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Geoscience bachelor's degrees by race and ethnicity. Pie chart comparison of 1998 (a), and 2018 (b) geoscience bachelor's degrees by students' race and ethnicity. Latinx (Hispanic or Latino), Am Indian (American Indian or Alaska Native), Black (Black or African American), Pac Islander (Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander), Other (Other or unknown).
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Over the past 20 years, the proportion of US geoscience undergraduate degree recipients from marginalized racial groups has increased about threefold, more than for graduate degrees. Much of this progress currently is concentrated at relatively few universities.
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Context 1
... in 1998-to 21% of a total of 7113 bachelor degrees in 2018 ( Fig. 1; Supplementary Table 1), according to degree completion data for bachelor's degrees in the US 12 . Among these groups, the largest percentage increase was for Hispanic/Latino students which increased from 3% to 10%, with the most growth since 2007 (Fig. 2). This percentage increase was larger than that for physical science bachelor ...
Citations
... 21,23,30,50 The institutions making significant impact are few. 23,49,50,54 Given the culture of geoscience, trainees and more senior participants from marginalized groups continue to face hostility, isolation, and other barriers. [55][56][57][58][59] Such experiences impact retention and recruitment by causing continual damage to BIPOC people's mental and physical health. ...
... Howard University in partnership with NOAA produced 60% of all African American atmospheric sciences PhDs in the past decade with 98% in the workforce, whereas top 10 programs produced fewer than 10 in the past 25 years. 23,36,50,54 Other examples of effective geoscience programs include NOAA's José E. Serrano Education Partnership Program with MSIs, 68,69 responsible for training graduates who have become 37% of the NOAA minority science hires from 2000 to 2005; the Center for Diverse Leadership in Science at UCLA, [70][71][72] which takes a human-centered relational approach grounded in equity, and works to build power in marginalized people, groups, and communities, while taking an interdisciplinary, intergenerational, and ecological approach, and has supported >200 fellows including students, community practitioners, and faculty fellows, and is effective at diversifying the geosciences workforce; and the Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science program at University Corporation for Atmospheric Research that through effective mentored research experiences is significantly broadening graduate school participation of historically underrepresented groups in the geosciences. 67,73 Major increases in investment for effective strategies have recently been proposed to broaden participation in STEM and advance systemic change. ...
Water, weather, and climate affect everyone. However, their impacts on various communities can be very different based on who has access to essential services and environmental knowledge. Structural discrimination, including racism and other forms of privileging and exclusion, affects people's lives and health, with ripples across all sectors of society. In the United States, the need to equitably provide weather, water, and climate services is uplifted by the Justice40 Initiative (Executive Order 14008), which mandates 40% of the benefits of certain federal climate and clean energy investments flow to disadvantaged communities. To effectively provide such services while centering equity, systemic reform is required. Reform is imperative given increasing weather-related disasters, public health impacts of climate change, and disparities in infrastructure, vulnerabilities, and outcomes. It is imperative that those with positional authority and resources manifest responsibility through (1) recognition, inclusion, and prioritization of community expertise; (2) the development of a stronger and more representative and equitable workforce; (3) communication about climate risk in equitable, relevant, timely, and culturally responsive ways; and (4) the development and implementation of new models of relationships between communities and the academic sector.
... The geosciences continue to be one of the least diverse disciplines in the United States and United Kingdom (Beane et al., 2021;Bernard & Cooperdock, 2018;Carter et al., 2020;Dowey et al., 2021;Gillete, 1972), despite their importance to managing natural resources and mitigating climate change. Recent work has shed light on discriminatory practices and behaviors in the earth sciences (Berhe & Ghezzehei, 2021;Carter et al., 2020;Dutt, 2020). ...
Geosciences remain one of the least diverse fields. Efforts to diversify the discipline need to address the role of hostile and exclusionary work and learning environments. A workplace climate survey distributed to five professional organizations illustrates varied experiences of earth and space scientists over a 12‐month period (pre‐COVID). A majority experienced positive interactions in the workplace. However, scientists of color, women and non‐binary individuals, scientists with disabilities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, pansexual, and asexual (LGBQPA+) scientists more frequently experienced negative interactions, including interpersonal mistreatment, discriminatory language, and sexual harassment. Geoscientists of color were more likely to experience devaluation of their work than white scientists. More than half of women and non‐binary respondents, as well as those who identify as LGBQPA+ experienced identity‐based discriminatory remarks. Disabled geoscientists were more likely to hear negative identity‐based language than those who did not disclose a disability. Overall, 14% of all respondents experienced sexual harassment in the previous year. Rates were greatest for historically excluded groups: non‐binary (51%), LGBQPA+ (33%), disabled (26%), women (20%), and geoscientists of color (17%). A majority of geoscientists reported avoiding their colleagues and almost a third considered leaving their institution or a career change. Historically excluded groups were more likely to report opting out of professional activities with potential career consequences. To address continued exclusion and low retention in the earth and space sciences, recruitment is not enough. We need to create environments that ensure opportunities for all to thrive.
