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The shift in undergraduate student demographic composition, particularly for the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, has been coupled with an ever increasing need for faculty to be more culturally aware and responsive. Traditionally, higher education has relied on the professional development programs of disciplinary societies and associations to meet such needs. However, designing professional development for STEM faculty in ways that awaken awarenesses about racial differences and their impact on academic success requires more than the conventional faculty development offerings, which, more often than not, only give cursory nods to difference or limit programming to “cookbook” protocols of do's and don'ts. Indeed, today's STEM faculty professional development must be met with more sophisticated paradigms that foreground personal reflection and development. Safe brave spaces represent an ideal mechanism for supporting not only personal reflection but also the grappling with and letting go of the destructive values and beliefs that negatively impact undergraduate STEM student success. The chapter offers the reader a view into our perspective as conveners of safe brave professional development spaces. In it, we also share the words of a safe brave space occupier, demonstrating how the power of reflection can influence the value of safe brave spaces. As a result, the reader is left with a different lens through which STEM faculty professional development programs can and should be considered – whether it is who is in them, who is missing from them, or what is required to facilitate more productive interactions within them. Admittedly, there is more work yet to be done. Understanding that this work requires safety and bravery is a necessary next step.

THE ANCIENT and royal burgh of Stirling, at one time the capital of Scotland, was at the turn of the century the county town of Stirlingshire and the centre of a thriving agricultural community. With the exception of a carpet and woollen mill and some neighbouring coal mines, there was little industry in the town. This was reflected in its social structure. There was growing up in the village of Raploch, beneath the castle rock, a sizeable Irish community of labourers and artisans, but of a population of around 20,000 in 1900, middle class businessmen and shopkeepers predominated. The town's structure in turn was reflected in the nature of the Town Council, which, although not always conservative in politics, was generally conservative when faced with innovation, be it a swimming pool or a modern town centre. This might explain why in Stirling the public library movement was late in starting, nearly 25 years after the Public Libraries (Scotland) Act of 1870 authorising the use for library purposes of 1 d. in the £ from the rates. It might also explain why there was some opposition from the Town Council to providing for the upkeep of the library after its foundation.