Matthew, PRI (QA Moderator): Hello and welcome back to the 14th annual summer symposium for the Paleontological Research Institute.
Matthew, PRI (QA Moderator): Due to the developments across our country and around the world, we as a group of Cornell graduate students and early career professionals felt that we should dedicate our symposium this year to diversity, equity, and inclusion in paleontology.
Matthew, PRI (QA Moderator): I am pleased t
o welcome all of our speakers and we hope that the presentations and the Q & A panel will foster meaningful conversations and invoke change in our field. So today, Dana Friend who will be our moderator for this session, and I'll pass it off to Dana.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Thank you so much, Matthew. Good afternoon, everyone.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Welcome to session two of today's program, as Matthew said I'm Dana Friend and I'm going to be the moderator for this session.
Dana Friend - Moderator: There are also several people helping behind the scenes to be moderator for chat, and the Q & A, and handle technical things.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Now this session will be recorded for viewing later except for our final speaker who has requested that her presentation, not be filmed. So please also be aware of not taking pictures or you know screen capping or anything like that for yourself
Dana Friend - Moderator: We want to honor those speakers wishes. So thank you for joining us. And thank you to all the speakers in advance. So, how this is going to go is that each presenter will present for 20 minutes and then followed by about five minutes for audience questions.
Dana Friend - Moderator: So please direct your speaker questions to the Q & A chat feature found at the bottom of your screen.
Dana Friend - Moderator: And if you have a specific question for a specific panelist, please indicate that panelist in your question.
Dana Friend - Moderator: And these will be asked of the presenters by one of the moderators. The chat function has been made available for technical questions or conversing with other attendees.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Please use this judiciously as any malicious or inappropriate use of the chat may result in your removal from the session and we don't want to do that.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Please see our code of conduct on the symposium web page for more information if you have questions.
Dana Friend - Moderator: And please bear with us as we navigate this virtual format and any technical difficulties we may have, and if Zoom crashes for some reason, just please rejoin the webinar with your registration link and we will resume as as soon as possible.
Dana Friend - Moderator: So now I would like to begin by presenting our very first speaker for session two
Dana Friend - Moderator: Please welcome Dr. Phil Stokes, Phil, please take it away.
Phil Stokes: All right, thank you so much Dana. Thank you to PRI for inviting me to talk a little bit about an issue that I think is very important and
Phil Stokes: It's also very timely in our country, and I'm really pleased to be able to share with you some of my dissertation research as well as some thoughts on what we can do. And in our academic lives, or in our professional lives, or when we're working with the public to really foster inclusion.
Phil Stokes: So on that note, I will get started here.
Phil Stokes: And so yeah, so, um, I got to talk about my PhD Research from University of Arizona, which was a series of manuscripts, which, you know, for my research I interviewed
Phil Stokes: A whole bunch of undergraduate geology majors at several universities to get an idea of what their experiences were like in the geosciences major.
Phil Stokes: So one thing to keep in mind. So I'm just going to tell you a little bit about the study background.
Phil Stokes: But really, you know, I'm going to leave out a lot of the methods and statistical analyses, just so we can talk about sort of the results and what to you know what the implications are.
Phil Stokes: And then, yeah, hopefully, you know, if you're interested in learning more about the methodology, you know, you'll do so.
Phil Stokes: You know, and I think probably everyone who's watching this presentation is at least aware that the geosciences are among the least diverse, or maybe they still are the least diverse of all the STEM fields.
Phil Stokes: So I looked at sociocultural factors and how they influence choice of major, and this ad advertisement here was something that, you know, I saw in a magazine somewhere, and I thought it would be perfect, sort of
Phil Stokes: Hang on a second. We've got some low audio here.
Phil Stokes: Let's see.
Phil Stokes: Just pause for a moment and see if I can increase the volume.
Phil Stokes: Microphone. Let's try that one. How’s the audio now?
Phil Stokes: Okay, it appears that Zoom automatically switched from the microphone on my headset to a different microphone.
Phil Stokes: Oh dear. Okay. So, all right.
Phil Stokes: So back to
Phil Stokes: Back to my presentation and hopefully we
Phil Stokes: Don't have that issue. So I looked at sociocultural factors, this idea that, you know, sort of things we see around us, including friends and family influences
Phil Stokes: Really affect choice of major, and so this ad really captured, you know the the thought, you know what will my friends think if I transfer
Phil Stokes: You know, so what what will someone's friends think if they become a geologist, you know, was one of my interview questions.
Phil Stokes: So I use this technique called the critical incident technique and it was developed by this guy named John Flanagan, is developed during World War Two to identify
Phil Stokes: Effective behaviors and predict the likelihood for success of pilot trainees. This is back when the Air Force was part of the army
Phil Stokes: And US government was spending a ton of money on recruiting and training pilots, and there were a lot of wash outs and so
Phil Stokes: John Flanagan developed an interview protocol, basically a series of questions to determine if someone was likely to continue as a pilot or if they would maybe not make it
Phil Stokes: And what was really neat about his technique, is that it's still used today. So if you've ever been interviewed for a job and someone asks you what you would do in a certain type of situation.
Phil Stokes: You know, they're really looking for a pattern of behaviors that can tell something about you know who you are and the chances that you'll do well in that position.
Phil Stokes: So John Flanagan defined a critical incident as an experience which affected a person's beliefs, values or behaviors. And so for my research, I narrowed it down so that a critical incident was a reported experience which influenced choice of major, the major was the geology major, of course.
Phil Stokes: So I interviewed a lot of students and I'll just give you an idea of what some of the interview questions, you know, we're like, and the responses, so
Phil Stokes: I would ask a student, you know, you know, tell me about, you know, experiences you had while you were growing up that might have influenced your choice of major. So it's pretty straightforward.
Phil Stokes: And here's an example of a critical incident that a student from, I believe is from Montana told me
So he says, It was a warm summer day, and there were active tornado warnings in the county where I grew up. My grandpa took me out and we saw a tornado.
Phil Stokes: So that is the experience part of the critical incident and then he also said it was awesome. That's how I first got interested in science. So that's the outcome.
Phil Stokes: So once I collected critical incidents, I then filtered them into different categories and subcategories, and this is based on a taxonomic system. So if you're familiar with paleontology probably know taxonomy. It's just a classification system.
Phil Stokes: And then the outcome was sorted based on whether the incident would have a positive effect on choice of major or a negative effect.
Phil Stokes: I gotta say. So my research was sponsored by this company called QSR international, I believe they're based out of Australia and they had a
Phil Stokes: Program called NVIVO and so QSR actually sponsored my research. So I’m really grateful, is it is a really helpful platform was funny, though, is I learned while I was using the software that they were previously called NUDIST.
Phil Stokes: So, you know, maybe it was a wise decision to change it if you're going to be in social and behavioral science.
Phil Stokes: So I collected critical incidents from 39 current and former geoscience majors from two institutions, 21 of whom were white, 9 or Hispanic or Latino and
Phil Stokes: I should should have met these numbers if they don't add up. It's because there's a third sample of African American students that I'm not including in the presentation today. So these numbers don't add up to 39.
Phil Stokes: But for the sake of brevity, I'd left that group out and then 22 were female, 17 were male. Interviews were 45 minutes long and they followed an approved human subjects protocol. If you've ever gone through that process, it's, it's pretty interesting.
Phil Stokes: And so we identified a total of 1169 critical incidents, or about 30 per student.
Phil Stokes: Now have to add there are a whole bunch of limitations on the study, and primarily the external validity, which basically means how much of this data, we can apply to other places is limited by the fact that it's a small sample.
Phil Stokes: So here's what it looks like. And I'll just leave this up for a second or two. So basically, all of the students’ experiences that were reported I sorted into
Phil Stokes: Several types of factors. So out of school factors, which were critical incidents that occurred, well,
Phil Stokes: Student was growing up, so basically before school or out of school, K 12, which as you could imagine it was you know in primary school, middle school and high school and college factors, so so critical incidents which occurred while the student was in college.
Phil Stokes: And this was based on a previous study which was a little more exploratory but kind of laid the groundwork.
Phil Stokes: So you can see it, there's quite a few categories, subcategories, and even some sub sub categories. The idea here is to try to divide these things, so then you can do a statistical analysis, and I did using ANOVA and I also did a pairwise comparison across each category.
Phil Stokes: So for those of you who are really into geeking out and taxonomy there were no sub sub sub categories, but I probably could have done that to my advisor who wouldl not have liked it.
Phil Stokes: So I'm giving you a few examples of some of these incidents, so I'm of course one example of course experience from college, student told me
Phil Stokes: I never really considered becoming a geology major until about halfway through my geology course. The professor approached me and asked if I'd ever considered it.
Phil Stokes: So the student then told me, it was pretty much right at that moment that I decided to switch.
Phil Stokes: Another example of a critical incident is something called the personal characteristic and this, this is basically is it implies something that the individual might might, you know, affect them personally or be a result of one of their personal characteristics.
Phil Stokes: And this happened to be a female student, she was telling me the story. And she said, I know that there's a big difference between the numbers of men versus women in the science field. I thought it was cool that the first two people that I met in the geoscience department were women.
Phil Stokes: So if you can imagine. So that first part is the experience. The second part is the outcome.