... We refer to All-ABOARD intentionally as an "intervention" because we pursue a distinct avenue for success by designing the program to specifically grapple with generating individual actors and teams capable of making and sustaining institutional change. Sustained efforts to increase participation in the geosciences of historically marginalized groups have had limited success in recent decades due in part to the inability to empower individuals or groups to pursue institutional change (e.g., Sidder, 2017;Bernard and Cooperdock, 2018;Beane et al., 2021;Cisneros and Guhlincozzi, 2023). We hypothesize that engaging intergenerational teams in an immersive context could lead to a cohort of resilient DEI-champions. ...
We developed All-ABOARD (Alliance Building Offshore to Achieve Resilience and Diversity) to meet the ever-increasing needs of cultivating a diverse geoscience workforce. All-ABOARD incorporates the Be the Messenger theoretical framework in all programmatic aspects to encourage participants to think about their own identities, positionalities, and privileges. Drawing from US-based institutions, we recruited four teams of four to five members who spanned a spectrum of positionality and career stages. To evaluate the efficacy of the program, we collected both quantitative and qualitative data at different intervals to measure changes in participants’ understanding and perception of identity, culture, respect, and diversity. The year-long core programming included regular webinars via Zoom and an in-person retreat. We found that immersive experiences and intergenerational teams led to the cultivation of a strong identity as a DEI-champion, enhanced group cohesion, and promoted feelings of resilience among participants. Our participants reported they felt most accountable to themselves and their teams, and that learning was accelerated by bringing together teams from multiple institutions to collaborate across intergenerational boundaries. Our program provides a model for training DEI-champions in geoscience who can advance strategic objectives in their home environments and demonstrates how frameworks from the social sciences can be effectively leveraged to transform geoscience.
... Challenges range from attracting and retaining diverse talent in schools and the workforce, to making progress on changing how we do science in more inclusive and equitable ways so everyone can bring their full self. Although there has been an increase in OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY McArthur Jones, United States Naval Research Laboratory, United States racial and ethnic diversity at the undergraduate level in STEM [1,2], little progress has been made in terms of increasing the numbers of professionals from diverse backgrounds [2,3]. People from marginalized communities face multiple obstacles when pursuing STEM degrees and careers, such as hostile environments and being made to feel that they do not belong in science [4]. ...
Institutions’ motivations for pursuing diversity, equity, inclusion and justice (DEIJ) often center on the benefits to the organization, an argument known as the business case for diversity in which diverse teams are more creative, set high bars for research, and produce ideas that are more innovative than those produced by homogeneous groups. As the sole motivation for DEIJ efforts, the business case is flawed and does not address the harmful workplaces many marginalized scholars encounter. Institutions can make more progress towards diversifying the STEM workforce by acknowledging the ethical responsibilities for doing so and transitioning to an equity-centered approach. Emphasizing personal motivations to actively engage in DEIJ work resonates with individuals more, rather than engaging with DEIJ to benefit an institution’s goals. Two recent studies support this argument. The first is an alumni survey and focus groups of postdoctoral fellows in the Advanced Studies Program at the National Center for Atmospheric Research to explore alumni efforts and motivations for engaging in DEIJ work. The second study surveyed attitudes towards DEIJ efforts among STEM graduate students at Colorado State University who took a course on social responsibility in science. Both studies show the motivations for scientists to support and get involved in these efforts and indicate that the business case is misaligned with the motivations of students and professionals in STEM. Understanding the attitudes and motivations that individuals have for DEIJ in STEM presents an opportunity for how institutions can best learn from and support these motivations for systemic change.
... Regenerative gatekeeping could be a vehicle for widespread action to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in geosciences; this requires consideration of both under-represented groups and individuals and specific types of higher education institutions such as minority serving institutions (NASEM, 2019). Within academia, scholars have recently argued that geosciences face a persistent lack of race and ethnic diversity as evidenced by Ph.D. attainment (Bernard & Cooperdock, 2018) and undergraduate degree attainment (Beane et al., 2021) including at faculty levels. These two studies make use of institutional data sets that continue to grow, but that have historically been difficult to access. ...
Committees touch nearly every facet in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics research enterprise. However, the role of gatekeeping through committee work has received little attention in Earth and space sciences. We propose a novel concept called, “regenerative gatekeeping” to challenge institutional inertia, cultivate belonging, accessibility, justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion in committee work. Three examples, a hiring committee process, a seminar series innovation, and an awards committee, highlight the need to self‐assess policies and practices, ask critical questions and engage in generative conflict. Rethinking committee work can activate distributed mechanisms needed to promote change.
... For the first century of IAVCEI's existence, volcano geodesy, and also IAVCEI as a whole (Cas 2022), were dominated by men mostly from the northern hemisphere. By the early part of the twenty-first century, gender diversity had increased, but overall demographic diversity remained limited, as is the case throughout the geosciences (Bernard and Cooperdock 2018), probably reflecting a lack of programs needed to address this issue (Beane et al. 2021;Dowey et al. 2021). We are hopeful that barriers to progress regarding diversity within volcano geodesy will be removed in the years to come. ...
