Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Welcome to session three of the Paleontological Research Institution’s 14th annual summer symposium.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): If this is your first time joining us today. A little background about our event.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Due to developments across our country and the world we as a group of Cornell graduate students and early career professionals felt the need to dedicate our theme this year to diversity, equity, and inclusion in paleontology.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): We hope the presentations and Q & A panel today will foster meaningful conversation and help invoke change in our fields.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): So welcome to the third and final session of today's program. My name is Jaleigh and I will be your moderator for this session. There's also a whole team of us, most are behind the scenes, making sure everything runs smoothly today.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): This session will be recorded for later viewing and unless otherwise noted by our speakers, please do not record or take screenshots of presentations
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Unless the speaker says that you have permission to do so. Um, so I want to thank all of our speakers and attendees for joining us this afternoon. Each presenter will present for 20 minutes, followed by time for a few questions.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): And then at the end of the session, we will have a 30 minute live Q & A panel with all of our speakers from this session.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Please direct your speaker questions to the Q & A chat feature found at the bottom of your screen. If you have questions for specific panelists, please note that in your question.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): And they will be asked by one of the session moderators.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Please bear with us as we navigate this virtual format and any technical difficulties that we may encounter during this session, if Zoom happens to crash for any reason.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Please just rejoin the webinar with your webinar link and we will get things back up and running as soon as possible. So we hope you enjoyed this session, um,
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): And let's transition to our first speaker slide, I would like to introduce Dr Kuheli Dutt
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Who is an assistant director of Academic Affairs and Diversity at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University and she will be presenting a talk on promoting racial diversity in the geosciences. So take it away Kuheli.
Kuheli Dutt: Thank you so much, Jaleigh. Is it okay if I share my screen now?
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Absolutely.
Kuheli Dutt: Good afternoon and thank you for attending today's session.
Kuheli Dutt: My talk is about promoting racial diversity in the geosciences, as you know, the geosciences are among the least diverse STEM fields.
Kuheli Dutt: And we haven't had any change in racial diversity in the last 40 years, on top of that underrepresented minorities account for only about 5% of the PhDs in the geosciences
Kuheli Dutt: And hold less than 4% of the faculty positions at top at the top 100 geoscience institutions. Like academia and other STEM fields and the geosciences, the leadership is almost entirely white and mostly male
Kuheli Dutt: And so, we have this lack of an inclusive culture in the geosciences where you have these dominant groups of white male cis gender heterosexual people and that is the dominant culture of the geosciences.
Kuheli Dutt: One of the issues is, I mean, we've been talking about in response to recent events, talking about
Kuheli Dutt: race and racism and systemic racism, but in order to address it, we have to first acknowledge that it exists. And I find that that's the first stumbling block for many people in institutions, the reluctance to acknowledge that there is a problem.
Kuheli Dutt: Take a look at the geosciences, the purple arrow, that's the geosciences and this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone. This is from the Bernard and Cooperdock paper, that showed there was no change in racial diversity in the last 40 years. Again, this is no surprise to anyone.
Kuheli Dutt: And in STEM fields, I'm going to mention a few studies that were done all specifically to STEM fields. So one of them found that Black and Latinx undergrads had the same
Kuheli Dutt: Likelihood as white undergrads to pursue STEM majors, but they ended up leaving at higher rates, despite similar academic preparation and background.
Kuheli Dutt: Another study found that LGBTQ students left STEM at higher rates than cis gender straight students. Yet another study found that women of color experienced the highest levels of harassment in STEM fields.
Kuheli Dutt: And yet another study found that almost 50% of black and Latina scientists would be surveyed had been mistaken as janitors and administrative staff.
Kuheli Dutt: So when you take all this together, what does this highlight when when anyone and everyone who's not part of the dominant culture ends up leaving or leaving at a higher rate, you have to acknowledge that there is a fundamental problem with the culture of that field.
Kuheli Dutt: And a lot of this, the exclusionary culture is rooted deeply in implicit bias and stereotype threat, and that's what a lot of my research is based on
Kuheli Dutt: Um, there's, and these are just highlights of certain studies. There are dozens more
Kuheli Dutt: Women and people of color in particular, African Americans of people who identify as Black are often stereotyped as not having innate brilliance. So there was one particular study that looked at I think 14 million
Kuheli Dutt: Evaluations on Rate My Professor and found that women and African Americans were least likely to be described as brilliant
Kuheli Dutt: Another study said that it didn't really matter whether it was a STEM field or a non STEM field
Kuheli Dutt: Any field where there is a perception that you need raw innate talent and brilliance, other fields where women and people of color, particularly Blacks
Kuheli Dutt: Are underrepresented because they're perceived as not having that talent. So whether you're talking about geosciences, or physics or STEM fields, or even philosophy or classics. It's the same idea.
Kuheli Dutt: You've probably all heard of this particular study, the lab manager position, for, you know, the job application where they were identical CVs and they gave one of them a male name, I think it was John
Kuheli Dutt: And the other one, a female name Jennifer, and they found that the CVs that had got the male name had been rated much higher than the identical female applicants.
Kuheli Dutt: Similar to race, they did another study I think with thousands of CVs and they found that the CVs that had been given Western sounding names like Emily and Greg
Kuheli Dutt: Got 50% higher callbacks for interviews, compared the identical CVs with with ethnic sounding names like Lakisha and Jamal.
Kuheli Dutt: NIH recently released a study, and I think about seven or eight years ago, there realeased another one. But the result is the same, Black scientists and women in particular received less funding then similarly qualified white scientists.
Kuheli Dutt: There was another study where they did this fictitious thing where they made up a whole bunch of fake student names and student profiles, and they wrote to these perspective to faculty members
Kuheli Dutt: Pretending to be prospective students who were interested in a research opportunity with that professor. And what they found is that if the applicant, the fake applicant was profile was that of a white male, they were much more likely to get a response from the professor.
Kuheli Dutt: So the consistent messaging for all of these studies, is that people of color, that women are of lesser value. And when you have a culture that is built on that consistent messaging, of course, diversity is going to be a problem.
Kuheli Dutt: Here's an example of a stereotype threat and I find this particular example fascinating for a few different reasons.
Kuheli Dutt: This is Brent Staples. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, he was a graduate student in Chicago's Hyde Park in the 1970s and he noticed that when he walked on the streets
Kuheli Dutt: People avoided, and white people avoided him, they they felt very there was clearly scared of him. They were threatened by him.
Kuheli Dutt: They cross the street. They didn't want to talk to him, the clutched their purses tighter or reached for each other's hands.
Kuheli Dutt: And even when he tried to do things like wish them good evening, or good morning or say hello or smile at them. It didn't make any difference.
Kuheli Dutt: He realized it was to do with the perception of a Black male in Chicago in the 1970s. And so what he started doing was that he started whistling tunes from classical music as he walked down the street.
Kuheli Dutt: And he noticed immediately that suddenly people weren't afraid of him anymore. And so what he did over here, is he removed himself from the negative stereotype of Black men in that area.
Kuheli Dutt: What is really going on here, if you dissect all the pieces, there's the micro aggression piece.
Kuheli Dutt: Where, clearly the white people have innate, you are not comfortable with a Black person and they make it clear, they're not comfortable with that Black person.
Kuheli Dutt: There's a stereotype threat that is they already have a negative association of a Black man.
Kuheli Dutt: And and then finally, white comfort, that is Brent Staples have to change his behavior. He had to change the way he presented himself
Kuheli Dutt: So that the white people around him felt comfortable. Now every one of these pieces, micro aggressions, stereotype threat, white comfort, this is what a lot of STEM fields, academia, geosciences are built on.
Kuheli Dutt: Affinity bias is another very powerful bias, but unlike the other biases which suggest doing harm to someone who perceiving someone negatively
Kuheli Dutt: Affinity bias is about liking people who are just like ourselves.
Kuheli Dutt: In other words, we see the most value in people who do work like us or we most closely associated with people who look like us or share a background with us. So this affinity bias is a reason why
Kuheli Dutt: In the in the geosciences or in STEM fields in general, the leadership doesn't really change, because people tend to appoint others who look like themselves or do work like themselves.
Kuheli Dutt: Now this is something very powerful, affinity bias, studies have found that babies as young as six months old show a preference for people of their own race.
Kuheli Dutt: And affinity bias is not so much about who we harm as it's who we tried to help
Kuheli Dutt: It could be based on race, it could be based on affiliation, say people from Ivy Leagues looking down on community colleges, or a certain type of work that someone does, it could be gender, it could be sexual orientation, any of those things.
Kuheli Dutt: And that's why this combination of affinity bias with systemic racism is what contributes to the mostly white leadership in the geosciences.
Kuheli Dutt: Now I know that someone spoke earlier about intersectionality and I think someone is also going to speak about it so I'll keep this really short.
Kuheli Dutt: This phrase was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw who’s a professor at Columbia and also UCLA, and she was on the original legal team defending Anita Hill.
Kuheli Dutt: This phrase what it what this term, what it means, actually, is that people with multiple marginalized identities tend to be the most disadvantaged within society.
Kuheli Dutt: What does this mean? This means even within a marginalized group, there's a hierarchy. So the feminist movement, mostly benefited white women, rather than women of color.
Kuheli Dutt: Similarly, the LGBTQ movement, mostly benefited people who are white people who identified as gay or lesbian, specifically white cis gender people who identify as gay and lesbian so
Kuheli Dutt: You have very different realities for say a cis gender, gender conforming white gay men versus a black transgender woman. So that's what intersectionality means, that the more marginalized identities, you have, the more disadvantaged you are.
Kuheli Dutt: So the combined effective all of these things, implicit bias, stereotype threat, affinity bias, intersectionality, lack of equal access to opportunity and resources, is why the STEM fields are so lacking in diversity.
Kuheli Dutt: And what ends up happening in a situation like this is that you have the dominant groups over here in this specific instance white male cisgender straight
Kuheli Dutt: Controlling the outcomes for minority groups, even though they have very different lived realities and don't always even have a very deep understanding of the problem.
Kuheli Dutt: So it was a study with the Pew Center, that the Pew Center did that found that white people are far less likely to believe or acknowledge racial inequity compared to Black people.
Kuheli Dutt: Another study found that male faculty in STEM tended to be more skeptical of gender bias evidence than others.
Kuheli Dutt: And the reason I mentioned these two points, it shows that people who don't necessarily experience a certain challenge themselves, end up dominating the lens, the perspective and the outcomes for those who actually do face and experience those challenges.
Kuheli Dutt: One example I like to give us the US College Presidents Survey. Now, when they were asked, you know what, what they thought about race relations on US colleges on college campuses in general, only 25% of them said that race relations on college campuses were in general good.
Kuheli Dutt: But when they were asked about race relations on their own campus, 81% of them said that it was good
Kuheli Dutt: Good or excellent. So what happens here is that even though in some instances, people might have acknowledged there's a problem, there's a reluctance to believe that the problem lies with them or their institution. It's like the problem is elsewhere, not with us.
Kuheli Dutt: And given that the university leadership is almost entirely white, it means people in power have a very limited understanding of the race relation, of racial issues.
Kuheli Dutt: Compound that that's compounded with the fact that most DEI work is often carried out by people of color themselves.
Kuheli Dutt: So in the geosciences, we have this we have three problems occurring simultaneously, one
Kuheli Dutt: Is that you have a very low number of PhDs in the geosciences, and so there is a pipeline problem, two, you have a
Kuheli Dutt: complete absence of underrepresented minority role models for students or junior people to look up to
Kuheli Dutt: And three, the culture in the geosciences like other STEM fields is highly exclusionary, and favors dominant groups rather than marginalized groups. And if we truly want to make a difference in the geosciences we need to address all three of these simultaneously.
Kuheli Dutt: Well there have been various studies on URM students and geoscience, and various factors have been identified, sense of belonging, math preparation, faculty as role models
Kuheli Dutt: Self Confidence, positive experiences, social persuasion, and basic things like called knowledge of the college application process, and the knowledge of income prospects from the geosciences
Kuheli Dutt: And these factors combined, it isn't any one of them that's more important than others, but these work together, to keep certain groups underrepresented. And so if we want to improve the geosciences, we need to systematically address every single one of these factors.