Phil Stokes: So in the first manuscript I'm going to talk about which was in GSA Today in 2014, focus mainly on the differences bit reported differences between Hispanic and white students.
Phil Stokes: And it only included a small number of findings, because this was a relatively preliminary study.
Phil Stokes: So up at the top you'll see those three categories. The college factors. The K 12 and out of school.
Phil Stokes: So in out of school factors I collected 127 incidents over five subcategories. And I'll just talk a little bit about those. So in this plot. You can see here on the x axis.
Phil Stokes: Those are the categories, so family factors, outdoor experiences, etc. On the y axis, you can see the average number of incidents per student.
Phil Stokes: And then on the left, there's two, there's two bars. The left bar, which is yellow. That is for white students and the right bar, which is like a light blue is for students who identified as Hispanic or Latino.
Phil Stokes: So you can see these numbers were fairly similar with one exception, for outdoor experiences. And this was a significant finding which just means that it's chances are, it's not due to randomness.
Phil Stokes: And so this type of example right, an outdoor experience while growing up would fall under that category of the earlier incident that I shared, where the student was telling me about his grandpa taking them to go check out tornadoes.
Phil Stokes: And so, as you'll see, in this example, the white students reported about three times as many outdoor experiences while growing up as Hispanic and Latino students.
Phil Stokes: Now if we look at K 12 factors, there were 105 incidents over 10 subcategories, but no statistically significant differences.
Phil Stokes: I'm looking at college factors, that's where most of the incidents were, there were 649 over 14 subcategories. And I'm just going to show you the top nine because it's a PowerPoint presentation and we're all supposed to keep the data limited on slides.
Phil Stokes: So here's that graph, on the X axis, you can see the sub or the category. So of course experiences, family factors. These are ranked by most incidents to least incidents.
Phil Stokes: Or I should say most incidents to fewest incidents, and then on the Y axis, you can see the average number of incidents per students again. So the bar on the left, the yellow is for white students and the bar on the right is for Hispanic and Latino students.
Phil Stokes: And really, the numbers are pretty similar with one big thing to note here, and that is family factors. And so this type of incident was actually really common for
Phil Stokes: All the students in the the sample, you know basically everyone has stories about how their family have reacted when they decided to declare a geology major.
Phil Stokes: And so this is one Hispanic student told me this story. She said, I haven't yet told my family that I'm thinking of moving out of state when I finish my degree. They have that guilty conscience thing, where they think you're trying to move away from the family.
Phil Stokes: So this type of incident as you could see, Hispanic students reported about twice as many family factors well in college.
Phil Stokes: So I said, Okay, this, this is really interesting. Let's break this down a little further.
Phil Stokes: So if we look at all college factors for positive and negative outcomes, you'll see that and maybe not surprisingly geology majors
Phil Stokes: Have a lot more positive experiences relating to choice of major, the negative, right, if you had too many negative majors, you probably wouldn't be in the major.
Phil Stokes: You can see, though, that the positive outcomes are roughly equal. They're pretty close but negative outcomes, there's quite a difference. And in fact, the Hispanic or Latino students, which are shown in the light blue bar
Phil Stokes: Averaged far more than White students when it comes to negative outcomes. And so this was another significant difference.
Phil Stokes: However, when we take away family factors, the significant difference disappears. So really, my thought is this difference was actually driving
Phil Stokes: The change that you see here from positive and negative
Phil Stokes: There it is.
Phil Stokes: So just to summarize the results here. So Hispanic and Latino students reported far fewer out of school outdoor experiences, than white students
Phil Stokes: Hispanic and Latino students reported far more college family factors than White students, and these were strongly negative.
Phil Stokes: Now the second manuscript. I'll talk about was much longer in length and it featured some full discussions about the data and the categories and everything. So if you're really into this sort of thing
Phil Stokes: Check it out. Oops, jumped ahead here. And so if you're really yeah if you're into it that can. I'm happy to share.
Phil Stokes: And so just going to share with you, kind of how it was ranked here, so this this somewhat busy chart will show you all of the major categories for college factors, and again
Phil Stokes: There were this time, they're ranked a little bit differently on the far left, you can see where it says college career in economics 98%
Phil Stokes: That means that 98% of the incidents that were reported were positive, right. So these were influences that strongly supported a student's choice to major in geology.
Phil Stokes: Far on the right, where the bar says 20% experiences with other majors. These are strongly negative incidents. So students who reported experiences that really undermined their choice of major.
Phil Stokes: And so that you can see it kind of in the middle of the chart here sort of the, the most popular incidents things where
Phil Stokes: People were pretty much everyone reported was of course experiences, family factors, and personal characteristics. And so that might be someone who said, you know, I really like studying the earth, you know, because I'm outdoorsy person or something.
Phil Stokes: So,
Phil Stokes: We did another statistical analysis, kind of similar to the first manuscript, but this time we did it by gender.
Phil Stokes: So college factors we had a very large number of incidents, and it was sorted into 15 subcategories, and there were two differences that I'll point out here.
Phil Stokes: In K 12 there were far fewer incidents to report. And there was one difference, but I'm not going to talk about it here for the sake of time.
Phil Stokes: And then out of school factors. There were a similarly small number of incidents.
Phil Stokes: And no statistical differences. So really, I'm just going to focus on those college factors.
Phil Stokes: And you can see in this chart. So this is the percentage of respondents reporting. So instead of number of incidents per person, this is now percentage of respondents reporting.
Phil Stokes: On the y axis, and then on the x axis we have some of the same categories that you've seen before, the bar on the left which is orange
Phil Stokes: signifies the male students and the bar on the right, which is green signifies the female students.
Phil Stokes: So you can see for family factors and personal characteristics, course experiences, on the numbers were really, really similar. And there were no significant findings.
Phil Stokes: But if we look at the right at the economic factors. Those were strong reported strongly, more, more so by male students, by quite a large margin and then strangely
Phil Stokes: The experiences in non geosciences courses were largely reported by women, relative to men. So if you want to know what of course is non geoscience course, these were the classes that are required for the major such as physics, or chemistry, or biology
Phil Stokes: You know that were, you know, part of the degree plan. They're not you know your general education classes and they tended to be, you know, negative experiences.
Phil Stokes: So um for look at the economic factors more closely. Nearly all were positive. And so an example is a student
Phil Stokes: A guy told me when I chose the major, I felt like I had a future. I know that with a lot of the other majors, you don't get a job afterwards, he said that he felt like geology would be different.
Phil Stokes: As I mentioned required courses, much like my own experience, they were there were not that great, was not a fan of calculus 2
Phil Stokes: And so, so this student also told me so. She said, I enjoy math, but I'm not very good at it, and she had considered switching from geology.
Phil Stokes: Ironically it into hydrology or atmospheric science because she couldn't hack the math. We kind of know now that you know those those fields are probably more math intensive than geology.
Phil Stokes: But really, you know, you know this this type of incident was was pretty common. About half the women reported, something like that.
Phil Stokes: So to summarize, men were far more likely than women to report positive economic factors as supporting of their choice of major.
Phil Stokes: And women were far more likely than men to report negative experiences in non geology courses.
Phil Stokes: So what does it mean, so there's a couple ways to look at it, you know. So my thought was, you know, to better recruit underrepresented students, we should highlight geosciences careers and make that information available to the families of majors.
Phil Stokes: I think you know this is something I've been doing for a long time, you know, provide kids with more outdoor experiences and exposure to science.
Phil Stokes: And then, you know, women, based on the study, weren't choosing the geology major for economic factors. And so maybe we should reconsider how the major might be marketed to boost recruitment and retention.
Phil Stokes: Now there's one thing I'll add to the first point, you know, and you know for talking about careers and everything, um, you know, the maybe the best way to do it is
Phil Stokes: You know, adjust the the messaging to to the audience, you know. And one thing I found that working with kids from, you know, across you know the suburbs and rural areas in cities
Phil Stokes: Is kids growing up in the city tend to not have the same, you know awareness of nature, and particular like they may be, have not even, you know, seen rocks before you know they don't know what's under the pavement.
Phil Stokes: But they are concerned about environmental issues such as air and water quality.
Phil Stokes: And so that might be something to highlight when you're, you know, mentioning these careers.
Phil Stokes: And lastly, you know, women had reported different course experiences in those non major required classes and you know my thought is, they may be weeding out more women than men from the major.
Phil Stokes: So I promised you some other stuff to think about and this, this really is sort of my hopeful look on everything. So, you know, I've worked in universities and
Phil Stokes: You know, found it sometimes an uphill battle to get things done and make changes and everything and you know more so nowadays. We're very fortunate that
Phil Stokes: You know, diversity is is something that at least they're talking about and maybe hiring some folks to work on.
Phil Stokes: But what happens if you don't have the means, you know, to share career information with parents, you don't have a budget for outreach, you're not getting any help to market your major or you have limited means to advise students?
Phil Stokes: And you know what, if you want to help, you know, you know, solve this issue, but you just simply, right lack the support from the administration, or the time or really anything like what, what is the most basic thing you can do?
Phil Stokes: And I'll share with you this paper, which which I've found a little depressing, but also encouraging at the same time.
Phil Stokes: So this came out a few years ago from Physics Education Research and the the author Zahra Hazari and her team looked at the factors that affected
Phil Stokes: The physical science career interest of female students, and they tested
Phil Stokes: Several common hypotheses which you see in the literature. Right. There's so many thoughts about why you know there's all these diversity issues.