Over the first century of the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior (IAVCEI), volcano geodesy grew from roots as an accidental and incidental system of measurements to an important method for monitoring volcanic activity and forecasting eruptions. The first practitioners in volcano geodesy were experts in other disciplines, and it was not until the latter half of the twentieth century that specialists in the field emerged—scientists who developed new methods, measured geodetic change at volcanoes, and quantitatively interpreted the results in terms of magmatic processes. Much of the early work in the field was restricted to a few volcanoes and involved techniques that had been adapted from other applications; relatively few methods were developed specifically for use on volcanoes. These volcanoes, however, provided the natural laboratories needed to advance the field. By the start of the twenty-first century, geodetic studies, especially using space-based techniques, contributed to the recognition of deformation and gravity change at hundreds of volcanoes on Earth. In coming years, IAVCEI researchers will focus on comprehensive exploitation of the growing volumes of geodetic data to better model, forecast, and track activity at volcanoes worldwide. Meanwhile, the field needs to become more diverse, better representing people who live in the shadows of volcanoes around the globe.
... In 2019, "underrepresented students" earned 15.7% of geoscience bachelor's degrees, 10% of geoscience master's degrees, and 6.7% of geoscience doctorates (Gonzales and Keane 2020), confirming an earlier finding that over 90% of Ph.Ds in Earth Science were awarded to white people (Wilson 2019). Geoscience bachelor's degrees awarded to students of color increased from 7% in 1998 to 21% in 2018, but that growth was distributed unevenly with only a few institutions participating in the increase in racial and ethnic diversity of degree recipients (Beane et al. 2021). ...
Earth Science is one of the least diverse scientific fields, but libraries can play a role in assisting their liaison departments’ diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts by diversifying our collections and supporting research practices that promote their use. In 2020, the University of California, Berkeley’s Earth & Planetary Science Department graduate students created an impressive Call to Action directed toward the faculty of the department. The Call to Action included a plan for advancing the department’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, particularly important in a department with only 17% of students from underserved backgrounds enrolled in the graduate program. Stemming from this effort, the Earth Sciences & Map Library at UC Berkeley, developed a guide (https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/geo_dei) to provide resources to further educate departmental faculty, staff, and students on the topic of DEI. The guide encourages researchers to expand their engagement with scholarship and citation practices intentionally while working on these DEI efforts. Although Earth Science is highlighted in this particular LibGuide, the strategies are universal, especially as applied to science, technology, engineering, math (STEM) fields. The development of this guide, as well as partnerships with active student groups, can serve as a tool for other academic departments creating and promoting DEI efforts. © 2022 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
... The participation of individuals from these groups in the geosciences has been up to 25% lower than whole population demographic trends since 2007 (Gonzales and Keane, 2020b), despite the benefits their participation would bring to the field. Beane et al. (2021) explored in detail race and ethnicity trends for students receiving geoscience bachelor's degrees in the United States over the past 20 years. While they reported some promising trends, only a few institutions drive the increase in diversity of geoscience bachelor's degree recipients, and the biggest influence on the diversity of those receiving geoscience degrees is both regional demographics and institutional student demographics. ...
Geoscience is plagued with structural and systemic barriers that prevent people of historically excluded groups from fully participating in, contributing to, and accruing the benefits of geosciences. A change in the culture of our learning and working environments is required to dismantle barriers and promote belonging, accessibility, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in our field. Inspired by a session organized at the 2020 Ocean Sciences Meeting, the goal of this paper is to provide a consolidated summary of a few innovative and broadening participation initiatives that are being led by various stakeholders in academia (e.g., students, faculty, administrative leaders) at different institutional levels (e.g., universities, professional societies). The authors hope that the strategies outlined in this paper will inspire the coastal, ocean, and marine science community to take individual and collective actions that lead to a positive culture change.
We examined data from the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the world’s largest earth and space science society, to characterize cohort demographics of multiple milestones in a biogeoscientists’ career. Geoscientists of color and White women make up a smaller proportion of those participating in activities critical to transitioning from student to professional (submitting manuscripts, getting published, and being asked to review) in comparison to White men. However, gender parity for biogeoscientists appears within reach at earlier career stages, with 37% AGU Biogeosciences members and 41% of Biogeosciences attendees at the Fall Meeting identifying as women in 2020. Unfortunately, data is lacking to make the same assessment for geoscientists of color. A large proportion of manuscripts are submitted by men (73%), many of which have no co-authors that identify as women or non-binary geoscientists, which likely points to inequitable resources and a greater service burden for scientists from historically excluded groups. Further, our communities’ bias of who we suggest as reviewers results in 85% of the reviewer invites going to White geoscientists and 63% going to men. Thus, while representation of diverse communities has improved in some areas, barriers to publishing results in journals not reflecting society: 25% and 22% of manuscripts were led by or included non-White geoscientists, respectively, and fewer than 5% and 7% were led by or included non-White, women geoscientists, respectively. Therefore, in sectors like academia where publishing remains critical for advancement, this process represents a significant obstacle for biogeoscientists not already part of the majority.