Kuheli Dutt: And to promote racial diversity, we need to acknowledge that racism is in fact real, so
Kuheli Dutt: We have racism, which is a systemic advantage, based on race, which is different from prejudice, prejudice is something that anyone can have regardless of their race. I mean,
Kuheli Dutt: People of all races can hold prejudice. Whereas, when we talk about racism, we're talking about a systemic advantage that some groups have and the main difference between these two is power differential. And what this means is that while
Kuheli Dutt: While everyone, say whether it's white people and people of color might all hold individual prejudices
Kuheli Dutt: White people are in a position to act on those prejudices in a way that harm people of color, or as people of color are not in a position to act in a way that harm white people.
Kuheli Dutt: I'm talking collectively about the system, the institution that is the key difference. It's an acknowledgement of this power differential. And this different lived reality and systemic advantage.
Kuheli Dutt: It's difficult to talk about this because there is a tendency for white people to not view themselves in racialized terms.
Kuheli Dutt: And there is this notion, oh, if you work hard, you'll do well, without acknowledging the fact that race also played a role in why someone did well and why someone else didn't.
Kuheli Dutt: The notion of whiteness itself is a very sensitive topic because over time, Italians, Irish, Jewish people, Greek, they all quote unquote became white and every one of these groups has known marginalization, at some point or the other.
Kuheli Dutt: And in Hispanic and Latinx cultures, this is significantly more nuanced and complex. It's much more than
Kuheli Dutt: Being Black or white, because a lot of people have indigenous and mixed ancestry, but it's also things to do with colorism, where
Kuheli Dutt: lighter skin is more is better is associated with a higher social status, a higher preference.
Kuheli Dutt: And the richer schools and neighborhoods also tend to be the ones that are dominated with lighter skinned or white passing people. So it is a very sensitive subject, and unless we choose to delve into it and address it, we're not going to be able to move very far.
Kuheli Dutt: And the key thing to keep in mind, and I say this in all of my talks is that you can still have white privilege, while facing challenges or oppression in some other identity.
Kuheli Dutt: So just because you've white privilege doesn't mean that you don't have any other problems or that you have some luxury or, you know, or that you don't face challenges. It's just that for race
Kuheli Dutt: You're, you know, you don't have that particular challenge that people of color have. Now, this needs to be addressed on two different levels. One is the individual level. And one is the institutional or departmental level.
Kuheli Dutt: At the individual level. Um, I ask everyone to do a reality check. Now, I've been the Diversity Officer for Lamont, for I would say almost 12 years now, you know, at least 11 years now and
Kuheli Dutt: I've almost never met someone who didn't self identify as a supporter of diversity and inclusion.
Kuheli Dutt: So I asked everyone to do a reality check with themselves and say, what have you actually done, other than self identifying as a supporter of diversity and inclusion
Kuheli Dutt: What have you actually done to promote racial diversity in the geosciences?
Kuheli Dutt: And this is really important because I don't know if any of you have read this book by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, called racism without races.
Kuheli Dutt: In there, he talks about the study when a lot of white people were asked whether they would invite people of whether they had a problem, inviting people of color, or a Black person to their house for dinner.
Kuheli Dutt: Almost everyone said no, of course not, you know, we'd be happy to invite a person of color or a Black person home for dinner.
Kuheli Dutt: But when they were asked if they had actually done it, more than 80% of them did not have any close friends or, you know, associates who are people of color. So this, it's this
Kuheli Dutt: This difference that needs to be looked into, another thing I tell people to do this is the equivalent to, you know, the race version of the race version of a panual
Kuheli Dutt: When someone invites you to be on a panel, ask for the panel composition, ask how many people of color are on it and ask what efforts were made
Kuheli Dutt: To invite people of color. Now, in the field of geosciences, it is, of course, difficult that isn't that much of a pool anyway.
Kuheli Dutt: But it just means that organizers should make that much extra of an effort, institutions should make that much extra effort to be proactive and invite people of color.
Kuheli Dutt: It's also important to separate systemic racism, from the advantage, rather than view it as a character defect. Because there is a tendency to view it as a character defect.
Kuheli Dutt: The other thing I would encourage everyone to do is to please do your homework, because it is not the duty of a person of color to educate white people on the subject of racism, though very often that's what ends up happening.
Kuheli Dutt: At the departmental level I, you know, one of the things you can immediately do is invest in pipeline programs, of course, going through carefully all of the points that had been mentioned earlier of what's important in the pipeline program.
Kuheli Dutt: Make sure you have a diversity advocate on a search committee, because merit is a highly subjective concept. I mean, people mistakenly believe it's an objective concept.
Kuheli Dutt: But merit is heavily based on affinity bias, we see the most merit, the most value in people who do work just like us or the work that we consider valuable. In other words, it is a very subjective concept.
Kuheli Dutt: Be proactive and aggressively appoint faculty and scientists of color to leadership roles, because that's the only way you're going to have role models.
Kuheli Dutt: That is, that's going to make that's going to set the tone, that students of color and postdocs of color are welcome. Revise your curriculum in whatever way you can to acknowledge the work of scholars of color.
Kuheli Dutt: And by the way, this is not even just about the geosciences, I mean I recently gave a talk at school of architecture and I was astounded by the similarities and some of the problems.
Kuheli Dutt: Again, invite speakers of color, and there needs to be very real acknowledgement of DEI work. Like I said, it's usually borne by marginalized groups.
Kuheli Dutt: One thing that you could do it at an institutional level is to revise your promotion criteria in some way to include DEI work, because currently most promotion criteria involve
Kuheli Dutt: You know, involve grades, classes taught, what lectures, what lectures given, student evaluations,
Kuheli Dutt: Publications, grant proposals and so on. And of course, those are important, but unless you add DEI work to it, you're consistently setting back people of color, because they are devoting time and effort to addressing this problem.
Kuheli Dutt: Again, wherever possible compensate people for doing this DEI work because they're taking this time out of their schedule when they could be writing a proposal or doing other work. They're taking time out to do this, to benefit the institution and to benefit white colleagues.
Kuheli Dutt: Ah very quickly I'm mindful of the time. I think I've very little time left. So I'm just going to very quickly run through some examples. Yes, Jaleigh, I see you, very good examples of things that we've done at Lamont.
Kuheli Dutt: One. This is just a snapshot and I'm just going to go through two or three of these. But the idea is we have a multi pronged approach. So we revised our search and hiring processes completely
Kuheli Dutt: From, you know, including guidelines on implicit bias, posting in diverse venues, comparing our applicant pool with the national available pool that NSF provides data on
Kuheli Dutt: And then providing a search committee report, that explains, not only why the top candidate was selected, but why the other people on the shortlist were not selected.
Kuheli Dutt: What we found is that there was a significant increase in women scientists across our ranks, result of concerted efforts.
Kuheli Dutt: Mostly this was most striking at the junior level where it's now about 50% women, but when it came to race we hardly saw any change. It was little to no change.
Kuheli Dutt: And we realize, part of it is to do with the fact that we're the only about 5% of the PhDs go to underrepresented minorities.
Kuheli Dutt: And so we need to invest in pipeline programs, and one of our programs is called the Secondary School Field Research Program, which is predominantly underrepresented minority students
Kuheli Dutt: And this is an immersive summer program. So these kids, they do field work, they analyze samples, they write research reports, and then they make a presentation and they're treated like early career scientists
Kuheli Dutt: This is a highly successful program, all of the students go on to college and about 50% going to STEM majors, including receiving scholarships.
Kuheli Dutt: So this is one of the pictures in the field. Now on the top right corner, you'll see a picture of this white man and he is the program director
Kuheli Dutt: Of this program. And the reason I always like to highlight this is that if we really want a change in culture
Kuheli Dutt: People from dominant groups need to take ownership of this problem rather than view it as someone else's problem and then self identify as being a supporter. So taking ownership is key.
Kuheli Dutt: This is nothing specific, our LGBTQ awareness. This is nothing specific to race, but
Kuheli Dutt: In general, promoting cultures of inclusivity, those of you who have been to the Lamont campus will see these little stickers all over campus saying you are welcome here.
Kuheli Dutt: But also, this year, you know, the Pride social activities that we had. We actually some of our students and postdocs spoke about the Stonewall Riots specifically in the context of police brutality towards marginalized groups. And so, these conversations create an inclusive space.
Kuheli Dutt: We have a diversity seminar, which we usually do maybe one or two times a year, to invite people to talk about diversity, at the same time we try to get more diverse speakers in our regular scientific seminars.
Kuheli Dutt: We broaden the scope of our mentoring award to include non traditional only it was just traditional faculty PI student kind of mentoring.
Kuheli Dutt: We included summer mentoring, underrepresented minority mentoring, technical lab mentoring, broadening up who can write letters of recommendation.
Kuheli Dutt: And we saw dramatic difference going from like 14% recipients female to about 50%.
Kuheli Dutt: We have this event called Harassment Awareness Month. That is just a whole series of events. We do it typically in March every year.
Kuheli Dutt: That just promotes awareness and the importance of these topics, and just recent efforts have been, you know, we've done racial sensitivity workshops, we've had conversations about across campus.
Kuheli Dutt: Town halls, our new director has just she just implemented, appointed a new task force.
Kuheli Dutt: And our students and postdocs came up with anti racism resources. We also on a monthly basis, discuss racism and anti racism issues at Lamont.
Kuheli Dutt: So this is just a nutshell. So I'm going to wrap up by saying that if we truly want to promote diversity, it has to be a multi pronged approach. You can't just handle one thing, you have to handle multiple things together.
Kuheli Dutt: Most important, the three most critical things are pipeline, role models, and geoscience culture.
Kuheli Dutt: Remember, you cannot have diversity without inclusion, you cannot have inclusion unless people feel like they belong, and you cannot have people feel, people will not feel like they belong, unless their identity is acknowledged.
Kuheli Dutt: And DEI work needs to, it's something you need to always work on it, it needs to always be on the radar.
Kuheli Dutt: Just like as a scientist, you don't just write one publication and say, oh, I'm good, I did that one thing. Check the box. I'm done. No, doing your science is an ongoing endeavor. It's the same with DEI work. It is ongoing.
Kuheli Dutt: And most critically, the leadership needs to take ownership of the problem, because
Kuheli Dutt: Otherwise, what ends up happening is students, postdocs, faculty of color, end up marginalized groups, LGBTQ women, people of color, bear the entire brunt of the problem. I think that's it. Thank you. I will stop the share right now.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Thank you so much for your presentation. Um, we have time for at least one question.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Um, so let's see. So this question is from Julie. So to diversify the geosciences we need to attract more diverse people into geoscience majors.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): To attract more diverse geoscience majors, we could target secondary teachers to help encourage students to major in geoscience, but we lack geoscience and also diverse teachers, how can the geoscience fields work with teacher preparation to lead to more diversity?
Kuheli Dutt: That's something. So I think one of them, that that's a great question. Actually, because exposure to the geosciences or lack of exposure to the geosciences happens is often a limiting factor.
Kuheli Dutt: I would encourage all the institutions to aggressively focus on education and outreach efforts. For example, we have at Lamont
Kuheli Dutt: Education outreach efforts at the K 12 level, because that's the level at which we can would work with teachers, with work with students, and introduce them to the geosciences so that by the time they're ready to go to college
Kuheli Dutt: They know what the geosciences are and have some sort of context. So yeah, I mean, investing in education and outreach efforts, specifically at the K 12 level is very important. And again, it has to be done at an institutional level
Kuheli Dutt: Where the dean or the director or the chair, invests, makes a commitment to doing this.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): All right. And here's one more question: For those of us in departments or institutions who are just beginning to address DEI issues, do you have any recommendations about building buy-in from those in dominant groups?
Kuheli Dutt: Well, let's put it this way. One of the most common questions I get from students and postdocs when I do workshops and seminars is
Kuheli Dutt: How do we get the people in the room who really need to be there? Because very often it's the people who are already sensitive and aware of these issues will show up
Kuheli Dutt: And ones who think that they don't need to be there, who, you know, who really need to be there who don't.
Kuheli Dutt: And again, this is again very important for the leadership, the leadership needs to send a message, the leadership needs to
Kuheli Dutt: Not request, but tell faculty members, you need to be there. This session is happening. You need to be there. Oh, this is a particular initiative.
Kuheli Dutt: I'm going to be there. You should be there too. And, I think part of it is getting these people in the room.