Phil Stokes: You know, anything from from implicit biases, to discrimination, to some of the things that I've talked about. And so the authors looked at
Phil Stokes: These five hypotheses. So you can see in this graph, which I took from the paper and they basically
Phil Stokes: They did a sort of an intervention in their class. So they collected data on the students interest in a science career, and then did like a before and after comparison.
Phil Stokes: To see how each of these interventions would affect that interest level. So they looked at, you know how a single sex class would have an effect, having women as guest speakers, having a female physics teacher
Phil Stokes: Noting the work of women scientists, you know, if you've ever picked up a geology textbook you'll know that they're pretty devoid of minority and female scientists, and then having a discussion about underrepresentation in science.
Phil Stokes: And so I read this. I first read this paper, and my thought was, you know, this sucks. So many of these interventions that we think could have an effect on
Phil Stokes: Career interests really didn't seem to be doing much, you know, at least in this study. There was no measurable effect for a lot of these things which we thought would be helpful.
Phil Stokes: But what was encouraging is that simply having a discussion about under representation of women in physical science boosted
Phil Stokes: The career interest of the students in the class. And so the authors wrote, and I really like how they put it, female students who were exposed to such discussions were significantly more likely to choose a physical science career than those who are not.
Phil Stokes: So, you know, let this give you hope you know if you can't do all these, you know, outreach things and talk to parents and everything.
Phil Stokes: You know, simply having this discussion with your students, with your colleagues, I believe, will make a difference.
Phil Stokes: So with that, I’d like to acknowledge, University of Arizona, National Science Foundation, opportunities for enhancing diversity in the geosciences, USGS and the Geological Society of America, and of course QSR International formerly NUDIST.
Phil Stokes: Thank you.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Thank you so much Phil, appreciate it. Alright, so we have a couple of questions here. And I'm going to start you off by reading the first one.
Dana Friend - Moderator: This is from Madeline Marshall. She says, Phil, could you talk about any thoughts on how the negative familial accident incidents for Hispanic LatinX students could be addressed to bring more positive outcomes, or how those students handled the negative negative pressure from family.
Phil Stokes: So, that that is a great question. Um, you know, and there's there's definitely a bias here in the research and that's that all the students I interviewed were either current or former majors.
Phil Stokes: So there were some presumably, who maybe were thinking about geology, but we're talked out of the major by family members, you know, because
Phil Stokes: If you, you know, and this is this is what some of the students reported so they may be the first generation to go to college
Phil Stokes: And so their families really wanted them to have visible career, like a doctor or an engineer, you know, or an attorney.
Phil Stokes: And and and so so geology just wasn't on the radar of the people who were, you know, helping to pay for college.
Phil Stokes: You know, so my thought would be, you know, in addition to having you know that career information available
Phil Stokes: You know, have a support group for your students who may have challenges, you know, explaining what they do to their family members. I was really fortunate that we had an NSF grant to have students
Phil Stokes:: Working in a lab and they were students from underserved audiences and so they could talk with each other about these problems and you really, you know, demonstrate to their parents what they were doing.
Phil Stokes: You know, whether it be in a research lab or community outreach, just to show that that you know the degree had value, and it was going to get them somewhere.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Thank you.
Matthew, PRI (QA Moderator): Hi. So we have another question. One of them was asked.
Matthew, PRI (QA Moderator): About how the students for your, your study were recruited.
Phil Stokes: Yeah, so there were, you know, ideally you want a random sample, but basically it was a convenience sample. I was working at two different research universities in urban areas.
Phil Stokes: And I just sent out an email and said, you know, hey, if you want to be in the study, you know, we'll give you a gift card.
Phil Stokes: You just have to, you know, do the interview and, you know, basically, you know, took the took the students that way.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Great. Thank you. All right. Question from Ming, a lot of great information about increasing and welcoming US based students in a US college setting.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Any thoughts on how international students, to the US or other countries or in our own home countries can be encouraged into earth sciences, specifically thinking about how families of these students who may have no idea at all can be reached.
Phil Stokes: You know, that's a, that's a great question. Actually, so I'm so wonder, by my previous life I was an academic advisor.
Phil Stokes: And I worked a lot with international students, and the ones we had were all from countries where
Phil Stokes: Either a government or a business, or a family member was sponsoring them to come to the US to learn geology, and the plan was for them to then go back to their own countries to
Phil Stokes: You know, become like oil folks, or work in environmental consulting or something, you know, so the the draw of coming to the US was that, you know, we had these these quality programs.
Phil Stokes: With with learning experiences like field camp, you know that were maybe not available where they come from. So I would, I would say that, you know, maybe highlighting
Phil Stokes: You know, the, the strengths of the degree program at your university, you know, and how that that information can be applied to solving you know societies challenges would be a good starting point.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Thank you so much, Phil. All right, now we're gonna stop the questions for now because it's almost time for our next presentation.
Dana Friend - Moderator: So coming up next will be Dr. Phoebe Cohen.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Alright, welcome back. Our next speaker, as I said, it's going to be Dr. Phoebe Cohen.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Phoebe, please take it away.
Phoebe Cohen: Alright. Hi, everybody.
Phoebe Cohen: My name is Phoebe Cohen, I'm a professor at Williams College and today I'm going to be talking about a gender analysis of the Paleontological Society that I've been working on over the last few years.
Phoebe Cohen: So first I'd like to acknowledge all the people who have helped me immensely with this project.
Phoebe Cohen: Some folks from the Paleo Society, Alycia Stigall, Dena Smith, Caroline Stromberg and Robyn Dahl.
Phoebe Cohen: And then colleagues of mine at Williams College, Greg Mitchell in women gender and sexuality studies, and Chad Topaz in math.
Phoebe Cohen: As well as my colleague Robin Kodner, and I'd also like to acknowledge the feedback of some really amazing geoscientists and astronomers on Twitter, who's handles are down here, who've also helped me develop some of the ideas in this talk.
Phoebe Cohen: So first I'd like to just start off by telling you a little bit about myself. So you have an understanding of where I'm coming from.
Phoebe Cohen: I'm a tenured faculty member at a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts. I'm white, I'm Jewish. I'm a US citizen. I'm a cis gendered heterosexual women and I'm a parent of a three year old.
Phoebe Cohen: In terms of my research. I'm a Proterozoic Paleozoic micropaleontologist and geobiologist.
Phoebe Cohen: And I'm a member of the Paleontological Council currently and also have the PS ethics committee and I've been involved in the Paleo Society ever since I was a student, I was a student rep in grad school.
Phoebe Cohen: So what's the Paleo Society? For those of you who aren't familiar
Phoebe Cohen: It's a an international nonprofit organization devoted exclusively to the advancement of the science of paleontology.
Phoebe Cohen: We are international. However, for the most part our membership is very much US based, as well as Europe and the UK. So technically, we're international but you know.
Phoebe Cohen: And the Paleo Society
Phoebe Cohen: Has its annual meeting at the Geological Society of America meeting every year, and so that's some of the information that will be talking about relates to that.
Phoebe Cohen: Okay, so first I'm just going to give a brief outline of some language that I'll be using around equity, inclusion, and gender, and then talk about the problem. So what is gender, um,
Phoebe Cohen: Although this is just a quote from a research paper that discusses some of the, the ideas of gender and gender studies.
Phoebe Cohen: Although gender has historically been treated as a stable binary category, it is more accurately understood as an evolving, socially constructed category of the human experience
Phoebe Cohen: And measurement methodologies need to respond appropriately.
Phoebe Cohen: So here's a little cartoon, which some of you may have seen the gingerbread person. So this just outlines the different
Phoebe Cohen: Ways that we can think about someone's gender identity, expression, their biological sex, and their sexual orientation.
Phoebe Cohen: So today I'm going to be talking about gender identity and so those would be words like woman and man. And then there are many people who, who don't consider themselves either of those categories, and may consider themselves gender queer or use a different term.
Phoebe Cohen: Another thing that I'll be talking about today is intersectionality, which was a term introduced by the scholar Kimberlė Williams Crenshaw in 1989
Phoebe Cohen: And she came up with this idea to describe the unique challenges that black women faced due to their intersecting identities of gender and race, specifically in the
Phoebe Cohen: In the judicial system criminal system, but it has since been expanded by Crenshaw and others to really talk about
Phoebe Cohen: The unique challenges faced by those with multiple minoritized identities. So that could be things like gender or race, ethnicity, disability, etc, sexuality.
Phoebe Cohen: Okay, so why do we need to count gender? For the for the women in the audience, you probably have some thoughts, some feelings, about gender and paleontology already
Phoebe Cohen: So I don't think we need to count to know that there are problems, but counting can help us understand how things are changing or how things are not changing.
Phoebe Cohen: So I'm going to talk briefly about personal experiences of myself and others.
Phoebe Cohen: But there's also a lot of qualitative and quantitative data on therepresentation of women in the earth sciences, high rates of harassment and gender bias. And so I've just I've just copied and pasted a few
Phoebe Cohen: Relevant papers over here on the right that discuss some of these issues and I'll, I'll show some a little bit of data from some of these later, so counting can help us know if things are, things are changing.
