Welcome to the first edition of our new feature, the PGED Community Spotlight! We’ll be using this recurring column to profile some of the amazing people we have been fortunate enough to connect with through PGED. Some people are collaborators who have worked with PGED on a regular basis, some will be like-hearted people who we have admired from afar for their efforts to help champion our cause, and all of them dazzle us with their passion for delivering high-quality education about genetics and related issues to students and the general public.
Introducing Shoumita Dasgupta
We begin with Shoumita Dasgupta, a friend and advocate of PGED who is a professor of medicine at Boston University. She is also director of graduate studies for genetics and genomics there, and is Past President of the Association of Professors of Human and Medical Genetics. Shoumita earned her bachelor’s degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her master’s and PhD degrees at the University of California, San Francisco.
We applaud Shoumita’s leadership on equity and inclusion in genetics education, and we are grateful that she brings PGED lessons to local classrooms when she travels—including a visit with middle schoolers in Charleston, South Carolina last year and plans in the works for visiting schools in Washington state this spring.
Interview
We chatted with Shoumita recently to learn more about her work and her vision for improving genetics education.
How did you first get connected with PGED?
Shoumita: I initially met some of the PGED team on social media. We were like kindred spirits! I asked Marnie and Nadine to think about how to adapt the PGED curricula for the Association of Professors of Human and Medical Genetics since our learners are much older than the usual students who get these lessons, and we wanted to explore doing outreach activities with younger learners as well. PGED is so great at welcoming people into the conversation in a very friendly and engaging way.
Tell us a bit about your career. What do you do?
Shoumita: I went to graduate school thinking I would have a traditional academic career, and while I was serving as a TA, I realized that I was most excited about interacting with other students. For me, that’s what filled my cup. I did a teaching fellowship focused on teaching cases to small groups of medical students, and later worked as a human biology instructor at a community college. I learned so much in that experience: how to keep students interested and motivated, how to keep things relevant. After that I joined Boston University when the Department of Genetics and Genomics was just being founded. That gave me the freedom to start something from scratch.
What’s your favorite thing to do outside of work?
Shoumita: I really love reading, especially novels written by women of color and immigrants.
What do you think is the biggest challenge in your field today?
Shoumita: In my academic job, in addition to being an educator, I also work in the DEI space. DEI education is really under assault right now. Having these conversations around equity topics can be scary for educators. They worry about potential backlash and whether there will be personal consequences just for teaching the facts. I worry that this climate will cause people to remain silent on these essential issues and concepts. That’s the deepest concern I have.
What about the greatest opportunity in your field?
Shoumita: I believe that talent is equitably spread but opportunity is not. The more we can connect with people of all backgrounds, the more we can get out there and meet these kids where they are. There is so much to be gained if we can engage these bright minds.
What is one thing you have yet to check off your bucket list?
Shoumita: I have a travel list of places I’m really excited to visit. As a biologist, I feel like I’ve got to go to the Galápagos Islands, and I also frequently daydream about Angkor Wat.
What is something about genetics that you want more people to know?
Shoumita: I really wish people understood that genetics tells us how truly similar we are. Many people tend to focus on the very minuscule parts of our genomes that are different, but our genomes actually provide evidence that we are far more alike than different.
If you could help PGED accomplish one thing, what would it be?
Shoumita: I’m such a big fan of PGED’s mission. It is so important to get those lessons out there into the classroom so people can have meaningful discussions. It’s not like you have to have your PhD to have these discussions, and PGED helps to demystify it for people.
We’re excited about your upcoming book. Can you tell us more about it?
Shoumita: I have been working on this book Where Biology Ends and Bias Begins: Lessons on Belonging from our DNA for the past year and a half, and I’m really excited about getting it out into the world. It’s about helping people understand what biology can and can’t tell us about common human traits, such as the difference between sex and gender, or between ancestry and race. It’s also a scientific rebuttal to many biased ideas that have taken root, highlighting the potential harms that could lie ahead by misconstruing what we know about biology. It’s my first book, and I wrote it for the general public as well as for use in the classroom. Currently the publication date is set for early 2025, and interested future readers can sign up here to be notified when pre-sales are available.
When you were a kid, what was the first thing you wanted to be when you grew up?
Shoumita: In second grade I was deciding between being an astronaut and a teacher. I guess I knew myself early on!