Kuheli Dutt: Is the first step. And once that happens, engaging them in the conversation is the next. And so I would encourage you very strongly to reach directly out to your leadership and say, you know, can you please set the example so that senior faculty follow you.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Awesome. Thank you. And if it's alright with you I we have one more question, which a lot of people are suggesting gets asked.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): So if we want to get involved with DEI work at higher levels in our organizations, but we get blocked because of career hierarchy, how do we influence the gatekeepers to let us contribute?
Kuheli Dutt: Yeah, I mean, at the risk of repeating myself, I think
Kuheli Dutt: Leadership is really key. And so it's, I think the first step you need to do is try to make the leadership aware and it could be daunting for one person to do it because they're worried about retaliation or something, you know,
Kuheli Dutt: Something going wrong or potential punishment. What I do encourage is as a cohort to do it. So if say you're all assistant faculty, say assistant professors
Kuheli Dutt: Have the entire group of assistant professors request the faculty leadership for a meeting and say we want to talk about this
Kuheli Dutt: And here is our list of discussion points. What can we do, I mean, if it was one person, that person could bet you know face of backlash. But if it's the entire rank of assistant professors, what are they going to do, fire the entire department?
Kuheli Dutt: And so that's the first step you need to take, you know, as an entire cohort
Kuheli Dutt: Reach out to the leadership to make sure there's that you create space to have these conversations. And like I said, it can't be a one time thing. It has to be
Kuheli Dutt: Sustained. So maybe if you make a commitment that once every semester this entire group, whether it's assistant professors, whether it's associate professors
Kuheli Dutt: Is going to reach out, is going to schedule a meeting with the department chair, or the you know the leadership and say, you know, this is what we want money for, these are the things we want to do, how are you going to help us to do it. That has to be a commitment from a group.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Awesome, thank you so much Dr. Dutt. We are going to be moving on to our next presentation. If a question
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): That you put in the Q & A did not quite get answered, we will get back to them at the end of session three during our live Q & A panel.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): So moving on to our next presentation, we have Dr. Patricia Kelly, who unfortunately could not be with us today.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Um, so Dr. Patricia Kelly is a professor emerita at the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She is also a research associate at the Paleontological Research Institution.
Patricia Kelley: Thanks to the organizers of this timely symposium, for inviting me to speak, and for allowing me to work around a previous commitment by recording my presentation.
Patricia Kelley: Today I'm going to be talking about my life experiences, as a woman in a field that was not always welcoming, what I learned from those experiences and a broad range of suggestions for how to make our field more inclusive, diverse and equitable.
Patricia Kelley: At the College of Wooster where I was an undergraduate, there were a lot of female geology majors. I didn't realize that there was anything unusual about being a woman paleontologist.
Patricia Kelley: Then I started grad school at Harvard. It wasn't until I was on a class field trip that I looked around and realized I was the only woman out of about a dozen students.
Patricia Kelley: I thought to myself, I guess that's the way things are. And I stopped drinking water, so I wouldn't have to make a fuss about finding a bathroom.
Patricia Kelley: At Harvard, I was given my own office which surprised me as the men had desks among the collections, or in a large bullpen.
Patricia Kelley: Then I walked into the men's bullpen. And notice the pornographic posters and the rare book collection, mainly Playboy magazines. And I thought to myself, I guess that's the way things are.
Patricia Kelley: Eventually I was told that if I managed to get a PhD, I would only be the second woman to do so in invertebrate paleontology, I thought to myself, because that's the way things are.
Patricia Kelley: I didn't really doubt that I could finish my degree, even though not everyone on my committee thought that women, and especially I, belonged in paleontology.
Patricia Kelley: I wasn't one of the guys, I didn't participate in the Friday afternoon beer drinking fests in the rare book room.
Patricia Kelley: But I had the project protection of Steve Gould, even though I was wrong, the wrong religion married to a Presbyterian minister to be, no less. And I followed the wrong baseball team Cleveland, not the Yankees, Steve made sure that there were no barriers to my getting through.
Patricia Kelley: I finished my degree in four years and accepted a job at the University of Mississippi, in the geology and geological engineering department.
Patricia Kelley: I moved in and looked around the engineering complex for a bathroom labeled faculty women, to match the faculty men's room, but of course there was none, because I was the first and only woman faculty member in the School of Engineering.
Patricia Kelley: I guess that's the way things are. I thought to myself, when sharing the ladies room with the secretaries and the few female engineering students.
Patricia Kelley: I was realizing more and more, that I was an oddity as a woman paleontologist among male engineers and then we decided to start a family, and there were new challenges.
Patricia Kelley: When I told my department colleagues that I was pregnant, one of them ground, I guess I'll have to go back to teaching paleontology. In shock I realized that they thought motherhood was going to end my career.
Patricia Kelley: I guess that's the way things are, I thought to myself, and vowed to prove them wrong.
Patricia Kelley: And I did, 10 years, and two children later, I was a full professor associate dean, and named the outstanding faculty member in the School of Engineering. I'd even gotten an NSF grant from the research opportunities for women program.
Patricia Kelley: I'd started making my way professionally. I loved going to GSA because that was the only place that I could see other paleontologists.
Patricia Kelley: I wasn't in the inner circle. I'd see Steve Gould going out with his male colleagues and former students, and I wasn't included.
Patricia Kelley: And GSA was not exactly a welcoming place for women. I remember a talk by a prominent paleontologist, in which an irrelevant slide of a naked woman appeared.
Patricia Kelley: I guess that's the way things are? I wondered, but I made my own colleagues mostly male and began to assume more positions of leadership in the profession.
Patricia Kelley: After two years as the geology and paleontology, Program Director at NSF, I moved on to the University of North Dakota.
Patricia Kelley: I was still the only woman in the School of Engineering. I guess that's the way things are. I thought, but now as department chair, I had some clout, and so did paleontology, as the centerpiece of building, and I was feeling like less of an imposter.
Patricia Kelley: After five years, I traded in blizzards and floods, for hurricanes and floods and moved to University of North Carolina Wilmington, for the second half of my career.
Patricia Kelley: I was department chair again, but this time in the department of geography and geology. There were other women faculty in the department who had been hired shortly before me.
Patricia Kelley: And so I had the opportunity to mentor them, nominate them for awards, hire more women. And in general, make it easier for faculty, male and female, to balance parental and teaching schedules. I was finally getting to change the way things are.
Patricia Kelley: I feel very fortunate in my career, I did more things than I ever expected to do back when I was just trying to survive in a male dominated world.
Patricia Kelley: I was president of the Paleo Society, the fourth woman in 100 years, and president of the PRI Board of Trustees.
Patricia Kelley: My research and teaching were recognized at my universities and at the national level, including the Association for Women Geoscientists Outstanding Educator Award,
Patricia Kelley: And the Carnegie Foundation Case United States Professor of the Year Award. I'm very grateful to the family, friends, colleagues and students who have supported me along the way.
Patricia Kelley: I realize now, how lucky I was, and it makes me want to try to enable the success of others. I focused mostly on women, because my personal battle was based on gender.
Patricia Kelley: And unfortunately things haven't improved that much for women, only a quarter of geoscientists are women and women with geoscience degrees are almost twice as likely not to be working in science and engineering than men.
Patricia Kelley: The situation is even worse in cases of intersectionality, where women of color have much higher unemployment rates, and all women are more likely to not be working due to family, than are men.
Patricia Kelley: Paleontology is similar, among faculty
Patricia Kelley: About a quarter are women
Patricia Kelley: Across all jobs, a third are women, of those responding to a Paleo Society poll of members, of those responding, a much smaller percentage are LGBTQ, and of a race, ethnicity, other than white, with Black/African Americans, representing only 2%.
Patricia Kelley: So how do we change the way things are? I'll address three areas: recruitment into the pipeline starting at K 12, retention in the pipeline, and changing the culture so that we don't have to look like white males to succeed.
Patricia Kelley: Paleo and geosciences suffer from recruitment issues. The subjects are not taught in high school and are not seen as lucrative fields. So K through 12 recruitment is essential.
Patricia Kelley: One shot events can be helpful, for instance classroom visits, interacting at science fairs, putting on programs for scout troops.
Patricia Kelley: But prolonged interactions involving longer term, one on one mentoring make a bigger difference, for instance, supervising a high school capstone project, or participating regularly in after school programs or summer science camps.
Patricia Kelley: For example, Thor Hansen and I were PIs on the NSF funded moon snail project, in which we involve teachers and students from 14 coastal, minority serving middle schools around the country.
Patricia Kelley: In our research on drilling predation by naticid gastropods, students and teachers did fieldwork, collected data, and tested hypotheses on geographic variation and predation. Students were excited about doing real science and could see themselves in science careers.
Patricia Kelley: I suspect that students with these experiences are more likely to find their way into introductory geology classes
Patricia Kelley: Which are the major source of recruitment for geology programs, for instance, two thirds of Association for Women Geoscientists’ members cite an intro course or teacher
Patricia Kelley: as their primary influence in becoming geoscientists. So what can be done to attract majors from underrepresented groups? The way we teach is important.
Patricia Kelley: For one thing, I recommend greater use of open educational resources, OER, instead of using expensive textbooks that mostly draw examples of geosciences from white male populations.
Patricia Kelley: Use openly licensed materials for example from the public domain, Creative Commons, OER Commons, etc.
Patricia Kelley: OER can be revised, reused, remixed, retained and redistributed without requesting permission from the creator.
Patricia Kelley: They are available from the first day of class at no cost to students. They can be adapted to match the identities and experiences of students.
Patricia Kelley: Allowing use of examples from underrepresented groups. Underrepresented students can see themselves in careers as geoscientists and paleontologists.OER can be adapted for accessibility, and they are sustainable in the sense that they can easily be kept current.
Patricia Kelley: Right now geology materials are limited at sites such as OER commons, we need to create more.
Patricia Kelley: Open pedagogy predates open licensing, but also takes open licensing to the next level.
Patricia Kelley: Emphasis is on giving students a voice, such as that, such that they are creators and not just consumers of knowledge.
Patricia Kelley: Rather than using disposable assignments that are never seen again, once they're graded, assignments are renewable.
Patricia Kelley: Student products contribute to the community of knowledge, for example as open openly licensed Wikipedia articles, or as presentations or publications in scientific venues.
Patricia Kelley: For instance, this paper is based on the senior thesis of the first author and four of the coauthors were also undergrads. Diverse students are empowered through this process.
Patricia Kelley: We should also avoid practices that will discourage underrepresented groups from continuing in the geosciences, subtle things like calling on white males more, or paying more attention to their questions and comments in class.
Patricia Kelley: Pipeline leaks occur at each stage of education. We lose diverse students between Bachelor's and Master's, and between Masters and PhD degrees.
Patricia Kelley: So how do we prevent these pipeline leaks? Again, by allowing members of underrepresented groups to envision themselves in the field.
Patricia Kelley: By increasing visibility of underrepresented scientists, and providing role models which, incidentally, are goals of PRI’s Daring to Dig project and the Bearded Lady Project.
Patricia Kelley: By involving students in groups such as the Association for Women Geoscientists, which has local chapters.
Patricia Kelley: The Society for Advancement of Chicanos, Hispanics and Native Americans in Science, and the National Association of Black Geoscientists
Patricia Kelley: And working closely with individual students to mentor them and to provide opportunities to do genuine science, e.g .through research experiences for undergraduates and similar programs.
Patricia Kelley: If we use open pedagogy and involve students in creating knowledge, students will realize their potential to contribute to a field. The results are empowering.
Patricia Kelley: For example, the REU program, led by Greg Dietl and me with the able assistance of UNCW graduate students including Christy Visaggi is speaking later in the session
Patricia Kelley: Had high success rate in that 85% of our diverse group of participants went on to careers and or additional study in the sciences, notably all six Latinx students completed advanced degrees.
Patricia Kelley: Finally, the transition to the workplace. Gender bias still occurs in hiring, with studies indicating that faculty see male students as more competent, hirable and worth mentoring.
Patricia Kelley: In academia, there may be bias and salaries and startup, and women often bear the brunt of trailing spouse and child care issues.
Patricia Kelley: This point has been driven home recently by studies indicating that the ongoing pandemic is differentially affecting research productivity of women, for instance, submission of manuscripts, who are spending more time on childcare and homeschooling than men.
