Ebony McGee Discusses the Value of Interdisciplinary Studies
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We spoke with Ebony McGee, BDP of Innovation and Inclusion in the STEM Ecosystem, about her interdisciplinary approach to research on racialized biases and marginalization.
1. How has the interdisciplinary nature of your work shaped what kinds of questions you ask in your research?
My training in electrical and industrial engineering, combined with public health, educational psychology, mental health, and Black Studies, pushes me to ask not just how STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) education works, but at what cost and for whom. This lens transforms questions from “How do we instill more grit in Black STEM students?” to “How do racialized STEM education and environmental racism produce weathering, racial battle fatigue, and premature death—and what would it mean to treat these as educational and workplace hazards requiring structural accountability rather than individual resilience?”
2. What interdisciplinary collaborations are most crucial to developing equity in #STEM?
The most essential partnerships pair STEM faculty with environmental justice researchers, public health scholars, and community organizers practicing fugitive pedagogy and Afrofuturism. Without collaboration across epidemiology, law, education, and grassroots environmental groups, equity work cannot address the lethal convergence of industrial pollution, academic stress, and systemic neglect that disproportionately kills Black women scholars’ decades before their projected life expectancy.
3. How do you translate findings from different fields into changes that institutions can actually implement?
Drawing from the R-RIGHTS 400 Years Project, I advocate for decolonized STEM curricula that fundamentally restructure how invention is taught—not just adding Black inventors as footnotes, but reframing entire historical narratives. For instance, Norbert Rillieux’s multiple-effect evaporator revolutionized sugar refining in the 1840s, yet curricula routinely erase his story while white man receive sole credit for industrial progress. To enforce this change institutionally, I tie curriculum reform to specific accountability mechanisms, such as independent STEM Truth and Reckoning Commissions that audit textbook racism and mandate structural revisions before accreditation renewal.