Phoebe Cohen: And when do we know for, quote unquote, done. Although this work is never done. It can also help us figure out how the Paleontological Society may be sort of recapitulating gender roles in ways that wouldn't necessarily be immediately obvious.
Phoebe Cohen: Okay, so just a little bit more background. The Paleo Society gives a number of awards every year at the annual meeting.
Phoebe Cohen: I'll be talking about two of those awards today, the Schuchert Award, which is sort of the young scientist award, which until 2016, was only awarded to members under the age of 40
Phoebe Cohen: But from 2017 onwards eligibility is now for those 15 years post PhD conferral. And so right there is an example of something of what the Paleo Society has done
Phoebe Cohen: To try to make this award more equitable, and then there's the Paleontological Society Medal which is sort of the, you can think of that is like the career
Phoebe Cohen: Achievement award. Okay. Okay, so
Phoebe Cohen: This was the most recent PS banquet program. I could I could find online this is from 2015.
Phoebe Cohen: So I joined the Paleo Society in 2002 when I was working for PRI as Warren Allmon’s assistant. So I have a long history with PRI, so I just highlighted the women who have received the Schuchert Award here and I've also pointed out, where I got my PhD. Okay, so, I sat at this banquet for 10 years
Phoebe Cohen: When I got my PhD, the last woman to get the Schuchert Award got it my senior year of high school.
Phoebe Cohen: So I sat at this banquet, and I watched these men, many of whom I knew and respected, get up there and win that award. And it wasn't until 2013 that I saw a woman get up and win the Schuchert Award.
Phoebe Cohen: Okay, so what about the Paleo Society Medal. Alright, so here are the folks, who have the women who have won the PS Medal. This is up until 2014, many women have won since then
Phoebe Cohen: And so when I got my PhD, the last one won the PS Medal was when I was in diapers, and she won it with a man. Okay, this is Helen Tappan
Phoebe Cohen: Close, close and dear to my heart, she’s a palynologyist. So this was my personal experience and personal context going into this study.
Phoebe Cohen: And of course that personal experience, just one tiny drop, there's obviously a lot more actual, actual research, but I just want to give you a context for my own personal motivation for doing this work, okay so
Phoebe Cohen: A little bit more of an outline of of potential problems here. So this was a recently published analysis of how the COVID 19 crisis has disproportionately impacted women versus men in terms of publications. So this is looking at the earth science pre print
Phoebe Cohen: Here. And so in the orange here, you're seeing submissions from March to April, and this is female first author. Okay, so we're seeing a huge drop in women first authored papers.
Phoebe Cohen: On this pre print. Okay. And this is likely due to increased childcare duties. I'm very familiar with that.
Phoebe Cohen: Here's a picture from the Clancy at al. 2014 paper on harassment in field sites, which is if you have not read this paper, it's a must read, as well as the follow up by Nelson, which is more of a
Phoebe Cohen: qualitative approach. So the frequency of inappropriate comments at field sites heard by men and women. So, you know, many women regularly or frequently heard inappropriate comments in field work, and then this is a paper that was done by some folks looking at AGU data, Popp et al. 2019
Phoebe Cohen: Does gender imbalance affect you at scientific meetings, and you know 17% of women said yes, 41% said, to some extent, okay.
Phoebe Cohen: So what are the what are the numbers say for our field at large? So this is data from
Phoebe Cohen: NSF, which you can go on to the website that I've linked to at the bottom here, and you can do these, make these graphs yourself. So this is looking at all earth science PhDs since 1980, so
Phoebe Cohen: Awesome. Okay. In 1980 things were abysmal. And there are a lot better now. Okay. Looks good. So we've reached
Phoebe Cohen: In some years, almost gender parity in terms of the number of PhDs, this is across this includes ocean and atmospheric sciences. Okay.
Phoebe Cohen: They don't, they don't have enough granular data. But if we look at who is actually a faculty member and this is data from AGI
Phoebe Cohen: We see that things are still not so not so hot. Okay, so in 2016 so four years ago
Phoebe Cohen: Only 15% of full professors were women, and not quite 25% of associate professor. So there's still this big disconnect between what we're seeing at the level of undergraduate or graduate education, and then what we're seeing in terms of faculty ranks.
Phoebe Cohen: Alright, so what about intersectionality. So, so far, everything I've talked about has just been
Phoebe Cohen: Plain gender, but we know that that is not the whole story. So here's a figure from the Bernard and Cooperdock Nature Geoscience paper, no progress on diversity and 40 years, which I think is a
Phoebe Cohen: Damning must read for our entire field. So this is looking at that same data set that I was just talking about. I'm looking at race and ethnicity. So this is some fields combined. OK, so the black line are white non Hispanics
Phoebe Cohen: And the colored lines are other ethnic, racial groups, and you can't even really tell where they are, because they're all so low. So we can pull that out and again taking sort of intersectional lens break it out by
Phoebe Cohen: The
Phoebe Cohen: Male and female. This is, this is how, then, this is how the NSF reports, the data is male and female. So if we look at Hispanic or Latino
Phoebe Cohen: Earth science PhDs. I thought this was kind of interesting. So starting around maybe 2000 you could, you know, squint and argue that men and women were getting their PhDs, in equivalent
Phoebe Cohen: Equivalent numbers, extremely low numbers. If you look at Black or African American, you could potentially argue that African American Black women are receiving their PhDs.
Phoebe Cohen: At slightly lower rates, but the numbers are so incredibly low that I think I would be remiss in actually doing any real
Phoebe Cohen: analysis on that. And then there's some good data from the AGU, where they looked at posters versus talks at their large meeting.
Phoebe Cohen: And I just highlighted the light bar our URM women and essentially what this paper showed was that URM women comprise the group that is least likely to be invited or assigned to give a talk.
Phoebe Cohen: And are over represented in requesting to present posters. Okay, so this is again looking at the intersection of gender, and race and ethnicity in the earth sciences at large. Okay.
Phoebe Cohen: And then of course we can listen to what people actually say about their own experiences. So this is
Phoebe Cohen: From Stephanie Suarez, who's a geochronology grad student, I started this account to talk about my geology work and realize it's impossible to do that without talking about racism, because they're so intertwined. Okay. And she's referring to the Cooperdock and Bernard paper here.
Phoebe Cohen: All right.
Phoebe Cohen: Then of course there's intersectionality with the LGBTQIA community. So here's just a couple quotes from folks on Twitter.
Phoebe Cohen: To just demonstrate this. So these are two British geologists who are basically pointing out the fact that you can, you know, in many cases,
Phoebe Cohen: There are countries where LGBTQIA students or faculty would not feel comfortable going on a geology field trip, like, Oman. And so Imperial actually just got rid of their requirement for an Oman based field trip because it is unsafe.
Phoebe Cohen: Here's a recent article by Pickrell, where Riley Black discusses her experiences
Phoebe Cohen: As a paleontologist doing fieldwork. And I just highlighted one quote, given that many field camps are dominated by men, it is very easy for trans people to feel isolated, misgendered and unsafe.
Phoebe Cohen: And then Sam Giles, again, pointing out the intersection of gender and sexuality in terms of not having any career role models. All right. I gotta hustle here because I spent so much time with background, methods. So what did I do? I took a list of first name member lists in Paleo Society.
Phoebe Cohen: This record is very spotty. We have no records from the 1990s, and I was, was able to get a
Phoebe Cohen: List from the archives from the mid 1980s. They couldn't determine the actual year. So I do have one data point from the, from the 80s.
Phoebe Cohen: But otherwise, I have data, starting in the early, 2000s, I use the API genderize.io which determines the likely gender of a given name.
Phoebe Cohen: All unassigned names and names with low probabilities as assigned by the API were checked via personal websites, email signature, social media profiles, personal information to assign a likely gender.
Phoebe Cohen: And about 1% per year of names were unassigned. For committees and awards, a combination of these techniques were used.
Phoebe Cohen: Starting in 2017 Paleo Society began collecting self reporting data, which is really what you want.
Phoebe Cohen: But response rates are low, and I'll get to that in a minute. Okay, so what are the limitations of the project, until 2017 it ignored all gender identities outside of the binary, bad. Okay.
Phoebe Cohen: Includes non self reporting data, also not good. It's not intersectional. So I've just spent all this time talking about intersectionality, it doesn't account for those things.
Phoebe Cohen: And the API does really badly with non Western names. So I did do an analysis of PS journal authors, but it's incomplete because I'm going to have to
Phoebe Cohen: spend a lot more time assigning names to likely genders. If you want to learn more about gender self reporting this article here. It's a pre print by a bunch of folks in the astronomy communities, I highly recommend it. Okay. So what did we find
Phoebe Cohen: This is the data that I have. We see an over representation of members inferred to be men at all career stages, but the trends are good. So what are the colors mean, blue are students.
Phoebe Cohen: The sort of greenish are regular members, green are retired members, the pink are amateur and avocational, that's a category that we've just introduced so there's not much data there. And then, and then the
Phoebe Cohen: Sort of purple. The pink is our total data. So you can see I have one data point from back in the 80s and then we we don't really have any data, unfortunately, until we get to the early 2000s. Here I've just zoomed in
Phoebe Cohen: To the last 20 years. And so if we look at the total, it's in the low 30s. Okay, but our students are more like in the mid 40s or high 40s.