Patricia Kelley: Workplace bias still exists. At an institutional level, personnel policies like stopping the tenure clock and family leave, which didn't exist in my day, can help, although those who take advantage of them can sometimes be stigmatized.
Patricia Kelley: Creating a family friendly culture, with onsite daycare and flexible schedules can benefit parents, regardless of gender.
Patricia Kelley: Workload assignments also need to be reconsidered, women often carry heavier service lives, as do persons of color, especially when institutions attempt to increase diversity and inclusion.
Patricia Kelley: And especially now, when institutions are actively seeking ways to combat racism with task forces, workshops, etc.
Patricia Kelley: We cannot expect Black, indigenous and people of color to carry the burden of educating white colleagues about racism, those of us who represent white privilege need to do the hard work ourselves.
Patricia Kelley: Another gender bias, exists in the area of scholarship. Females in STEM fields published less, review less, receive worse reviews, and are perceived to contribute less than their male colleagues. In paleontology
Patricia Kelley: Women recipients of research based awards from the Paleontological Society had been scarce, 7% of PS medalists, 14% of Schuchert awardees.
Patricia Kelley: We need to change the culture of implicit bias that exists against those who are not white males, bias that includes weaker reference letters, negative evaluations, less mentoring and access to leaders.
Patricia Kelley: The culture can be changed through such steps as implicit bias training, blind evaluations, and mentoring and networking opportunities. This is an area where our professional societies like the Association for Women Geoscientists or the Paleontological Society can make a difference.
Patricia Kelley: And finally, members of underrepresented groups, women, Black, indigenous and persons of color and LGBTQ individuals have been selected subjected to harassment bullying and assault.
Patricia Kelley: Steps are being taken in the right direction, with ethics statements and codes of conduct being established by professional societies and for this meeting
Patricia Kelley:  And training opportunities being offered for instance by AWG. We also need policies of no recrimination when violations are reported, zero tolerance policies and penalties for offenders. Codes aren't useful unless they are enforced.
Patricia Kelley: Don't be like me. Don't assume that's the way things are, that things would be different if we had a beard, or a different color of skin or sexual preference, it's time to change the way things are, as individuals and as a community.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Thank you so much for tuning into Dr. Patricia Kelley's presentation.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): We will be entering a short break before our next presentation at 5:05 Eastern Time, so five minutes after the hour. I have three short, um
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Reminders for everyone. Before we take a quick break and I recommend everyone takes the time to get up and stretch. We have two more presentations in session three.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): So my first reminder is if you are able, our speakers have recommended several funds and organizations to donate to in lieu of registration fee for this
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Symposium, you can find those on our PRI symposium webpage. Two, is please if you have attended any of our sessions today, we are really looking forward to
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Your feedback for how symposium went this year. So if you could take a few moments to give us some feedback. We would truly appreciate it and three, if you have any questions so far
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Don't forget to put them in our Q & A, you can find that at the bottom of your screen. And we will revisit those during our live panel Q & A at the end of session three. All right, everyone. See you soon for our next talk at 5:05.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Next up, we have Dr. Anne-Marie Nuñez, who is professor in the department of Educational Studies at the Ohio State University, and she will be presenting her talk titled toward intersectional equity in the geosciences. So Dr. Nuñez, please feel free to share your screen and start your presentation.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: I just wanted to thank the organizers for inviting me to be here to be part of this community.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And when I saw who was presenting before me, I realized that I could start my talk in a very different place than I would otherwise. So
Anne-Marie Nuñez: What I'm hoping is that what I talked about will provide a lens for thinking about change in geoscience, that complements what has been discussed today and goes more deeply into the term intersectionality and what intersectional means.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: So what brought me to this work, a lot of my earlier research, I focused on the trajectories of first generation college going students, Latinx students, English learner students
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And in many of those cases, I was among the first researcher to be doing conducting scholarship in that area and from a quantitative perspective initially, and one of the things that I then delved into deeper was the diversity within each of these groups. How are they defined right
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And so, so that was one of one of the issues that led me to this work. A second is that, as Dr. Dutt so eloquently put it identities really complex right
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Race and the way that it's constructed is very complex, and another issue is that when I was doing work, doing field work on geosciences so all this work led me to broadening participation working in science
Anne-Marie Nuñez: I realized that, that when I was talking with students from underrepresented groups they didn't always necessarily identify in that way.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And so that, you know what which which like identity was salient to them, that a woman of color might not have, you know, been thinking of herself as Latinx, and so I'm in other and I'll get to that in a moment, but
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Okay, I want to acknowledge the National Science Foundation funding that made this possible. And I'm going to circle back, but these are
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Have been my thought partners over the years in this work, co principal investigators.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: A lot of this talk is going to be based on an article that I recently published in the journal Geosciences Education with 2 graduate students who I'm proud to say is a Latinx student and a Native American student.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Um, and so
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Intersectionality has been referenced so far today. This is
Anne-Marie Nuñez: The work of sociologist Patricia Hill Collins and
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Talking about how, you know the the idea of multiple identities and how they constitute complex social inequalities and need to be looked at
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Together. Um, and that intersectionality is not only a theory. It's also can be employed as a form of critical praxis.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And a lot of times in my field of education and also in the sciences, when people talk about intersectionality
Anne-Marie Nuñez: They're just talking about it on the individual level, like they just disaggregate within you know this aggregate race within gender, if they're presenting quantitative results right
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And that kind of work is really important and really insightful, but the original meaning of intersectionality was really grounded in activism and resistance against racism, you know, beginning in the work of searching for truth, to all the way to now to black lives matter. So this term
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Has been traveled, it's what people talk about is intellectual travel. Right. And so here I'm talking about it traveling to the geoscience but it's important to understand the roots of it, that it's
Anne-Marie Nuñez: You know, grounded in black feminist thought, in legal studies, we have heard these authors cited earlier today. A lot. But what the critics employ this framework have talked about is that it's often been just used more as a research
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Framework, or to focus on individuals, as opposed to transforming structures that need to be transformed.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And so I drew on the work of sociologist [unknown] to develop a structural multidimensional model of intersectionality that not only looks at you know the importance of multiple identities
Anne-Marie Nuñez: But how they interplay with institutions to perpetuate inequities in the sciences, in other fields. And so here
Anne-Marie Nuñez: You know I'm giving examples and I'm going to be, you know, talking more about this.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: But just looking at how systems of power are interlocking, how they reinforce and perpetuate inequities, and we've talked about incentive structures, for example.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: You know, as they intersect with disciplines. I mean, if somebody's supposed to become well known nationally or internationally in their discipline, how does that work with their daily diversity work right.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: So how did it know, power is kind of an abstract concept, intersectionality can be very abstract. How can we break it down to
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And employ it to understand how to bring about more environment equitable environments and outcomes.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: So in our article, this is the intersectionality lens, and and this I adapted from my work on Latinx populations, because, as Dr. Dutt said earlier
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Latinx populations are very nuanced, a very complex and so I adapted that work and saw that it could be perhaps relevant to transformation in geosciences
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And so just to kind of walk through this particular figure, to represent the level, there are three levels, and the first level is on the right.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Sort of the individual level, the level of social identities, and there are way more than we could indicate in this depiction of an iris, some of which can overlap.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: But these are just an example, they might play together, they might overlap. They might be intersecting.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Together, these identities shape the perspective, through which an individual might see or experience the world. And so through what
Anne-Marie Nuñez: We talked about us as domains of institutional power, and I'll go into those in more detail, but there are four of them.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And then, more broadly, this must be situated within the historic, social historical context, right thinking about how a particular place and time are going to also
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Shape opportunity structures, for in this case, students, and faculty, and administrators in geosciences seeking to foster equity.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: So I already it’s already indicated on the prior figure, but just the importance of thinking about identities, but also how they might be salient in various contexts. So um Dr Posselt described to her research examining
Anne-Marie Nuñez: geosciences classes in labs versus field, right so so identities like disability might become very different or in terms of their salience in the field versus the lab, right
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And so these are just examples of identities and that came up in the field work that I did.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Domains of institutional power. So that was level one, this is level two.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Examples of organizational domains include earlier academic preparation and schooling. What do students bring with them.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And now I can circle back to that. But that's kind of, you know, one of the basic ones will be talking about, representational
Anne-Marie Nuñez: The images of geoscientists as white able bodied men, earlier Dr. Cohen talked about you know that a lot of times geoscientists depicted as being in the field, right, like if there's a web page for a major like show people in the field.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: So those images can can actually, you know, foster exclusion.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Interaction, interactional. We've heard about sexual harassment, emphasis of tough masculinity, stereotypes and those influence how instructors and students and peers interact with each other.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And the last one is experiential, and that's how does one perceive you know one’s agency in all of this, right, because other research I've done with you know K through 12 students
Anne-Marie Nuñez: They felt like they you know their their abilities were lesser than those of their colleagues and then when they learned about structural inequalities about their schooling being less well resourced
Anne-Marie Nuñez: They started to realize, wait a minute. And, and so they kind of broaden their perspective and agency.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And this is the third level, situated and cultural, historical context. And so with regard to geoscience
Anne-Marie Nuñez: It, it began, I'm in a history of natural extraction right and and colonization
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Expansion for land. So um just a lot of taking, a lot of conquest. Right. And hierarchy. So in terms of knowledge development
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Historically sciences construction of women and people of color as not human, and not capable of intellectual thought, and
Anne-Marie Nuñez: So I just put up here one chapter ledger in Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, one of the fundamental pieces in this discipline, which I think speaks for itself how, how, you know, use of social identity can't necessarily be historically separated from the science itself.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: So what I'm going to talk about now is
Anne-Marie Nuñez: The, a couple of examples of taking this lens and thinking about how it might be used to transform practice, to become more inclusive and so
Anne-Marie Nuñez: These are two projects that I've been involved in, and one of them is a program for undergraduates. So this is the Geopaths program funded by the National Science Foundation, that was
Anne-Marie Nuñez: It was operated at Hispanic serving institution. So those are institutions with 25% or more Latinx students. It was a multiple semester
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Program, involving rotations in research and industry with local employers, but also REUs, right undergraduate research and
Anne-Marie Nuñez: internships with local employers located in a city with a lot of options for that, for with employers.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And so, first in terms of thinking about organizational dimensions one way in which
Anne-Marie Nuñez: This particular program, tried to address or transform inclusivity, and equity
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Is that it to the talent development perspective, looking for students with potential. So a growth mindset, the students who are selected, were not necessarily that they weren't they weren't the
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Highest GPA students who often come from, you know, the more affluent backgrounds or their parents went to college, they were geoscientists.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Another, in terms of representational, the faculty mentors were from diverse demographic backgrounds.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Interactional, the these in this opportunity employers, this is through our evaluation data and our research data
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Employers talked about being able to see and perceive students’ skills and their talents. So that was a really good opportunity for them to interact with students and see what those students had to bring.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: For the students, they talked about this as experiential, the opportunity to understand real life applications and and in this case, you know,
Anne-Marie Nuñez: In certain areas of the country or in certain contexts, oil and gas is often dominant in terms of the perceptions of geoscience, but these students learned about other industries and so this broadened
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Their own perception and sense making of educational opportunities.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: With respect to cultural, historical context, this particular program operated in an institution that was historically less well funded, but other institutions in the state
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Because of its high concentration of Latinx population. So it was a history of institutional, racial ethnic stratification, a legal case had to happen
Anne-Marie Nuñez: For that institution to get more resources. So there's a history here. Right. Well, where that institution was positioned as, you know, being less so called elite or less so called prestigious
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Than the flagship institution. So the students themselves talked about how interacting with employers and this opportunity made them think that they could compete, and that they were more likely to apply to graduate school, or think about that.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: That they were more likely to apply to graduate school and to think about these opportunities.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Because they thought they could compete with the flagship, I mean one dynamic that happens with students who go to less selective institutions, minority serving institutions
Anne-Marie Nuñez: They often self select out, out of even applying for jobs or applying for graduate school because they think, oh, I can't
