don’t think most patients realize the enormous number of demands that are being placed on doctors right now, so it might be necessary for a broader information campaign about these demands to change how the general public view their doctors.” When presented with the research, Nursing sophomore Jacob Doxen said he was surprised to find out the percentage of dishonest patients was so high. “It’s shocking because people in the medical profession, nurses and doctors, are just trying to help their patients,” Doxen said. “There’s no judgment involved in being a nurse or a doctor. We can really only provide the help that the patient needs.” However, Doxen said he is hopeful for the future and believes trust is necessary to create the best relationship between a patient and a health care professional. “In nursing school, one of the biggest things that they emphasize is building trust with your patients and proving to them that they can be open with you and honest with you,” Doxen said. “Make sure that trust is established and continue to build upon it with every visit or every time you interact. It’s a lot easier to lose trust than it is to build trust.” AUDUBON From Page 1A CSG From Page 1A Most patients lie to doctors about health issues, University study finds ALYSSA MCMURTRY For the Daily “They don’t have funding for projoects that they would otherwise have wanted to do”