Phoebe Cohen: So we do have some self reporting data and I just asked that this not be copied or shared at this time. And so the triangles are self reporting data.
Phoebe Cohen: The blue triangles are 30 to 40% response rates and the green triangle is our most recent data, which shows an 84% response rate, and I'll explain why that's so much higher.
Phoebe Cohen: So you can see that the green triangle lines up quite nicely with the sort of trajectory of the pink, which I think is, is really nice. So moving forward, we will have self reporting data, it will not have to rely
Phoebe Cohen: On these likely gender assignments, okay. Because we have self reporting data, we are also able to capture those who do not consider themselves to be female, male, so this is these are categories that are
Phoebe Cohen: Within the membership renewal. So you can see that I've just put in the response rates down here. So with self reporting, we are able to capture
Phoebe Cohen: Basically the the gender identity of, that a person identifies with and we don't have to make any inferences. So that's really important in moving forward, that will give us a chance to accurately capture our community.
Phoebe Cohen: So what does this tell us, and is it useful? So one thing I think is of note is that student trends have been consistently higher than regular members for at least a decade and probably longer.
Phoebe Cohen: And so there's this sort of trickle up, it works, but it's slow. Why is it slow? Why are we not seeing a faster shift from higher proportions of our student members being women to moving that into our
Phoebe Cohen: Our total and our regular members which are still quite low. So of course, the total includes the students. So the regular members is probably the better line to be looking at
Phoebe Cohen: So why do men remain over represented? Well, I'm sure many of you can think of ideas. So here's a recent paper that just came out, hostile climates are a barrier to diversification.
Phoebe Cohen: Gender differences in recommendation letters for postdoctoral fellowships in geosciences. This one was very compelling and depressing, by one of our speakers Kuheli, who's speaking later.
Phoebe Cohen: A recent paper, looking at NSF submissions by career stage across different divisions. So here in Geo, you can see that by the time it gets to full professors
Phoebe Cohen: Women are just submitting many, many, many fewer proposals than men.
Phoebe Cohen: And here's a quote, which I think it captures some interesting things that are not reflected in these papers that I've just shared with you.
Phoebe Cohen: And this is by a not a woman who wants to be anonymous
Phoebe Cohen: And she was going to meetings, mostly in the 90s, being made most unwelcome by other women and some men in my field and closely related paleo fields at the actual event, which is the annual meeting.
Phoebe Cohen: In part because my degree, my degree is from the wrong place. So this sort of idea of elitism, in part because I work on coal energy
Phoebe Cohen: In part because I got tired of being touched by drunks, it wouldn't happen now, although it still does
Phoebe Cohen: The guys in question are dead, but the yucky feeling remains. I do not know if I could be enticed back. So I think there's a lot of intersection reasons about about why we have this disconnect between the ratios that we're seeing in our students
Phoebe Cohen: And what we're seeing in our senior members. All right. Going to get into the awards have already described the Medal and the Schuchert
Phoebe Cohen: Fellows are members of the PS who have made significant contributions to research, teaching, or service to the profession. So this is, cumulative number of awards given in the Medal and the Schuchert by gender over time. Okay.
Phoebe Cohen: Very dramatic looking and sort of sad. But let's dig into it a little bit more and see what we learn.
Phoebe Cohen: So here is sort of a stack histogram. So the Fellows program was only introduced in early 2000s, whereas the Medal and Schuchert have been around longer
Phoebe Cohen: So you can see what the the proportion of the number of women Fellows is much higher than what we see in the Medal and the Schuchert award, some people sort of see the Fellows as a way to make up for the fact that women were likely overlooked for the Schuchert for many decades.
Phoebe Cohen: Sort of anecdotal thing.
Phoebe Cohen: If we look at the total sort of proportion. For fellows, Medal and Schuchert for all time. This is what it looks like. But if we zoom in to the last decade, this is what it looks like. So awards have become much more representative in the last 20 years. I think this is really important.
Phoebe Cohen: To point out, okay, especially the Schuchert is now essentially at parity, which is really amazing
Phoebe Cohen: Considering what my experience was as a graduate student, sitting at that banquet table.
Phoebe Cohen: Okay, I'm actually going to skip this stuff because I want to get into
Phoebe Cohen: Some more, alright so service. So for service, I basically got archive lists of everyone who's been on a committee, who's been president, who's been Chair of some committee over the whole history of of the society.
Phoebe Cohen: And this is what we see in terms of inferred gender for women and men. So we're seeing a big increase in women doing service.
Phoebe Cohen: In the 2000s and then an even larger increase in just the last few years, so awesome. Women are doing a lot of service. Love it. Um, there's a problem, however, and the problem is that if we categorize that service.
Phoebe Cohen: If you look at executive officers, versus education and outreach and this includes our some of our diversity and equity work.
Phoebe Cohen: We're seeing big shifts. Okay, so we're seeing that executive officers are still dominated by men, and some of our more education outreach related service is vastly dominated by women.
Phoebe Cohen: Much more disproportionate to the, you know, low 30% maybe a high 30% proportion of women in our entire discipline. So women are doing a lot of service, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Phoebe Cohen: But if that service has sort of a gender component to it. I think that's something that we really need to be conscious and aware of. And you'll note that publications are almost as bad as executive officers and in terms of
Phoebe Cohen: The gender of those who are involved. Okay. And of course publications are are critical thing for for folks’ careers.
Phoebe Cohen: Alright so next steps in a call to action.
Phoebe Cohen: And so I guess my conclusion from this is are that straight cis gendered able bodied white women are doing okay in the Paleo Society.
Phoebe Cohen: I want to make it very clear. This does not negate the harm from decades of sexism and exclusion of limit in our field, and it does not mean sexism and harassment is still not a continual issue for for many women.
Phoebe Cohen: One of the things that I got out of this analysis is that efforts relating to women should include a focus on post student or sort of mid career stage. And this is something that's seen, increasingly seeing across the STEM fields.
Phoebe Cohen: Three minutes. Okay. Women are doing a vastly disproportionate amount of society service, but only in certain gender categories.
Phoebe Cohen: And I think that all of this tells us that we obviously that we need to continue to expand our diversity and inclusion efforts beyond the gender binary
Phoebe Cohen: Not that we're done with with you know that women are are done or fixed or whatever, but that we need to expand our conversations and our discussion, in our efforts.
Phoebe Cohen: So what comes next. Okay, so here's just a couple of quotes that I think embody some of the things that I've been thinking about. So here's a quote from Mikki Kendall’s really wonderful book Hood Feminism, mainstream white feminists, which I would consider myself
Phoebe Cohen: Will have to confront the racism of white women and the harm it does without passing the buck to white men. So I guess the point here is that
Phoebe Cohen: White women, we need to acknowledge the role that we've played as opposed to just putting the blame on the white men in our, in our field.
Phoebe Cohen: And then the last quote here. You can read this, this Twitter one is this one by Sarah Ahmed, who's a Black feminist scholar and she's talking about race and institutions.
Phoebe Cohen: I think the final comment there are issues of perception among certain communities which are stopping them from reaching us. So you could imagine us being paleontology, is particularly suggestive.
Phoebe Cohen: The certain communities as an implicit reference to communities of color, race often appears under the euphemism of community and appearance. That is a disappearance
Phoebe Cohen: The implication that the institution does not reach such communities. So you can say that paleontology does not reach such communities.
Phoebe Cohen: It does not include them because they perceive the institution as excluding them. The problem of whiteness is thus redescribed here, not as an institutional problem, but as a problem with those who are not included by it.
Phoebe Cohen: So we have to take responsibility for what our society looks like, as opposed to passing the buck on to communities that we, you know, may perceive as not being interested in us.
Phoebe Cohen: So just quickly, I want to say what the Paleo Society is already doing because we're already doing a ton.
Phoebe Cohen: We have a really, really strong ethics code. I'd say one of the strongest of any society, and I really encourage you to learn about it and take advantage of it. There is no statute of limitations for this code. We also have an incredible diversity and inclusion committee, headed by
Phoebe Cohen: Dena Smith, and this is just a screenshot of the anti racism statement that the Paleo Society put out. It's on our website and I definitely recommend that you read it and check out the resources that they posted.
Phoebe Cohen: Right now applications are open for the PS conference travel grants that support inclusion for those of you who are interested in registering for GSA, but might not have the financial ability to do that.
Phoebe Cohen: So what's next.
Phoebe Cohen: White men need to step up re:surface especially in education and outreach.
Phoebe Cohen: We need an acknowledgement of how white men in our field have benefited from a legacy of sexism, and we need an acknowledgement of how white men and women in our fields have benefited from white supremacy.
Phoebe Cohen: Continued work on ethics reporting and support for victims, supporting the work of the DEI committee.
Phoebe Cohen: We have a climate survey that we did in fall 2019 and we'll be sharing the results of that moving forward, to learn more about the experiences of different groups. Nominate white women and people of color for awards, and do your homework and listen.
Phoebe Cohen: And I also want to give a plug to this really wonderful GSA pardee symposium.
Phoebe Cohen: On strategies for excellence in diversity and inclusion and I encourage you to participate in the workshop that afternoon and listen to the talks, and that's part of GSA and you can learn more about that here I can put a link in too.
