NSF Award
2403844
This project aims to serve the national interest by establishing practices to improve inclusivity in academic geoscience departments. Geoscience is a critical discipline for today’s world, integrating other physical and life sciences into a wholistic perspective with relevance to the most pressing challenges facing humanity today including climate change, energy resources, and natural hazards. However, the number of graduates and students pursuing geosciences is not sufficient to meet the demand for geoscience expertise in the economy. While geoscience degrees can provide students with significant opportunities to learn and practice workforce-relevant skills, many systemic barriers prevent equal participation, exacerbating the gap in the geoscience workforce. Through intentional professional development, the Cultural Change in Geoscience (C-ChanGe) project will create a corps of faculty change agents empowered to make successive, incremental changes that will lead to positive cultural shifts within their home departments. This cultural change will foster an environment where all people experience academic geoscience as safe, welcoming, and supportive. C-ChanGe will also compile and leverage existing efforts focused on cultural change. This will create a network of leaders and resources that raises the visibility of all aspects of this important work and enhances opportunities for collaboration.<br/><br/>C-ChanGe will generate positive systemic change in the culture of academic geoscience departments and community through facilitating professional development for geoscience faculty that will a) foster high-quality discussion and sharing of evidence-based practices, b) develop web resources with geoscience-specific examples, c) promote change in participant attitudes and d) equip participants with resources to lead further change in their department and community. This project will provide faculty with concrete ways to implement inclusive strategies in their individual practice at many scales, professional development to overcome barriers to inclusion and belonging for students from marginalized identities, and training to help participants share what they learn with colleagues in their local program, department, and institution. The project will also leverage existing expertise to generate a national network of projects focused on making academic geoscience more inclusive, welcoming, and supportive of people from diverse backgrounds and identities. This network will elevate the national visibility of existing efforts within the geosciences and provide opportunities for collaboration among disparate programs. Through this network, we will create a cycle by which C-ChanGe participants learn from the cutting-edge research and implementation of impactful practices, are able to apply this learning in their local context, and then provide information to the project network about the efficacy and challenges of implementing those research-informed practices.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
