How the culture of STEM helps reproduce inequality was the focus of Dr. Erin Cech's Zoom talk, Understanding Enginering Education Culture, on Tuesday, Sept. 8. Drawing from several NSF-funded survey- and interview-based studies, Cech, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, discussed how these professional cultures can have built within them disadvantages for women, people of color, and LGBTQ persons in STEM. She discussed the role of three cultural ideologies — schemas of scientific excellence, depoliticization, and the meritocratic ideology — in producing these disadvantages.