Phoebe Cohen: And I just want to end with this slide, and to just point out that when I was sitting there watching this parade of not women going up on stage.
Phoebe Cohen: I spent very little time thinking about the fact that almost everybody who went up on that stage was white.
Phoebe Cohen: And that is my fault, my problem. And I think that it's a for many white people it is our problem.
Phoebe Cohen: I think those of us who have been complicit even if only in our silence have to begin or continue the work of becoming truly anti racist.
Phoebe Cohen: And again, if you need a place to start, I definitely recommend the Paleo Society site’s D and I committee document which you can find on the website. Okay, thank you.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Thank you so much, Phoebe. We have time for one, maybe two questions.
Dana Friend - Moderator: No, it was great. I'm so glad. Alright, so first up.
Dana Friend - Moderator: What actions can be taken to improve the culture of PS and other academic areas for increased equity between the genders.
Phoebe Cohen: Oh wow so many things. So one of the things, there's a whole PS banquet committee that's working or obviously we're not having a banquet this year.
Phoebe Cohen: But for the banquet next year, thinking about, okay, how can we maybe change the alcohol situation at the PS banquet so that is less boozy, how can we maybe highlight
Phoebe Cohen: You know, one of the things I think would be great would be sort of to highlight and acknowledge
Phoebe Cohen: Some of the women who were potentially overlooked for awards in the 80s and 90s, for example, I think that would be really powerful. So thinking about sort of like restorative things that the society could do
Phoebe Cohen: The previous talk, where we learned about from Phil’s talk learning about
Phoebe Cohen: You know, talking about these issues with your students. Right. Like, you can't just bring your students GSA and pretend everything's gonna be hunky dory.
Phoebe Cohen: Being honest with your students about what they might experience and supporting them, making sure that they're aware of the resources that are available.
Phoebe Cohen: Educating yourself on what might happen if you are, you know,
Phoebe Cohen: Not a woman and you are bringing women students or underrepresented students to a meeting.
Phoebe Cohen: Making sure that you're providing them with the proper structures and support I think is really critical, and also encouraging more community. I think this symposium itself is really great, a great way to do that.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Okay, I have one more.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Someone asked, What are your thoughts about the leaky pipeline theory. Do you feel women's roles are a major factor in not continuing into faculty roles and maybe choosing an alternate career path?
Phoebe Cohen: Yeah, so I specifically did not include the leaky pipeline term in my talk, because I think it's super problematic because it implies that there's something wrong with women who leave and I almost left academia and so I have sort of like a personal feeling about that as well.
Phoebe Cohen: Not everybody needs to go on to become an academic
Phoebe Cohen: It's not realistic, given our job market, and it is not necessarily the path forward for everybody.
Phoebe Cohen: The question is whether or not people are making that decision because of negative issues that they're facing because of their gender. It's not that
Phoebe Cohen: You know, leaving academia is a bad thing, it's a bad thing if people are doing it because they're not being properly supported not being properly mentored they are not
Phoebe Cohen: They don't have accessible child care, things like that. So I think that's what we should be focusing on. If people should leave for whatever reason is good is best for them.
Phoebe Cohen: But if it has to do with their, their race or ethnicity, their gender, their disability, any, any factor like that. Then, then it's a problem.
Thank you.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Alright so that concludes your Q & A, um, if you have more questions for Phoebe, please just go ahead and throw them in the Q & A and we can bring them up again at
Dana Friend - Moderator: At the at the finish of this particular session.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Alright panelists. I'm going to begin reading some questions for you guys.
Dana Friend - Moderator: All right. Someone asked, Are there specific systemic changes in an academic or non academic setting that you have identified for us to advocate to increase diversity or inclusion and equity.
Julie R. Posselt: Specific systemic changes.
Phoebe Cohen: I mean, getting rid of the GRE. A lot of people are doing that right now. That's a you know it's it's kind of trendy right now. But I think for good reasons. And it's something that I think has benefited from communities institutions coming together and pushing for it.
Phoebe Cohen: The covid crisis has obviously made that easier, but hopefully it'll last
Julie R. Posselt: Yeah, I'll totally co-sign on that and I've spent a lot of time talking and thinking about why it is that people turn to the GRE as
Julie R. Posselt: This sort of lightning rod for change and my
Julie R. Posselt: My general take on it is that it is something that it represents so much more in the heads of faculty members often than even those who make the test say
Julie R. Posselt: And so by engaging a conversation about the GRE you're sort of taking on some of the most high barriers to equity you're taking on how do people conceptualize intelligence, quality, merit, excellence.
Julie R. Posselt: The challenging part with that is that if you're only talking about the GRE and then not thinking also about how other aspects of admissions can reinforce the same stereotypes.
Julie R. Posselt: Whether it's through letters of recommendation that the profile of the students becomes bias or trends within personal statements that privilege certain kinds of research experiences and that not everybody has access to
Julie R. Posselt: Yeah, it is a great example of it's a specific change that you can seek and that if you do it in a systemic way if you position the change of the GRE within a broader conversation about what's the culture that we tend to value.
Julie R. Posselt: How is admissions a place that we tend to value culture of certain sorts and not others. It's helping to surface, some of the things that have been latent in there all along but that we don't always take time to make explicit
Phoebe Cohen: Yeah, I totally agree with that. It's like the tip of an iceberg of conversations about, you know, elite institutions and right I mean there's so many coded words that we use that end up leading to overrepresentation of some groups.
Phoebe Cohen: And so, you know, that can if you're if you're looking for a place to start I think that can be a good starting place that can hopefully lead to bigger conversations like Julie was talking about.
Julie R. Posselt: This also mentioned quickly though that
Julie R. Posselt: If you're looking for part of the rationale, especially given the summers racial uprisings for colleagues who are still resisting
Julie R. Posselt: Making a change to the GRE, you could one one pitch that's increasingly effective is to say, hey, if you're not willing to change this one thing about one part of our system.
Julie R. Posselt: What should give us as students or as colleagues who want to be change agents confidence that the department or
Julie R. Posselt: Disciplinary leadership is serious about making systemic change because really, there's a lot more going on than just this one thing and this is a moment in which
Julie R. Posselt: Like you said. Phoebe if we're not willing to make that change now and if we are not willing to make that one little change what should give us confidence that the leadership is serious about making systemic change.
Phil Stokes: Yeah, I agree. And, you know, right, because you could you could argue that any sort of standardized test could be a barrier, not just GRE but SAT or ACT
Phil Stokes: You know, one change that I was really proud to impart was we had training for our incoming teaching assistance.
Phil Stokes: And we added a module to this was at University of Arizona College of Science, we added a module for diversity.
Phil Stokes: You know, just to you know make sure that our new teaching assistants were aware of biases and how they, you know, understood how they can be inclusive of everyone in their classroom. It was low hanging fruit. But I think very effective.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Alright, I'm going to go on to the next question.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Someone has asked, how do you see bridging field or other experiences for A) those who were attracted to feel geology, precisely because of the informality, constant togetherness, and personal challenges of toughness with B) those who need and want more boundaries in those areas.
Julie R. Posselt: So just a few words about that, but I'm confident that Phil and Phoebe would have awesome things to say too. I think the main thing is just to recognize that
Julie R. Posselt: That norms and values are always like can be thought of as a double edged sword. Depending on how they're defined and deployed in real life.
Julie R. Posselt: They can be really, really positive tools for a broad number of people or they can be highly exclusionary
Julie R. Posselt: And so that idea of redefining toughness, not to exclude physical toughness. But to say that that's not the only kind of strength that has value.
Julie R. Posselt: And that if we're willing to accept that within the field, those who have been successful are not a small, they're not a narrow profile.
Julie R. Posselt: And more instead of defining it based on how it has been through history through through the present, the eyes of the present and who's being successful and why
Julie R. Posselt: That way, you have an opportunity to like you can imagine something like the boundaries have been here and it's not like we're trying to eliminate from that.
Julie R. Posselt: The field. People who fit within that, but really to, like, just be more expensive to be more capacious and to recognize that in the 21st century, and in the society that we have it there, there's more that can be successful about it.
Phoebe Cohen: Yeah, totally agree. I think, you know, one thing that we've worked hard, doing my own institution is just thinking about the imaging that we're or the you know the visuals are the concepts that we're sharing with our students, especially introductory courses.
Phoebe Cohen: To acknowledge the fact that field work is a component of what we do. But there are many other components right there's lab work. There's data analysis, you know, we're starting to
Phoebe Cohen: teach our students, you know, R a lot earlier, things like that. So again, like Julie said, you know, we're not
Phoebe Cohen: Saying that field work doesn't exist or isn't important. And we acknowledge that many of our students do start taking our courses because they like being outside
Phoebe Cohen: But expanding that picture. Okay, to make sure that you know just even the images that are up in our hallways are all of you know
Phoebe Cohen: Our white male students on a big mountain in Montana. Right. Not that there's anything wrong with that or their enjoyment of that experience and we want to make sure that people who do want to have those experiences.
Phoebe Cohen: Can have them, but that that's not the norm or the default for our earth sciences community. I think is really important. And then of course the conversations about
Phoebe Cohen: Accessibility and field trips, which
Phoebe Cohen: We heard about this morning also super important, making sure that people have access to different kinds of field experiences that
Phoebe Cohen: That they feel comfortable with and and making sure that when you talk about those things. It's not like you know this is the “B trip” right but you're not putting judgment on the different experiences that students are going to have
Julie R. Posselt: I love this slide that
Julie R. Posselt: That Cameron had of
Julie R. Posselt: The historical profile and then the reality of diversity within paleontology.
