NSF Award
2325476
As the relationships between people and the planet are interwoven with cultural heritage and community, diversifying the environmental workforce is of pressing importance. Differences in experience bring unique questions, approaches to problems, greater collaborative creativity, and innovation; however, the geosciences are the least diverse STEM field based on graduate student enrollment. This planning grant, Expanding academic Careers through Inclusive Transitions in Environmental Science, aims to expand, foster, and embed institutional support for diverse scholars in the environmental and geosciences at the University of New Mexico–an R1, Minority Serving Institution (MSI) situated in an arid, high-desert setting. This award will support activities to build inclusive career-stage transitions for diverse scholars in environmental science, empowering them through the theory of self-authorship to disrupt historical and ongoing power structures within the environmental and geosciences. In this way, the researchers will develop the necessary conditions to achieve the principles of Collective Impact at UNM and across a network of minority-serving institutions in the US Southwest.<br/> <br/>This project will holistically support diverse scholars by increasing institutional capacity for inclusive mentorship and research through training and workshops; create near-peer networking opportunities to promote social belonging; and develop equitable and substantive local professional partnerships. This will lay the groundwork for a full program implementation that would support year-long programming for two cohorts at critical career transition points: from bachelors to graduate studies or professional career (post-baccalaureate scholars) and from PhD to academic faculty or non-academic research career (postdoctoral scholars). This award will pilot summer programming for cohorts at each of these stages, and train faculty mentors in inclusive mentoring strategies, including development and use of a tailored Individual Development Plan for diverse scholars in environmental science. This planning stage will also be used to develop professional and academic networks to collaboratively support these goals across Minority Serving Institutions in the U.S. Southwest. The project is grounded in critical constructivism and self-authorship theory. Critical constructivism is based on the assumption that knowledge and understanding of reality–including identities of self–are based on interactions with and experiences of the world including those experiences that are socially, culturally, and historically inflected. The project's transformational programming will support both cognitive dimensions of self-authorship and interpersonal and intrapersonal development to facilitate self-authorship, taking the historical power structures found in the geosciences into account.<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.