Anne-Marie Nuñez: You know, I can't compete with that person from that flagship or that very well resourced private school. So, um, so that's one example of thinking about the structural elements and we have multi dimensionally addressing issues in equity.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: A second one was this audience, this time around was faculty. And so Dr. Posselt referred to this program earlier. I'm going to talk about it from the perspective of sort of speaking about structural change and organizational change.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: It was a three day workshop to develop more inclusive and equitable field work. And so the participants, you know, organizationally were
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Presented with strategies to restructure field experience but not just presented, I mean, they had dialogues, right they shared
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Shared strategies and people who had different expertise with different identities. So, by the way, and these two slides. When I talk about programs, I'm focusing on levels, two, and three, the organizational and cultural, historical, because a lot of those tend to get
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Overlooked or it's harder sometimes to operationalize what those mean.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Representationally, the PIs were from very diverse demographic groups and also the participants, and so they could relate to one another in terms of facing challenges and share
Anne-Marie Nuñez: You know strategies for managing in the field, and managing in the discipline. With regard to interactional they participated in bystander training. So that was indicated to that was intended to address issues of sexual harassment.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And also this idea of just taking responsibility for your peers, taking responsibility for the group.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Experientially the participants talked about how it gave them an opportunity to think, both individually and collectively, and reflexively about their practice as fieldwork instructors.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And then in terms of cultural, historical context, there was an exercise in which
Anne-Marie Nuñez: A couple of the principal investigators foregrounded the histories of Black and indigenous indigenous communities in the site that we were on, so that current portrayals in the plaques, you know, on the trails
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Did not include indigenous and Blacks who also shaped that land. And so to to really recast, what what is the human history of that site.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: So in our article, so those are two kind of concrete examples. And then in our article we offered at level two here of institutional power and these different domains of different
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Strategies and and we've heard a lot about you know about a lot of these right um you know
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Increase the quality and quantity of diverse images with geosciences, thinking about K through 12 and higher education partner together to expose more students to images of geoscientists and what it's about, plus the adequate academic skills, reforming introductory classes.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: We've seen a lot of data on the engagement of diverse geoscientists but also supportive intergenerational communities of scholars and, you know, given that there was a question earlier about how how to
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Get buy in when it's mostly junior faculty who are handling this. So, the importance of the possibility of finding at least one ally
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Who's a senior member of the faculty to partner with to help maybe be a sponsor for these efforts, what I heard people talk about as well and that can be powerful
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Is the power of peer mentoring as well, like sharing cohort mentoring, right, that was discussed earlier as well.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And I think part of that is that if the system is not going to change tomorrow then then people do have, but sometimes we're peers when there aren’t role models in senior positions, where peers can help one another while the system is changing and to help the system change.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And so this is at the third level situated within the broader cultural, historical context.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: To articulate the interdependence between geo scientific inquiry and broader social issues. So one of the things we talked about in the article and one of the things that
Anne-Marie Nuñez: An anthropologist of science named Bruno Latour talks about is with the Anthropocene era that can provide you know an opportunity to really talk about how these are intertwined.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: To recognize the exclusionary history in our
Anne-Marie Nuñez: In our article will be talked about the biography of Margaret Wilson, who was one of the first people to get
Anne-Marie Nuñez: One of the first women in the United States to get a doctorate in geoscience at Columbia University, and and I saw some some things in the chat. There are horrible stories.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And then we just heard from we just heard from Dr. Kelley discussing their biographies and and so bringing forth
Anne-Marie Nuñez: You know that kind of history is really important, as well as the contributions of diverse scholars. So there's a geoscience student, graduate student here at Ohio State who is
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Reorganizing or she, I think she already has.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Great, so she already has reorganized the built environment within the department so that it that it reflects the contributions of diverse geoscientists, so putting images there
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Of more diverse scholars who have contributed to the discipline, but that might not have been recognized, to incorporate a historical perspective of how indigenous populations and people of color have shaped the land, and also the knowledge about and understanding of them.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Also to conduct land acknowledgments in these various settings to recognize indigenous history and stewardship of the lands.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: So that's where I'm going to end. I will say that in the presentation I have a list of references and I am going to point here, this is
Anne-Marie Nuñez: A website that has a lot of lot of references and, you know, resources and websites related to diversity, equity, and inclusion in geoscience, my 2 graduate students compile that in conjunction with funding from from this particular grant, so and so I will just end there.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Awesome, thank you so much for an awesome presentation. Um, so we have time for a few questions. So first up
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Roy is asking, in my experience, undergraduate under representativ,e underrepresented minority students are often unaware that grad students generally receive full financial support. Could this be a barrier to application to grad school?
Anne-Marie Nuñez: That definitely could be a barrier, in in terms of even just awareness, right, of how the financial aid process
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Works and so I know that there are bridge programs from undergraduate to graduate school that seek to educate undergraduates about those particular opportunities, but certainly
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Those efforts could probably be conducted earlier. I think also about first generation college students. Whose who are even less likely to understand how higher education works, let alone financial aid so to
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Opportunities like research undergraduate experiences, those kinds of mentoring opportunities are hopefully spaces as well where
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Where that collective knowledge can be shared or facilitated as well right, to find somebody who might write you a letter of recommendation.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Okay, next up. Um, so what are some strategies that predominantly white departments or and or institutions can employ to create a more inclusive environment for first generation students and how can faculty proactively engage and support first generation scholars?
Anne-Marie Nuñez: So I think first of all
Anne-Marie Nuñez: What Dr. Dutt was bringing up with just that sometimes when someone's in a privileged position with a particular identity, it's, it's easy to forget what the experiences of others are
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Are like. And so, for I did see a question in the chat earlier and think about, you know, the cost of field gear.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And so one of the things so so this may, I'm just going to start now because this is one of the things that made me think about, I was
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Conducting more field research in a particular department
Anne-Marie Nuñez: They, the students initiated a
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Like a lending, and they they initiated kind of a closet where students could contribute and faculty could contribute equipment like water bottles and clothing.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And so I was talking to one of the students who
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Who was running it given her leadership role and she talked about how
Anne-Marie Nuñez: She said to me, and she herself was first generation and a woman of color and she said to me, it's so great. I see people wearing my clothes, but they don't know it's my clothes, and so then to make it like
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Anonymous. I think those kinds of collective efforts, and then to engage the faculty and to engage students I think helped others you know who might not have the gear.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: To, you know, be able to have access to it. So I think that that's one thing to just really understand
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Some of the challenges that these particular students face and are there ways to lend equipment. I'm thinking about the field context, specifically, are there ways to facilitate you know funding to go to conferences, those kinds of issues. I think
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Though, being aware and this is my own kind of interaction with the culture of geoscience of
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Sometimes I see a lot of geosciences are really outdoors people in like skiing and those kinds of sports are really expensive. I mean, and a lot of people don't have money and
Anne-Marie Nuñez: I observed that it means that like first generation students and low income students don't get to sometimes go out and partake in some of those activities. So to really like for faculty, I think, to
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Educate themselves and learn more and also to get to know their students. I think as well and what their students' needs are.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Is it is it is it the gear, is it understanding financial aid. One more thing.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: When I was doing my fieldwork, I was with
Anne-Marie Nuñez: The only woman of color in that particular group from an underrepresented group as defined by NSF, who was working 20 or 30 hours a week, and she could never go to seminars, so
Anne-Marie Nuñez: I think there's some opportunities where maybe people could record seminars, maybe people could consider like rotating different times for seminars.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Being flexible as to when students can get their lab work done. You know, so there were instructors who have talked with me, so, particularly for working students, I think understanding some of those temp that temporal flexibility is really important for these particular students.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Awesome. So we have time for one more quick question.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): So this one is from Marina.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Are there ways to help eliminate those biases towards institutions, non flagship versus flagship, or private versus public when reviewing graduate applications.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): I was just struck that perhaps something as simple as not including the name of a prior institution in an application packet might eliminate that bias.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): I suspect there would be a lot of pushback on something like that, not to mention that would be hard given letters of recommendation, etc. Do you know if there been any efforts towards something like this?
Anne-Marie Nuñez: So, um, I did. So I will talk about this actually, am I so this is not in geoscience I'm also on a large and a separate
Anne-Marie Nuñez: NSF grant, grant right now about the Computing Alliance with Hispanic Serving Institutions.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: So this is a network of over 40 Hispanic serving institutions in the country. Most of them are less well resourced, they are not, you know, so called brand name institutions. Right, so I
Anne-Marie Nuñez: We organized a workshop for the Computer, Information Science, and Engineering Directorate exactly a year ago, where we brought together, It was about about 20
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Scholars computer science scholars from 20 HSIs and we wrote, I think it's just internal within I guess it's okay for me to talk about, its internal within the 
Anne-Marie Nuñez: National Science Foundation, I think I can talk about it. One of the themes that came up was this question. And so one of, one of the things that we talked about.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Is that just like there's training on implicit bias, there should be training on implicit institutional bias.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: In a review processes. So one of our, so it hasn't necessarily been implemented yet, but one of the things that we've talked about is
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Like how to provide reviewers and program officers at NSF training about how to contextualize
Anne-Marie Nuñez: These kinds of applications, within the realities of what these students at these institutions experience, so that a lot of them might be working, they might not have been able to do undergraduate research experiences, that particular
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Case often excludes people from, you know, applying to graduate school. So how, I think that finding ways of training and raising awareness and maybe doing set aside, you know, it may be that in some cases set aside more for minority serving institutions
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Could also be helpful, while we're all trying to, you know, combat individual and institutional bias.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Awesome. Thank you so much, Dr. Nuñez. We look forward to including you in our Q & A panel shortly. So we have one last presentation today.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): I would like to invite Dr. Christy Visaggi
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Who is the senior lecturer and undergraduate director in the department of geosciences at Georgia State University, to present her presentation on teaching geology and paleontology for all identities, feel free to share your screen and take it away.
Christy C. Visaggi: Okay.
Christy C. Visaggi: All right. Does that look all right?
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Yes, it looks great.
Christy C. Visaggi: Okay.
Christy C. Visaggi: So I'm very excited to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me to be a part of the symposium. I am Christy Visaggi at Georgia State University and I will be focusing on teaching for all identities.
Christy C. Visaggi: So I like to begin, usually with talking about the diversity crisis as a concept, and paleontologists I think have long thought about
Christy C. Visaggi: Diversity and its importance and how it's a crisis that now we are in what some call the sixth extinction with the rapid loss of species due to human impacts, but
Christy C. Visaggi: We haven't really collectively looked inward at the diversity crisis within our own discipline and as other speakers have shared today
Christy C. Visaggi: We haven't really seen progress on diversity for 40 years as evidenced by the Bernard and Cooperdock paper
Christy C. Visaggi: As well as several other studies or reports by different organizations or co authors that have looked at patterns of gender, or Hispanic students, or other people of color
Christy C. Visaggi: Those with disabilities. And when we look at our society, the kinds of representation we see in identities in society, that is not reflected in geosciences and
Christy C. Visaggi: As many of you know geosciences is the weakest of STEM fields when we look at the lack of representation of these different groups.
Christy C. Visaggi: Why should we care about diversity? I think this is an important thing to talk about. Because if you're trying to effect change and you want others to join the movement with you, it's important that they understand why we should value diversity.
Christy C. Visaggi: Scientists, we may value the concept. Again, when we talk about ecology and evolution.
Christy C. Visaggi: But there are many ways in which the research shows that diversity is important to science, it advances scientific progress. We come in with different perspectives, different experiences.
Christy C. Visaggi: Of course, there's the issue of environmental justice and a lot of the complex issues that geoscientists are working to address disproportionately affect those that are lower socioeconomic standing, or those with
Christy C. Visaggi: From different racial or ethnic groups. The public perception and value of science is not always as strong as it should be, and valued.
Christy C. Visaggi: And so I think one of the things we can do, again, is to do a better job of trying to reach all identities and have a better way of connecting those individuals and how their lives
Christy C. Visaggi: Are very much linked to science, and diversity is the future, in an increasingly global society where people have
Christy C. Visaggi: Many different identities, that we just heard about intersectional identities, and so this is something that the geosciences, we really need to work on.
Christy C. Visaggi: So I’ll just share a few presentations or publications. One recent one that talks about the diversity innovation paradox.
Christy C. Visaggi: Where this is again evidence for why diversity is so important and having those from different backgrounds can really help think about science in new ways.
Christy C. Visaggi: And then I also like to get into obstacles, and why I am not going to focus too much on that, as other speakers have today, there are
Christy C. Visaggi: Sorry, I'm thrown off because of a slide seems to be missing from my presentation.