Julie R. Posselt: So probably could have like included that one somewhere on the right to say that's like, yes, it's all of that, where we've been and where we're going.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): I'm going off on that where field camp is often a big requirement for many programs, especially at the graduate level. Um, what advice do you have for getting around that fields camp requirement or how can we be more inclusive in our fields in general when it comes to field work.
Phoebe Cohen: I mean we just shouldn't have field requirements.
Phoebe Cohen: We don't have one. I didn't have one when I was an undergrad I turned out okay. I've done a lot of field work.
Phoebe Cohen: I mean, I know this is a controversial topic. So I'm you know I'm but I don't think that there needs to be a field requirement.
Phoebe Cohen: But I know other people feel very differently.
Julie R. Posselt: Did you have a capstone or other because I think in some places, at least the argument for it is that this is the place where you're learning comes together, but I can imagine as an education professor that there's lots of ways to make your learning come together
Phoebe Cohen: Sure. Yeah, we have like synthetic senior seminars, where students are integrating different kinds of knowledge and
Phoebe Cohen: You know, doing higher order thinking and and everyone has the chance to do field work and to have field experiences.
Phil Stokes: Yeah, I would say you know so i think i mean if you look at field camp as as a requirement as you know how it's supposed to lead students into careers.
Phil Stokes: I would argue that most most undergraduates, don't go on to become you know mappers, you know, right. It's there's so there's so many more career opportunities.
Phil Stokes: You know, however, I do see a value in having a capstone course that really that really ties the curriculum together and and also it's like
Phil Stokes: You know, if you're just looking at from the socialization point of view, it's, it's like an incredible memory for so many majors, you know, ask them about their, their field camp experiences, you know, and it's, you know, I'd argue that it's a good reinforcer of an identity as a geoscientist
Phil Stokes: So altogether eliminating you know field courses you know I, I would not be in favor of that but i i'm also
Phil Stokes: really disappointed. Whenever I hear you know someone say, well, if a student can you know so and so, can't hack field camp, you know, then they can't become you know a geologist like
Phil Stokes: You know, there needs to be that work around for, you know, students that with impaired mobility impairments or even a student who says interested in remote sensing, you know that you know you don't need to be out in the field to look at satellite data.
Phil Stokes: And I believe there is
Phil Stokes: Again, I'll go back. So my alma mater, University of Arizona actually offers an accessible earth field course which can take the place of that.
Phil Stokes: Traditional field camp and you know it's you know it's in Italy, which, you know, makes it somewhat inaccessible itself, but I don't see why you know other programs can't put together a similar course that may be is lab and office based
Dana Friend - Moderator: Thank you. All right, I'm going to ask the next question this is from Jen.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Jen asks, is there any effort to standardize codes of conduct and fieldwork. I've worked for one PI who has no code, no guide, another that had a very comprehensive guide and it made a huge difference. Thoughts?
Phoebe Cohen: Yeah, I mean, I've written a code for our department and and been involved in the work with the Paleo Society’s, you know, sort of larger code of conduct, but
Phoebe Cohen: I think that's an interesting, I think the. I'm sorry, the
Phoebe Cohen: Advances, Geoadvances team has a whole website on the SERC page someone wants to pull up that link and pop it in
Phoebe Cohen: Which is super, super helpful and I am constantly sending to colleagues.
Phoebe Cohen: And so that provides a really great set of resources, because everyone's, you know, depending on what type of field work you're doing or what sort of
Phoebe Cohen: You know population of working with obviously your, your code is going to need to to change somewhat, but there's going to be some universal things one would hope.
Phoebe Cohen: I don't know of any sort of larger recommendations, it would be interesting for an you know some someone like GSA or even the Paleo Society or AGU to look into that. I think that's an interesting idea.
Julie R. Posselt: Yeah, the AGU ethics and equity center may have something going in that regard. I'm not entirely sure, but
Julie R. Posselt: But I'll mention that there's a certain amount of like the discussion about what should go in a code of conduct is good to have collaboratively, but
Julie R. Posselt: I'm not totally persuaded that at a field wide disciplinary level a single code of conduct is a good idea because context matters so much and
Julie R. Posselt: What is acceptable code of conduct or acceptable behavior is going to vary a little bit by context or at least the issues that are salient that people are going to really feel like need to be represented there.
Julie R. Posselt: Might need to vary in the same way that when people are putting together a syllabus or an evaluation rubric. There's usefulness in seeing templates.
Julie R. Posselt: But then also developing your own that's locally resonant so that there's buy in for it. I think codes of conduct are a good
Julie R. Posselt: Thing for a group to do together as opposed to have just handed to them. And so any sort of effort to create a standardized one could probably be more like a starting point for conversation than the bar to which everybody should be rising
Phoebe Cohen: I think that's super important point, and like having
Phoebe Cohen: You know, also when you have one talking about just having handing it out and walking away like it has to be a conversation
Phoebe Cohen: With your students with people, you're going into a field and something I'm still working on myself because it can be kind of awkward and uncomfortable, but
Phoebe Cohen: I think that, you know, Julie's point that it that it is a community coming together in some ways and deciding that this is how they are going to behave that this is these are the
Phoebe Cohen: You know, the norms that they were going to adhere to. And so having that community buy in, I think, is really essential. It can't just be a piece of paper.
Julie R. Posselt: And literally had this terrible experience when I was at a conference where
Julie R. Posselt: A colleague of mine came to me and said, oh my goodness X person just yelled at me and
Julie R. Posselt: Went for quite a while about how they had like violated the code of conduct and then 10 minutes later that same individual who had done the yelling
Julie R. Posselt: Went and went up on the stage and presented the code of conduct for the hundred some people who are attending the conference.
Julie R. Posselt: So like a mission statement or like all things we have to remember that these, these are tools like anything else. They can be adhered to or not. And that's how we use the tools, not their existence that helps to change behavior.
Phil Stokes: Julie. I have a question for you know if you ever run into a situation where a person in a field experience, you know, was maybe a bad actor or had some bad behavior, but because there wasn't a code of conduct. They were okay with you know the university was okay with that.
Julie R. Posselt: I know I've heard about that at the field institute that we held and the closest that I can describe to seeing something that fit that was
Julie R. Posselt: There was this kind of story that was going around the one of the courses that I observed where an international student smacks the butt of a woman student in the class.
Julie R. Posselt: And the instructor felt like they should mention it to the students that it wasn't acceptable to do that, but because they weren't international students and the norms might be different in their country.
Julie R. Posselt: That they were not necessarily going to take any further action. So I think it's one of those situations where yeah we're in a conversation about norms and rules that are socially constructed and how we manage them and enforce them is also going to be socially constructed
Julie R. Posselt: I don't know if that's quite answering your question. But yeah, it happens all the time. 
Phil Stokes: Yeah, no, that's, that's sort of my experience is that
Phil Stokes: You know, and it seems like every year. You know, so it was a staff member on a field camp and
Phil Stokes: You know, every year. It's like you get a lot of people together. And there's always someone who's just like not quite used to, you know, working in a group environment for weeks at a time.
Phil Stokes: And as a result of something, you end up, you know, adding a new rule to the you know the rulebook. Right, right. It's like okay well we didn't think about this before but yeah I guess we have to address it.
Phil Stokes: You know, I think that that sort of code of conduct needs to be a living document that's right you know and as you mentioned, socially constructed, you know,
Phil Stokes: You know, if you're in any sort of leadership position. You know, it may not be in your job description, but I would, I would encourage you to
Phil Stokes: You know, do you know do just this right is to take an active role and identifying the behaviors that you like and that you don't like field experiences and putting it out there.
Phoebe Cohen: And that this ties in with an earlier question about like with concrete things that people can do, you know, encouraging your, your department or your program to, you know, develop a code of conduct and craft that conversation. In addition to the GRE thing would be a great idea.
Julie R. Posselt: And to have to revisit it too. I know with my with my classes when we have discussion guidelines.
Julie R. Posselt: Which is sort of the equivalent for a code of conduct. We don't just do it on the first day and then file it away. We check in about once a month, or if I know we're going to be having a discussion about a paper that is like really hot in some way.
Julie R. Posselt: We check in with our norms. Before we have that discussion. So yeah, but it gives it a chance to be that living document like you're saying, Phil.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): All right. Um, so, next question. What do you recommend for a female faculty who are trying to be role models for their female and underrepresented.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Students when the female faculty is faced by such social behaviors of sexism and discrimination, not only in the fields, but maybe in a professional setting or elsewhere.
Phoebe Cohen: That's super hard. I mean, I would say. Be kind to yourself because
Phoebe Cohen: If you're in that situation like you're taking on a lot of pain probably
Phoebe Cohen: And so, and it can be really hard because you want to be there for your students.
