NSF Award
2136010
In 1972, geoscientist Dr. Randolph Bromery chaired the ‘First National Conference on Minority Participation in Earth Science and Mineral Engineering’, a gathering of more than 300 representatives of academia, industry, government, and civil rights organizations. The goal of the conference was to broaden participation and support the success of Black, Native, and Latinx geoscientists. Despite this goal, the geoscience community remains a long way from achieving the level of diversity needed to tackle some of the nation’s most pressing environmental challenges. This project will develop a scholarly, community-driven, forward-looking roadmap that institutions, funding agencies, industry, and the public can use to contribute to the universally beneficial goal of broadening participation in the geosciences over the next half century. Training a diverse cohort of geoscientists is essential to meeting the growing demands for a robust geoscience workforce that can address the societal challenges posed by natural hazards, global change, and energy in the 21st century. However, historical efforts to advance this goal have been ignored or forgotten among most geoscientists, the scientific community, and the broader public. To make substantive and lasting demographic change in the geosciences, the research community must understand past efforts to advance justice and use them to inform new ways forward and to establish mechanisms for accountability over the next fifty years. To develop the roadmap report, this project will first convene the geoscience community at a ‘Second National Conference’ to examine the past fifty years of efforts to advance broadening participation in the geosciences. Following the convening, the project will form a group of twenty early-career geoscientists that will co-author and deliver the roadmap report. This project has a novel approach as early-career scholars usually are not in the leading role of such large community-wide efforts. The project leads and the twenty-person writing team will be early career professionals. If successful, this project will provide the new and innovative ways forward towards achieving more justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in the geosciences.<br/><br/>This project advances a radically new strategy, centered on brave leadership, to achieve broadening participation goals in the geoscience community. By drawing on tenets of Black studies and other frameworks from social science and humanities, this project will take a novel, interdisciplinary approach and establish evidence and experience-based strategies for broadening participation that expand the understanding of the history, current state, and future of geoscience. To ensure that progress is made on reaching the goals for broadening participation in the coming decades, the geoscience community needs a roadmap that will provide checkpoints, strategies, and accountability. To create this roadmap, principal investigators (PIs) will (1) convene a conference with participation from stakeholders, representatives, and leaders across academia, industry, professional organizations, and government agencies. Participants will reflect on past efforts to advance JEDI goals and cultivate partnerships to support new institutional and community goals. Then, PIs will (2) identify a team of twenty early-career leaders to develop ‘The 2072 Report’. Developing the report will be a unique professional development experience that will equip the next generation of geoscience leaders with tools, frameworks, and partnerships necessary for making lasting change in the field. This project has a novel approach as early-career scholars usually are not in the leading role of such large community-wide efforts. The project leads and the twenty-person writing team will be early career professionals. If successful, this project will provide the new and innovative ways forward towards achieving more justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in the geosciences. A primary outcome of this work will be the co-creation of a community-driven framework for achieving a just, diverse, and equitable geoscience community. It will include best practices, tools, and ideas for broadening participation; checkpoints and goals that will keep the community on track; and strategies for ensuring accountability over the next fifty years. This roadmap will provide the geoscience community with direct opportunities for reflection on what can be achieved in two years, what is feasible in a five- or ten-year strategic plan, and how those components can provide building blocks towards fundamental, sustainable, systemic change. Another outcome will be the establishment of a cohort of early-career geoscientists who are committed to dedicating their careers to transforming the geoscience landscape while they pursue academic positions. This will encourage novel and interdisciplinary research directions across geosciences.<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.