Christy C. Visaggi: Okay, so I'll just talk about the obstacles, since they're not showing up.
Christy C. Visaggi: So, many different obstacles that various authors, Stokes at al. he spoke earlier today.
Christy C. Visaggi: On barriers, perceptions to the major also, of course, racism, you heard from Kuheli Dutt earlier in this session and thinking about other challenges that different identities may face such as hostile climates. There was a publication out about that recently as well.
Christy C. Visaggi: So moving from obstacles to opportunities, there has been increasing interest in part due to the widespread protests following police brutality and the wrongful deaths of Black and brown people that has been long ongoing, but has
Christy C. Visaggi: Sparked more widespread interest in recent months during the pandemic, where now people are listening, are talking more and I hope, are ready to act more in support of those from marginalized and oppressed groups. There are petitions to
Christy C. Visaggi: Improve the challenges of racism in geosciences and there's increasing publications as to how we can think about
Christy C. Visaggi: The issues related to DEI in geosciences.
Christy C. Visaggi: What I'd like to talk specifically about today is that of instruction, and I am in a teaching position here at Georgia State University.
Christy C. Visaggi: And last week, finally, a publication came out on equity, culture and place in teaching paleontology, and this is a student centered approach for broadening participation. It is available through Cambridge Press, it’s one of the elements
Christy C. Visaggi: Free to download through Tuesday, August 11 so much of what I will be sharing today comes in part from that publication.
Christy C. Visaggi: There's my obstacle slide. Well I somehow got those reversed and there you go to see the examples that I shared with you. Okay.
Christy C. Visaggi: The main focus is culturally responsive pedagogy and this is an umbrella term. There are different authors who have
Christy C. Visaggi: Defined how they view culturally responsive pedagogy or other variations of this term.
Christy C. Visaggi: And all of the approaches have similarities. They value students as individuals. There's an engaging practice that fosters community.
Christy C. Visaggi: We try to provide meaningful connections to students and draw on intrinsic motivation.
Christy C. Visaggi: It's been shown to improve recruitment and retention of underrepresented groups, it's supported by neuroscience and, ultimately, even if you're implementing it as a way to try to improve the experience for underrepresented groups, it's ultimately beneficial for all students.
Christy C. Visaggi: If we're focused on trying to improve diversity in our discipline, the first thing we need to do is recognize that identities are intersectional
Christy C. Visaggi: And so are we being inclusive and welcoming? Do they feel like they belong? What can we do to ensure that they
Christy C. Visaggi: Are having the resources that they need and that our practices in our classroom are equitable so that all students can succeed.
Christy C. Visaggi: And so all of these concepts combined, I think fall nicely into thinking about instruction as culturally responsive using this concept of culture broadly defined.
Christy C. Visaggi: While I'm focusing more on race and ethnicity in this presentation, those concepts of culture also relate to being in an urban setting, or generational, or disabilities, or LGBTQ, so culture, that kind of shared norms, beliefs, experiences. That is how I'm focusing on it here.
Christy C. Visaggi: To begin, I'd like to say that it is not simply a checklist of approaches and you can go out and add these examples to your instruction and check, you're done. It's much more than that. It also doesn't simply look cultural, there are aspects of culturally responsive pedagogy that don't
Christy C. Visaggi: Even consider or include specific examples or references to race, or ethnicity, or other aspects of identity.
Christy C. Visaggi: It's not simply inserting culture into education, but teaching in the context of culture. So being much more aware of culture and how you set up what you do.
Christy C. Visaggi: Also, it goes beyond instruction, pedagogy includes much more than what your actual teaching or lecturing is, it incorporates knowledge of resource limitations of your students.
Christy C. Visaggi: Avoiding stereotypes or isolating identities, using multiple modes of evaluation. There's not a one size fits all approach. And of course, having respectful communication and not using classist, or ablest, or racist, or other language that would be culturally offensive.
Christy C. Visaggi: Ultimately, it's a shift in mindset and in your practice as an educator.
Christy C. Visaggi: How I view it is through three main lenses. One is students as individuals.
Christy C. Visaggi: Getting to know your students, giving them ownership and learning, thinking about attendance and participation and knowing that for some, those policies can be very exclusionary.
Christy C. Visaggi: Same with rigid deadlines, not everyone is working with the same availability to put into their schoolwork. Some have outside jobs. Some have families to take care of.
Christy C. Visaggi: Life happens as we all know, in the midst of this pandemic. So there's ways that we can approach what we do in the classroom that creates more opportunities for success for students.
Christy C. Visaggi: Also, ideas of differentiated instruction, as well as universal design in meeting needs of everyone.
Christy C. Visaggi: I use this photo of my brother here at the top. He is a wheelchair user and he has accompanied me into the field for
Christy C. Visaggi: Fossil collection, so fieldwork is one of those things that we really need to take a hard look at in geosciences and was talked about earlier today, some of you the discipline as one that you have to do field work which is not helpful. Some think that
Christy C. Visaggi: You can't do field work if you have a certain disability and what we're seeing, hopefully, is that people are examining the culture of field work, the barriers to doing fieldwork, and that geosciences is not just about field work, so we can
Christy C. Visaggi: Show that geosciences is more than just a white able bodied male rugged individual hiking through high mountains.
Christy C. Visaggi: Another example with students as individuals is an assignment I do in intro classes to look at geology around the world.
Christy C. Visaggi: They synthesize their knowledge of concepts in geology, as well as get to explore places of interest in meaning to them.
Christy C. Visaggi: So I give them choice in this and, as evidenced by the map here you can see that the students pursue many different places to really understand the links between what they're learning in geology, how geology is important for society, and then how it relates to interests in their lives.
Christy C. Visaggi: Engaging practices is the second lens. This is about building community and having students work together.
Christy C. Visaggi: So you can do small groups learning. You can gamify lessons, telling stories is a very human thing to do to make sense of the world.
Christy C. Visaggi: incorporating that into your learning is really valuable way for people to learn.
Christy C. Visaggi: And of course, linking to real world problems. So something when you teach minerals, instead of just focusing on
Christy C. Visaggi: identifying them and doing properties to check for hardness and cleavage
Christy C. Visaggi: You can talk more broadly about how we use those minerals in our daily lives, you know, everyone appreciates their cell phone and how much access they have. Do they know what minerals go into making that device?
Christy C. Visaggi: Do they know where those come from in the world? And then, what challenges there are in terms of mining, and ethical issues, and injustices related to that.
Christy C. Visaggi: Another example I use in my classes is a fun card game developed by a former student of mine, where you have small groups of students organize different cards that represent events in history of life
Christy C. Visaggi: To try to make sense of the order and sequence of those events in Earth's history.
Christy C. Visaggi: This was also really useful to adapt to virtual learning. We created a model of this to use in a drag and drop PowerPoint slide way, and then students have to think about what makes sense, why you need to have certain things present on Earth before you can have other events later on.
Christy C. Visaggi: One resource I'd like to share with you that is coming soon, so check the paleontology Paleontological Society website.
Christy C. Visaggi: There are Fossil Use cards that several colleagues and I are developing where
Christy C. Visaggi: Teachers can print these cards to have students mix and match and look at examples of fossils that are used in interesting ways, whether that's scientific
Christy C. Visaggi: More personal or cultural, or industrial the theme this week for science week is materials in our lives, which is why we focused on this particular activity. So know that is coming soon, and anyone interested in this, please
Christy C. Visaggi: Reach out to me. I have other projects in the works that I hopefully will be able to share with you about in the future.
Christy C. Visaggi: The items featured here show about crinoids and how they've been used as beads by different groups, including Native Americans, as well as petrified wood in Arizona, that has been used as building material for Pueblos.
Christy C. Visaggi: And lastly bridging connections is the third lens where you use relevant quotes, metaphors, vocabulary language.
Christy C. Visaggi: Guest speakers and inspiring role models, positive appropriate media, and familiar and interesting places. So I first became interested in
Christy C. Visaggi: This approach culturally responsive pedagogy, at a SERC workshop on Pan African approaches to teaching geosciences
Christy C. Visaggi: at Morehouse several years ago, and I learned of the tenants of Pan Africanism as the focus of that workshop was to do more in our instruction to reach
Christy C. Visaggi: Those who are Black or African American
Christy C. Visaggi: And the concept of Sankofa is one of those tenants of Pan Africanism, which essentially means to go back to the past, take what is useful and bring it to to the future.
Christy C. Visaggi: And when I heard that I thought that is conservation paleobiology. That's almost the same words used in this paper here to describe what that idea is.
Christy C. Visaggi: And then in thinking about conservation and the Anthropocene, and human impacts, we have to also consider that
Christy C. Visaggi: The lens that we may have as scientists or the lens that a white privileged individual may have about that is not going to be the same
Christy C. Visaggi: As those from marginalized and oppressed groups. And so I encourage you to look at the A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None book to learn more about the complexities of that.
Christy C. Visaggi: Scientists’ spotlight interventions have been shown to be very useful in teaching science. I've put a selection of individuals here who are very important, not only for their scientific contributions in geosciences
Christy C. Visaggi: But also in being a member of an underrepresented group. So if you're not familiar with these individuals, and you're not using them in your classes when you talk about different concepts, I
Christy C. Visaggi: Urge you to look into that. In addition, I'm placing here several places where you can learn more about either historical figures, or modern individuals that are belonging to
Christy C. Visaggi: Members of diverse groups.
Christy C. Visaggi: Other ways to bridge connections in paleontology, there is definitely a history where
Christy C. Visaggi: Fossils have been removed from land that was not owned by the people that removed them.
Christy C. Visaggi: And one of the ways that we can explore this more is by just thinking about whose native land are you on. And there's an interactive map where you can look at that and think
Christy C. Visaggi: Okay, the places I'm using to teach about fossils, or the examples I'm bringing into my classroom, what peoples, are the
Christy C. Visaggi: Native American groups coming from these lands, and there's also work by Adrienne Mayor about this as well.
Christy C. Visaggi: When you talk about climate change, are you bringing in the issues that it creates for Indigenous communities around the world, or in speaking about famous volcanic landmarks like Mount St. Helens
Christy C. Visaggi: Giving recognition to the fact that there is a history, and multiple names for this location by different tribal groups in the area, or how
Christy C. Visaggi: Slavery has led to the discovery of fossils, as well as the movement of fossiliferous building stone to different places in the country.
Christy C. Visaggi: The state fossil of South Carolina was originally found by an enslaved individual and buildings including the Smithsonian have a history related to slavery.
Christy C. Visaggi: Here I provide a selection of resources that explore more of these concepts in bridging connections, whether you're looking at building stones
Christy C. Visaggi: Looking at fossil appropriation, thinking about the cultural significance of species, or
Christy C. Visaggi: People from underrepresented groups who have made significant contributions to the discipline, also of course articles in the Journal of Geoscience Education. There are some wonderful examples in there of
Christy C. Visaggi: cultural connections relating to learning about geosciences.
Christy C. Visaggi: And then lastly, I would like to mention place based learning. I know I'm just about out of time, so I'll go quickly.
Christy C. Visaggi: I'm at minority serving institution, Georgia State University in downtown Atlanta, and I teach multiple classes and Georgia has a great history, as you heard from our
Christy C. Visaggi: First speaker today, place based learning falls under the umbrella of culturally responsive pedagogy, drawing on that sense of place. There's
Christy C. Visaggi: A familiar knowledge and meaning to learning about places around you. And since students at my institution come overwhelmingly from Georgia
Christy C. Visaggi: It's a fantastic way to have students connect to their learning in a more meaningful way.
Christy C. Visaggi: One example I've done is create get historical photos of campus buildings. So they start to think about relative age dating by organizing photos from oldest to youngest.
Christy C. Visaggi: In looking for historical clues and before they have to face a challenging cross section. Also when looking at resources in Georgia, such as gold mining
Christy C. Visaggi: Being sure to mention the Trail of Tears, and the removal of the Cherokees related to that.
Christy C. Visaggi: As well as referencing the large granite Stone Mountain. That is a wonderful geological feature with a very troubling history of white supremacy and, you know, choosing instead to not ignore that, but use photos, such as this to incorporate more anti racism work into instruction.
Christy C. Visaggi: So the last few slides are mostly sharing of resources, there are multiple places where you can learn more about colonialism and geology, how to make your virtual learning more inclusive.