Phoebe Cohen: I've never been in quite that extreme of a situation, but I have found that having honest conversations with my students about experiences that I've had. Even if it's, I'm just sort of giving them summaries. I'm not, you know, you don't want to over share with your
Students
Phoebe Cohen: Can be really helpful and can lead to a conversation where they feel like they
Phoebe Cohen: Have you know have a realistic picture, but where you can obviously you know as the adult in the situation be like, look, if any of this happens to you, you know,
Phoebe Cohen: That you are there to support them and that even if they see something negative happening to you as the instructor, that does not mean it's okay. Um, yeah.
Julie R. Posselt: I'd add to that to that, to the extent that your conditions allow you to not try to handle it alone, whether it's
Julie R. Posselt: connecting with other female colleagues or men who are supportive or people who are outside the gender binary who really get the dynamics of navigating gender and what sexism look like on a day to day basis.
Julie R. Posselt: Having having people, not your students again, to open up to about that is both good in terms of devising strategies but also developing more of a network of support.
Julie R. Posselt: So in theories of motivation being connected and being a sense of belonging to whatever group you're trying to be motivated within is a really key pillar of motivation and so
Julie R. Posselt: Anytime you're trying to navigate difficult situations on your own. It's going to be more difficult. And then the other thing over time. I've just
Julie R. Posselt: I hope your institutions have ombudspersons available. And if they don't, that's another really concrete thing that you can advocate for in your organization or your department.
Julie R. Posselt: Because that's a great outlet in situations where you're trying to be a good role model, but you might not feel like you have very many outlets for discussing the realities that you're experiencing with
Julie R. Posselt: That you're experiencing ombudspersons are really critical as like a low bar reporting mechanism.
Julie R. Posselt: That helped to keep track of issues as they come up without necessarily escalating them to a title nine investigation immediately.
Julie R. Posselt: So that's a major finding of my research is just creating more opportunities for talking about it that getting, deinstitutionalizing silence as the state of affairs when sexism occurs.
Julie R. Posselt: In both the little things, and in the bigger things that are made possible because we have stopped paying attention to the seriousness of the little things.
Phil Stokes: Yeah, you know, it's obviously I haven't experienced it in the same sense of female colleagues, but I have witnessed, you know, some pretty
Phil Stokes: Let's say archaic viewpoints that were pushed, pushed very strongly by certain faculty, you know. And my thought is, you know, the, you got to support you know the
Phil Stokes: The women who, you know, experienced this type of discrimination and also encourage them to document it.
Phil Stokes: You know there are some cases where universities are not receptive right where you can't find a mediator or an advocate.
Phil Stokes: You know, and it does eventually get to see like the legal arena, you know, and that. And my thought is, you know, if you have everything well documented that that only helps your case.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Thank you. I'm going to read the next question.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Marina asks, What incentives can Paleo Society and other societies do to promote people to get involved in outreach and education services, how can we reward the great work. People like you Cameron, all of you know so many people are doing. And then make it more rewarding.
Phoebe Cohen: That's a tough question.
Phoebe Cohen: I mean, I know through anecdotal discussions with leaders in sort of the education side of Paleo Society that
Phoebe Cohen: They will often email many, many people to ask them to be on the education and outreach committee and that
Phoebe Cohen: Men are more likely to say no.
Phoebe Cohen: I'm sure it's not a surprise to anyone. So I think that's part of every you know the reason for those for those some of the data that that I showed
Phoebe Cohen: This is way bigger than the Paleo Society or paleontology, or a science right and this is, we are getting into big societal gender issues here. And so I don't think I have a good answer. I think raising awareness to the society and having a you know go all the way up to the level of
Phoebe Cohen: The Executive Committee is is really important.
Phoebe Cohen: So that people feel like this is a priority for the entire society, not just for the one person who's trying to convince you to be on this committee.
Phil Stokes: Yeah, I guess I'll jump in here. So right there's, like, kind of like two types of people. There's those who are motivated intrinsically
Phil Stokes: You know, to teach and do outreach and there's those who are motive motivated extrinsically, you know, so, so
Phil Stokes: You know, if you’re intrinsic then you're just probably going to do it because you enjoy it.
Phil Stokes: If you're an extrinsic person, then you know you want some sort of payoff, whether it be money or recognition or whatever.
Phil Stokes: I do think that like the 10 year evaluation process should acknowledge you know community engagement. You know, you know, more than it does if it, if it does, you know,
Phil Stokes: Arguably varies from institution to institution, you know, and I've always looked at it as a very broad issue because
Phil Stokes: Yeah, you know, diversity is important in science, but also like the taxpayers are funding National Science Foundation, National Institutes for Health.
Phil Stokes: You know, these, these granting agencies and so you really want to be able to show off what you're doing right and not you know silo yourself in, you know, your, your, your studies.
Phil Stokes: You know, so that's kind of, for me, like the approach. It's like, look, if you do these things if you connect with the community.
Phil Stokes: You know it's gonna pay off, you know, politically for the university down the road. So, so there should be an incentive there to, you know, for faculty and for students to get out in the community and share what they're doing.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Alright, it looks like we have time for one final question for you all. Um, so, since many of our majors in paleontology and geosciences are recruited from taking introductory classes, how can we change the culture of these classes to better recruit more diverse students in the field?
Phoebe Cohen: I'm in the middle of developing a new introductory class like right now.
Phoebe Cohen: So I've been thinking about this a lot.
Phoebe Cohen: So again, going back to the. What are you, what are you showing that you're representing
Phoebe Cohen: So making sure that if you're talking about careers in whatever discipline you're talking about that. It's not just, you know,
Phoebe Cohen: The much macho field part of the discipline, but that you're talking about people who do all kinds of different work.
Phoebe Cohen: Showing diversity of different types of scientists and science continually through your lectures. If you're reading scientific papers, making sure that you're reading papers from a diverse group of scientists
Phoebe Cohen: And again, diversity community, you know, many, many different things, right, we're not just necessarily talking about racial diversity.
Phoebe Cohen: So making sure that you're thinking of intersection really about the types of scientists and science that you're showing
Phoebe Cohen: Changing the way you teach so active learning
Phoebe Cohen: Using ungrading techniques. The SERC website is an amazing resource for learning about these kinds of pedagogy. So if they're things that you're not familiar with, but there's really good
Phoebe Cohen: data to suggest that that does influence the experience of underrepresented students in the classroom.
Phoebe Cohen: Reaching out to students. If you have research opportunities as opposed to waiting for students to come to you. Learning, making sure that you learn your students names and can pronounce them correctly and that you don't misgender students
Phoebe Cohen: I mean, I, I'm doing the laundry list now, but those are just some of the things that jumped to my head. There's actually a really wonderful paper I can link to it in the comments. That's like
Phoebe Cohen: Twenty-one techniques for building an inclusive classroom that I've, I've used a bunch. So I can, I can share that with folks.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Thank you so much, Phoebe.
Julie R. Posselt: I think right oh
Dana Friend - Moderator: Oh, please do.
Julie R. Posselt: I was just going to maybe provide a little synthetic comment for what Phoebe had to say is that
Julie R. Posselt: What you're describing, there is a huge body of activity. And when you start to recognize or encourage your colleagues to recognize that teaching is a practice.
Julie R. Posselt: That has a whole lot of knowledge and evidence behind it in the same way that paleontology has a body of evidence behind it scientifically.
Julie R. Posselt: You start to realize that the knowledge and skills that it takes to do instruction.
Julie R. Posselt: Are not just to be absorbed or picked up or born with, but rather to be honed and developed in the same way that expertise and other fields are and so
Julie R. Posselt: Embedding that process of learning about teaching or learning about curriculum design or learning about how to just do our work better academically.
Julie R. Posselt: Within this realm of efforts around diversity, equity, and inclusion that like using the literature and recognizing it as a domain of knowledge that needs to be cultivated over time. The way any kind of expertise does goes a long way.
Phil Stokes: Phoebe really sort of nailed all the all the major ideas you know it's right and as Julie added, you know, like, um, you know, it's up to the instructors to want to improve how they teach
Phil Stokes: You know, and I think there are some instructors who are content with their status quo, but there's many who are always willing to improve
Phil Stokes: And having that that human connection where you know you can you can highlight a scientist of color in your lecture I think would be is huge and you know more of that you know that it's kind of like chipping away at a big iceberg, you know, eventually we'll, we'll get there.
Phoebe Cohen: Yeah, I think, Julie’s point is so critical, like there are people who, you know, this is their job. This is what they study
Phoebe Cohen: So familiarizing yourself with that literature and that scholarship and then Phil's point that like I just did a laundry list right and that can be overwhelming. If you're, you know, teaching for next year. Right. But just picking one or two things that feel
Phoebe Cohen: Like that you're able to take on and again chipping away and and you know that you don't have to change your course overnight if you
Phoebe Cohen: Can't but if you're teaching a new course right from scratch. If you're a newly minted instructor. That's a great opportunity to really dig into this literature.
Dana Friend - Moderator: Thank you so much. All right. This concludes session two of PRI’s Symposium, we want to thank our speakers and organizers for donating their time and effort to make this a success.
Dana Friend - Moderator: And if you haven't done so, please think about donating to one of our speakers suggested funds found on our symposium webpage. Also, before you leave, we would appreciate it if you could fill out our feedback survey with any questions or comments that you might have.
Dana Friend - Moderator: So thank you so much for joining us. We will now be taking a one hour break and we will resume with session three promptly at 4pm Eastern. So thank you and see you soon.