Christy C. Visaggi: And I just want to remind everybody, again, you know, think about how we view Earth system approaches as really valuable to understanding our planet.
Christy C. Visaggi: Same with broadening participation, multiple approaches need to happen. It's not just a change one thing, it's the intersection of many different strategies and ultimately
Christy C. Visaggi: Being better at supporting students of all identities. If you're not familiar with these wonderful organizations, these show how students from many different backgrounds are represented and supported in science and geosciences broadly, and so lastly, I encourage you to challenge yourself.
Christy C. Visaggi: Do difficult work, like taking the implicit bias test to see what biases you bring into the classroom as an instructor, work to improve your allyship, make it visible and don't just make it visible but actually do the work.
Christy C. Visaggi: As our speaker earlier today said, what are you actually doing to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion?
Christy C. Visaggi: Think about your classroom approaches, both your syllabus, do you have a statement? Do you
Christy C. Visaggi: Have resources there for first generation students and those with disabilities? There are multiple ways that you can think, is your instruction for all identities accessible, engaging and meaningful.
Christy C. Visaggi: And with that, I will leave you with a quote from Rosalind Franklin, who, if you didn't know, has made substantial contributions to geosciences as well as
Christy C. Visaggi: Not just being known for the wronged heroine in understanding DNA, and she stated that science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated.
Christy C. Visaggi: So I urge you, if you are teaching in a way that is focusing on the science content only, please think more broadly in the context of culture, what you can do.
Christy C. Visaggi: Thank you so much again for inviting me to give this talk. The Paleontological Research Institution.
Christy C. Visaggi: Many colleagues at the Paleontological Society, in Georgia State University, who have supported me and contributed to my understanding of course the workshop where I initially took an interest in this.
Christy C. Visaggi: My two best field assistants, whether sharing a presentation with me or in the field, parents I see you right now in this pandemic. It is hard.
Christy C. Visaggi: Mamas. Those who identify as mamas it's especially hard. So we are here with you. And many of us are ready to do what we can.
Christy C. Visaggi: To support you, and lastly there again is a reminder about my publication. If you want to learn more about these teaching approaches which is available for free to download until August 11. Thank you.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Thank you so much, Dr. Visaggi. I'm, um, so one question for you before I bring back the rest of our panelists.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): So these are some really great resources, do we have information on how the conversation on inclusion and diversity among geoscientists has benefited from the increasing number of large scale studies on the subject?
Christy C. Visaggi: Oh, good question.
Christy C. Visaggi: I think that while there have been publications, you know, even over a decade ago and there were minority committees decades ago, the
Christy C. Visaggi: Widespread sharing of these publications on social media, including popular press coverage, particularly Kuheli Dut’s article recently.
Christy C. Visaggi: On racism, and the publication in the New York Times about how Earth science has a whiteness problem. Yes. I think absolutely. Just the more people that are sharing these
Christy C. Visaggi: Stories on various outlets that has, I think, I hope, lead to a new movement where more and more people are are buying in and thinking about what they can do differently to affect change.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Awesome, thank you so, so much. At this time I would like to invite our other two speakers today who were present for session three, and we will open up the live Q & A portion of our session.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): So first question for you all. Do you have any advice for encouraging institutional leaders to take ownership and action? In my department most of the work is already falling on students and junior faculty.
Christy C. Visaggi: I guess I'll, I'll share a little first.
Christy C. Visaggi: If, so they said students in junior faculty. I think I would I would reiterate what Kuheli said earlier today, or I think it was her who found
Christy C. Visaggi: You said that you know, finding those allies in other leadership positions as well. So not just junior faculty, but whether it's in another department, in a certain campus resource center, but finding others who can be allies to
Christy C. Visaggi: Be able to put more energy into spreading that work out and spreading that message out to more in in the department and not having it just solely be those junior faculty or students.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: I hesitate, because I'm not a geosciences department, but
Anne-Marie Nuñez: I will see that sometimes also if some of these professional alliances, and associations, and communities can also be sort of nationwide communities of practice that
Anne-Marie Nuñez: You know, different departments and institutional leaders might be able to link across institutions
Anne-Marie Nuñez: To get gather resources to be able to make change. And so in other research on STEM initiatives, these kind of inter institutional
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Efforts can build capacity, and sometimes when fundings involved like an NSF grant, that can also lead to buy in, leaders can see more like the value of that, for better or for worse. Sometimes that kind of prestige
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Can really, really help in these kinds of situations. So those are just some potential other avenues.
Kuheli Dutt: Yeah, I mean I just like to reiterate that for the junior like, the students, postdocs, junior faculty, you know, find allies in the mid career to senior faculty
Kuheli Dutt: And have them reach out to the leadership and you know request a meeting or a conversation with all of them, make it clear to be the start of a dialogue and not just a one off meeting. So, you know, just to start a process rather than a one time thing.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: I think that's really important because sometimes mid career and senior faculty, they might not be aware, but might be willing to support you. And so if you
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Even though it might be challenging to take initiative with those that you feel comfortable with, who may be in that closed door meeting that you're not part of, can say something on behalf, you know, on behalf of you or behalf of your colleagues
Anne-Marie Nuñez: I think would be really important. And then I think also, I mean, in my own experience, not in geoscience but as an education faculty member, I created a peer mentor in faculty network with other Latinx faculty
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And there were like, no Latino faculty who were at a senior level in my department, but we came together and we applied for internal grants together. And so then that kind of gets the attention I think of senior faculty, we it we involve senior faculty in mentoring our group
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Who we called Compadres. So I think that there are these kind of intergenerational and peer at the same time potential to address change.
Christy C. Visaggi: I would add, also, that sometimes different talking points can reach different people better. So, you know,
Christy C. Visaggi: Some of the things when when having conversations with those in the mid or senior level, reminding them that in trying to encourage others to get on board that you know
Christy C. Visaggi: NSF and other funding agencies are taking DEI work very seriously. You know, this is not something that can be brushed aside any longer. And in order to stay relevant in the climate that we're in now, it's really important that people are
Christy C. Visaggi: Not leaving it for somebody else to do, and that everybody is contributing.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Definitely. Um, so our next question is, as part of our department’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, I'm working with our Center for Teaching and Learning to develop a one to two hour TA workshop on DEI for each semester
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): For our geoscience TAs, last semester I focused on building inclusive labs and discussion groups. Do you have one to two suggestions for building future workshops around? And this was from Mary.
Kuheli Dutt: I could start.
Kuheli Dutt: I would. Well, what, one of the things I've been noticing of late that has suddenly gone up in a lot of demand.
Kuheli Dutt: Is that students postdocs, a lot of them nowadays, right now I think are demanding courses and workshops on systemic racism and anti racism.
Kuheli Dutt: So if you could work with, you know, your Center for Teaching and Learning to develop a module workshop on systemic racism and then make sure it's not just students, but the faculty will also end up attending it, that will be a great way to get have impact.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: It could be that engaging social science faculty or faculty from ethnic studies, who can also bring in that knowledge within the institution could be really helpful. You know, one of the things I think about in DEI work is well they can't necessarily read everything that
Anne-Marie Nuñez: That we're reading. But, but how can we draw on the expertise, maybe of other people around campus, and then think about how do we make connections with our science.
Christy C. Visaggi: And I don't know if Mary, you have done this at your institution but
Christy C. Visaggi: Having TAs do individual reflection, as well as group sharing of different aspects of identity and the kinds of things where
Christy C. Visaggi: You know, if you look up identity wheels. There's different ways that people think about your social identity, or other aspects of your identity and
Christy C. Visaggi: How you are coming into the classroom, and how students are perceiving you as the instructor, because you are a woman or because you are a person of color.
Christy C. Visaggi: Thinking about those kinds of things and discussing ways that if there are challenges you can try to think about that in advance, has been a useful part of the teaching practicum that we've done here at Georgia State.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Another thing I might add is that, you know, I know, I talked about maybe partnering with faculty and other departments, but also perhaps thinking about student affairs.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: A lot of the fact, I mean, a lot of the sort of administrators and staff in student affairs are trained in issues like dialogue if they're in a multicultural center. So they might be able to help
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Build skills in issues like communication, and skills like dialogue, and so I mentioned that because it might be like low hanging fruit. There may be you know people in student affairs or women's studies.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Or like the women's center or multicultural affairs that also might have these particular skills, a different way of connecting.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Thank you. Our next question is from Alicia: For me, the decision not to pursue a PhD was strictly financial, grants and scholarships for women still seem to be lacking. Does anyone have any advice for minorities that want to further their education, but just can't finance it?
Kuheli Dutt: I can suggest that one of the, this is something not so much from the student end but from the institutional ownership end where departments and institutions should actually commit to setting funding aside for minority students. And that's something that doesn't necessarily
Kuheli Dutt: Factor in as much because financial considerations are significantly high, especially for first generation students, and if if you feel you know
Kuheli Dutt: Brave enough, I would suggest you know having students get together and request the departments that you know what sort of funding can you provide students for whom funding is an issue?
Anne-Marie Nuñez: It's important for departments to also think about cobbling together, potentially different sources of funding.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: That there might be funding for the university level, also at the department level, also at the grant level. So how can
Anne-Marie Nuñez: How can departments put together on you know multi year packages, right, that might come from different sources. Um,
Anne-Marie Nuñez: In terms of not knowing whether or not one can afford it, sometimes it's hard, Like sometimes it's hard to know until you actually get your package
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Whether or not you can actually, you know, pursue an education. I know that in you know in my department, we really prioritize
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Like being able to give students complete packages. So I again that's like Kuheli was saying it's not necessarily from the student level, but to realize that maybe if you're applying, there may be multiple sources of funding that you might not have thought about.
Christy C. Visaggi: I also wanted to add to really make sure that you're connecting with relevant organizations like SACNAS or other groups, depending on
Christy C. Visaggi: You know, whatever identity, identities, you are
Christy C. Visaggi: Connected to, because there are, you know, certain scholarships, there's the Hispanic scholarship fund, there’s Ford Foundation fellowships, you know, there are different
Christy C. Visaggi: Scholarships to support either broadly diversity in academia, or certain individuals. And so, connecting with those organizations or
Christy C. Visaggi: You know Facebook groups, or people who are a little farther along in their career path and have knowledge about those resources, who have been recipients of those scholarships, such as NSF GRFP
Christy C. Visaggi: Those can be great places to also learn about some of those opportunities as well to continue your education.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Some of the yeah, and I think that
Anne-Marie Nuñez: If there's a way you might be able to find out that certain departments are really good at mentoring students to apply for GRFPs, like some departments have like really good mentoring programs and so
Anne-Marie Nuñez: There may be opportunities, once you get there, but sometimes that can be hard information to get it if you're at the application stage.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: But perhaps if you have informal networks to find out about some of that if you know, informal knowledge around accessing funding that you might not have known existed, you know, these kinds of mentoring opportunities within the department.
Christy C. Visaggi: And I just remembered also the AGU Bridge program. And while it is not specific to funding, it is a group of institutions that are committed to recruiting more students from diverse backgrounds, and so that might be something to look into as well.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Awesome. Thank you all. Our next question is: Well, so we encourage folks from over represented groups to educate themselves on DEI
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Issues and to not let the work fall on those from underrepresented groups. When underrepresented groups are consulted on issues as part of the changing the internal culture process
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): It gets really confusing to know where the midpoint is between helping to refine a policy and doing the work for someone on a DEI committee who hasn't done their homework. How do you know if you're being taken advantage of, and where is the midpoint?
Kuheli Dutt: For this is actually something that I've encountered a lot of it as an in terms of people have asked me about this particular issue a lot because very often DEI work falls on people of color and marginalized groups.
Kuheli Dutt: I would say that I know as the first point of contact, yes, you know, your department, or your advisor, or your colleagues would turn to you.
Kuheli Dutt: And what I would suggest, rather than just, you know, saying no, or taking it on to the point where you're just, you know, doing all of the work.
Kuheli Dutt: Say yes, I'm happy to do it. Who are the people who are going to work with me on this? Making it very clear that the people who are going to work with you on it need to be white people like that's probably the first step.
Kuheli Dutt: And I would suggest be very firm on that point if they say, oh, well, we don't really know, why don't you do it, and then we'll see who we come up with
Kuheli Dutt: You know, then say that there isn't really send a message or make it clear that that's not the message you want, and that while you're happy to
Kuheli Dutt: Start this conversation and you know help people how to do it, unless there's commitment from other white people at that very moment who will work with you on it, it's not something you're comfortable doing.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: I think faculty of color and women faculty are expected, you know to do more service
Anne-Marie Nuñez: In general, like this. And so this is, you know, probably part of also just learning how to say no, or not I'm not saying no totally.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: But you might say, how, how long of a time commitment is this? Like the way that you might about any service commitment, what kinds of tasks are involved?
Anne-Marie Nuñez: To indicate that you know you have boundaries around which you know you're not going to work past those particular boundaries, or
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Maybe you say if somebody approaches you and you have another mentor at your institution
Anne-Marie Nuñez: You might say, I have, I need a day or two to think about this. I need to talk with my mentor, and talk with your mentor.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And maybe that way, you might learn about politics, you might learn some knowledge that you might not have been aware of
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And that might help you in terms of discussing, like, to what extent you want to commit and what you want to commit to, and if you get into it and it's like expanding to say, remember I said I would do this, and I need to walk away, and and protect yourself.
Christy C. Visaggi: I would also add that I think a lot of times on committees or people who maybe are passionate about DEI issues.
Christy C. Visaggi: We also need to remember there are people who are paid, in paid positions through organizations who have developed some of these resources. So depending on what the work is if it's developing a resource or a module or, you know, speaking about a certain subject. It might be something where
Christy C. Visaggi: Someone is doing this as part of their job, then you can bring that person in, or use that training online, or something like that and take the work off of yourself.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Along these same lines, we have a similar question. Um, so across many departments, graduate students and also emerging professionals are often expected to do unpaid labor
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Including internships, or unwritten expectations for department service, etc. How does this impact inclusivity and equity and what are some strategies, especially for students and others and more precarious positions, advocate against this aspect of professional culture?
Christy C. Visaggi: That is a good question and very difficult to answer. I think I'll just mention one example that we have tried to use here.
Christy C. Visaggi: And that is at Georgia State, there's an opportunity to apply for certain special funding for student organizations, and events and you know there's tech fees, and sustainability fees, and so one thing we did was to create a scholarship program or fellowship program for
Christy C. Visaggi: Students who are doing internships in sustainability, so that if it was non paid internship or volunteering that
Christy C. Visaggi: They could apply to this fellowship specifically to try to support them in that. So it was one way internally in our department that we tried to do it, but also across the university there are other ways to try to
Christy C. Visaggi: Support students to do things like internships, because they shouldn't have to do
Christy C. Visaggi: You know, unpaid internships, that's just going to further create inequities for only those who have the privilege to be able to pursue them can do them.
Christy C. Visaggi: So, at least in terms of that aspect of the question, there might be some resources at the institution that could help support students in that way.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: I think, you know, and I think what Christy's bringing up is just the importance of asking the question. A lot of times
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Students might not be aware of what resources that are available to them. And if you ask the question that might raise awareness. Oh, wait a minute, like
Anne-Marie Nuñez: This is something our institution should probably be thinking about, um, yeah, sometimes again, like faculty and administrators are need reminding
Anne-Marie Nuñez: That when these issues come up to think about. Or you say, like, are there resources available for this, to remind them that this is actually work, this is labor time. I know from the perspective of being a faculty of color, that with my graduate students, they get asked to do
Anne-Marie Nuñez: They get us sometimes to be on the university wide diversity committees, or I'm  asked if I know anybody, right to recommend people. And so as a faculty member
Anne-Marie Nuñez: I try to be really clear with them like you, this is an opportunity, but you can say no, and and that's okay. And this is this is the this is kind of the strengths of potentially doing this, but you absolutely don't have to do it.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And so to kind of teach people like how to or mentor and how to set boundaries and not expect you know, not have graduate students expect that when they're called on that they
Anne-Marie Nuñez: You know, should respond to requests and maybe there are times when students could say I need to ask my advisor.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: I need to talk with my advisor, and and to make that advisor, you know, be your sponsor, or be that kind of in between person, who might be able to talk with others about, you know, protecting students from that kind of emotional or other unpaid labor.
Christy C. Visaggi: And one of the ways to do that in trying to have your advisor help protect you or others when they ask you these things, you know,
Christy C. Visaggi: If you can say, well, I need to talk with my advisor about what else I can drop or not do, if I'm going to potentially take on this new thing, right. So you have to also think there are only so many things you can do. So every time you get a new request
Christy C. Visaggi: You know, consult with your advisor, or think to yourself, both right. If you're going to also try to do this, what else is going to have to go or be put
Christy C. Visaggi: Aside and then ultimately, you know, ensuring that you and your advisor have the same vision for what the main priority for your goals, and your time, and your energy should be.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Awesome. I recently experienced just that so
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Um, this is good information. Um, it looks like we have a follow up on that question. So what are your thoughts on the role of program staff in this conversation?
Anne-Marie Nuñez: I think you know there's some research that that I've been doing and some of my colleagues have been doing about the important role of staff in terms of bridging some of these
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Concerns and sometimes you know that that staff can take
Anne-Marie Nuñez: That they can also be people who can relay concerns to faculty who can relay concerns to administrators who can be, for lack of a better word, safe or comfortable people
Anne-Marie Nuñez: For students to approach. And I think stress, particularly like program staff who might be involved in a DEI program
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Or if they know that that's even if they’re regular, full time staff and they know that that's part of their responsibility
Anne-Marie Nuñez: They might expect those kinds of questions, and they might know them as part of their responsibility to support students in navigating that. So I think, I think the question of staff is really important and we, one of the things that I've noticed in my research on
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Geoscience and computer sciences, there's a lot of talk about faculty diversity, but at the 10 year level.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: A lot of times, there might not be any faculty of color, or only one. And so this idea of relating across identities
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Can be really challenging and so sometimes staff can be a really important bridge for advocating for raising awareness among those faculty the concerns of first generation students and students of color. So I'm glad that I'm glad that staff is was also brought up.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): It looks like we also have one more specific note on that, so non academic staff in an academic program.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): There is usually focus on students as future academics, or an academic, staff are often left out of the conversation, despite providing continuity for academic departments intending to remain enrolled long after students have graduated, or when new cohorts of faculty start.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: I'm not sure. Like, I'm so I’m not sure what the conversation that's being referred to is mentoring students for future
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Positions, um, but I think that for, I mean, I think it's important for faculty and staff
Anne-Marie Nuñez: To, to really think about what are non academic options for students, to to model that that multiple career pathways are
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Valid, you know, there are STEM PhDs who go on to serve as administrators in my, in my institution, supporting all the postdocs across the university.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: To be aware that there are just multiple pathways and that all of those are valid, I know that not all faculty like think that way. But in my own practice and experience
Anne-Marie Nuñez: I think it's really important if we're supposed to provide opportunities for students to make sure that
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Students are aware of the full set of opportunities available to them in terms of opportunity searches. If we don't know, to maybe be able to refer them to the association that might know, to a professional network.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: I'm not sure if that was your question, but I think it's important.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Awesome. Thank you so much. I'm so next question, we only have time for one, maybe two more questions: Do you think each department should be required to post admission and race, ethnicity statistics, as well as having a DEI director?
Kuheli Dutt: Oh yes, absolutely yes to both questions. In fact, at Lamont, we do exactly that. So,
Kuheli Dutt: In fact, in the, in the chat box. I can probably post what we do. So what we do is not just post the demographics of our
Kuheli Dutt: Of our scientific staff, but also, who are the people we're inviting for seminars and what does that look like. So, you know, having this having this out there very publicly so that people can see it. Look at the numbers.
Kuheli Dutt: You know whether there's been any change or what those numbers look like, it introduces a level of transparency and also introduces accountability. Like if those numbers are public, you know, you have to do something about improving them.
Kuheli Dutt: I also think it's really important to have someone, a diversity, director of sorts, look at, you know, for every institution, I serve as a diversity director for Lamont.
Kuheli Dutt: And I think maybe that's why we've been able to do as much as we have, because otherwise, at the end of the day, students, faculty, postdocs, they're there to do their science, to teach their classes, and so
Kuheli Dutt: If they have to devote a significant amount of their time to DEI work and that's not acknowledged or compensated in some form, either it's going to
Kuheli Dutt: Create a hole in their CV at the time that they're doing this, in other words it's going to take away from other things, or it's not really going to help
Kuheli Dutt: Any form of institutional ownership, because that person, if it's a student or a postdoc, will just move on to another institution in a few years time and
Kuheli Dutt: The institution is, the current institution isn't going to really benefit from it one way or the other. So I think it's really important to have
Kuheli Dutt: Someone designated and of course it would depend on the structure of the organization. So for Lamont
Kuheli Dutt: It's, you know, the campus is big enough that we have a diversity, you know, I am the diversity director.
Kuheli Dutt: But in other departments, it could be even a, you know, even if it's a 50% position or even if it's just someone designated as the go to person, who's going to be charged with this thing of
Kuheli Dutt: You know, even if not doing the work themselves, who do you reach out to, who do you enroll, who do you enlist, who's
Kuheli Dutt: You know how many meetings per semester do you have, who's keeping track of what got done, and didn't get done and why or why not? So just having some sort of institutional framework, even asking these questions, it's important to have someone for that institutional memory.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): All right. And before we wrap up, I just wanted to make sure if any of you had a question for each other, or based on each other's presentations, give you an opportunity to ask those.
Kuheli Dutt: I think your presentations were great.
Christy C. Visaggi: Likewise.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Likewise, I appreciate how they all complement each other and looking at a lot of different levels
Anne-Marie Nuñez: You know intervention is really important.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): We are seeing so much unrest in our society, and we're starting to really elevate these ideas and break down some of these boundaries, um, across race, gender, and identity, what is one piece of advice, um, something small that any of us can do to be a good ally in both geoscience and paleo?
Kuheli Dutt: I would say each person needs to do their homework and not expect it to be the duty of a person of color to
Kuheli Dutt: Bear the brunt of DEI work, to explain to white people what racism is and why it's harmful. Yeah, to just to just take ownership of the problem and you know everything that comes with it.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: I think in a related theme, to just be willing to speak up when like a micro aggression happens, be willing to take ownership and call people
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Out. At the same time, I think, depending on your context and depending on there may be different things that you are you know that you are doing, in addition to that, so sometimes
Anne-Marie Nuñez: I, you know, in my own work, I might be doing things that are not very visible to other people, but I know that, like, I'm now a decision maker.
Anne-Marie Nuñez: And so in my role it's lifting up scholars of color. It's making clear what their contributions are, so maybe from a student perspective, it's also, you know, supporting your peers, making clear what their contributions are, I know academia
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Is a competitive environment. And if there's a way to
Anne-Marie Nuñez: Collaborate, and and just promote one another. Um, I think that that also is something to look out for.
Christy C. Visaggi: And kind of related to those, you know, really listening, listen to people of color, listen to those from marginalized and oppressed groups.
Christy C. Visaggi: Really, you know, critically self reflect and and check yourself because until you listen, until you read, until you really start to understand these other positionalities
Christy C. Visaggi: You know, you're, you're only coming to it from your lens and you don't necessarily know what you're doing that impacts other people in a negative way. And so just, it's all part of doing your homework and stepping in. So they're all related. It's hard to just say one thing.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Awesome. Thank you. Also, so much for an awesome Q & A panel discussion.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): So with that, the PRI summer symposium is finally coming to a close, we'd like to extend a true heartfelt thank you to all of our speakers and organizers. This was a 100% volunteer run effort. So for everyone, for donating their time
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): To create such an open space for discussion and making this event such a success. A few reminders. If you have not already done so, please
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Check out our speaker nominated funds and organizations to donate to if you are able.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): We will be putting together resources that have been shared throughout all sessions today. So they will be available at a later time.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): As well as recordings of sessions will be available and we will be able to email our attendees and promote those on social media, when they become available. And lastly, please
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): Look at our feedback survey. We truly appreciate any and all feedback and comments that you have for our event today as we hopefully look forward to incorporating more virtual events in the future.
Jaleigh, PRI (Moderator): You can find all of this information on our website. There are links currently in the chat. Thank you so much for everyone, for joining us.
