 Thank you for still being here. We know it's towards the end, but this is like our capstone event. And we really want to encourage everyone to think along and discuss along. This is an important thing for the CSDMS community to be diverse, to be inclusive, to be promoting equity. And we have had three people kindly agree to help us with thinking about programs that you can tap into to promote diversity, like what kind of strategies, what are issues in our community still or in the community of earth science as a larger community. I guess I don't think we know it all exactly for the CSDMS community. In general, we feel we've been thinking about this, but there may still be lots of things to do better, etc. And so like one of the goals of today is to hear your voices and hear from people who do this on a more programmatic basis or in a more project and structured way than CSDMS has been doing it. So we have here Leo Flores from Boise State University and he'll be moderating and has some slides to sort of speed up, like get everyone some information and sort of talk about what the goals are today. We have Anju Gold who's here at CU. She runs actually many programs for like outreach and undergraduate education, etc. But the particular program that we asked her to sort of bring to the table is this program called REX that is for community college students and engaging them into science that goes on at the university. We have Katia who's at UCAR and promotes diversity there and we'll speak a bit about that. And then Venkat, Anayisha, Venkat's back to being a professor, but Anayisha is at NSF right now and she's remote on a Zoom. And so they will have a little bit more of the NSF perspective on this and like what kind of programs are there at NSF that we can tap into and what are the sort of philosophies that are going on there. I'm mic'd up so yeah, okay. Do you guys have enough microphones there? Should I just turn this one off? I'll turn this one off for now. So thanks to Greg and to Irina for the opportunity to moderate this panel. I think obviously this is something that a lot of us are increasingly sort of concerned about, but I think the other sort of the other thing that I've sort of detected in our relative communities is a real desire to make a difference and get better about diversity, equity, inclusion, right? And so, but us being trained as sort of geoscientists and as modelers, we don't necessarily sort of have the tools, the capabilities or know what the sort of programmatic pathways are to being better about this. And so, you know, my hope is that this being the last sort of session that we will formally be here in Plenary at Systems will, you know, we'll go away from here with an idea of maybe some things that we can do between now and when we see each other again next year to advance the state of diversity, equity and inclusion in the geosciences and in the modeling community in particular. So this is going to be a real quick PowerPoint presentation, but many of us know, you know, so getting to this characterization of the state of where we're at, you know, we as a community as geoscientists in the earth sciences, so these are PhDs awarded by gender, female in blue, male in red. And as we see in the past 45-ish years, the gender balance of PhDs awarded in the earth sciences is improving. We're pretty much a parody at this point in this last sort of data point in this survey. But at the same time when it comes to ethnic and racial diversity, how many of you actually saw this paper that was in Nature? Great, that's awesome. So I found this and I immediately forwarded it to our entire department because this is something that we all need to be very aware of. So, you know, despite trying to make progress on diversity in the past 40 years, the data shows, right? And we are sort of fundamentally often data-driven people. The data shows that we have not made any progress. And this headline, you know, should really sort of shake us to our core when it comes to diversity and equity and inclusion. And if you dig deeper in and thanks to Irina in particular for sort of doing this deep dive. So if we look at what the facts are, so it's tough to see. But if you draw your attention to these sort of final panels, this is the racial breakdown of awarded doctoral theses between 1973 and 2016. This is a table from that Bernard and Cuperdonk paper. And if you look at this, if you look at the bottom line here, is that these are all science and engineering PhDs awarded. And this column here is the background population of these different racial and ethnic groups. And if you look at it, you know, in science and engineering in particular, you know, we are by a factor of three about underperforming in terms of, you know, a doctorate that sort of looks broadly representative of our society. And in the geosciences, it's even right. And so the state of where we're at is not great in terms of what the numbers are, but it's important to sort of know where we're starting and to confront the reality as it is. And so the question is, you know, how do we do better? And the question for our panelists and for all of you is, how do we do better as a community? What actions can we both take as individuals as well as a community to promote diversity, equity and inclusion? Systems in its renewal proposal has gotten very aggressive about this, which is great. You heard Greg's introduction at the beginning of the meeting talking about this being a diverse, open and welcoming community. And Systems is doing a number of things specifically to address diversity, equity, inclusion and so, you know, our annual meeting in particular. So if you look at sort of the distribution, women make up about 29 percent of systems executive committee and the steering committee's committee features 40 percent women. So we're almost at parity there in terms of leadership, which a lot of studies have pointed out is particularly challenging because of the gender disparity in sort of senior levels of science and engineering scholars. And this is directly from the proposal. So they've made it committed to developing an open transparent process for populating science teams, which takes into account diversity and career stage, gender expertise, institutional origin, so that includes our ones, four year colleges, HBCUs and other criteria. I think one of the things that has been brought up in in the community is that often in training people from diverse backgrounds into leadership roles, it requires sort of a one on one approach, right? So it requires somebody from a leadership position actually making a directed email, a directed phone call to somebody from an underrepresented group to say, hey, we really think that you would be awesome in this leadership role and we really appreciate your perspective. And we would invite you to serve in this capacity or to stand for election to this board at the earliest level. So addressing sort of the very, you know, the earliest level that an organization like systems can CSDMOS offers students stipends for attendance at the annual meeting. Each year, systems offers about five of these with an aim to improve diversity. So these scholarships are advertised nationally through the Institute of Broadening Participation, the Association of Women Geoscientists and other organizations. But obviously, you know, there's there's perhaps some opportunities there to sort of be a little bit more broad in terms of how we reach out. So so, you know, I think that one of the things that we wanted to cover with our panelists is, you know, what are some existing things that you all as as scientists, as as investigators, as postdocs and graduate students, you know, oftentimes, I think, you know, we being sort of tinkerers and doers try the DIY approach of doing it ourselves. And often, you know, while that's a that's a great sort of instinct, there's there's so many resources and opportunities to to engage with and so many things that can serve as sort of force multipliers of what we're doing. And so one reason that we brought these group of panelists on board was to ask and ask them to sort of tell us about some of the programming that their respective institutions offer and to brainstorm brainstorm some ideas with, you know, folks like Venka and Aisha about, you know, how you might wrap these into your next proposal or supplement requests and to be effective about sort of enhancing diversity in in the geosciences. And so with that, I think what we wanted to do real quick is just provide maybe a real quick, short opportunity for each of our panelists to discuss, in particular, research, recess, recs, sores and RAU opportunities. And so I'll start off with Anne in particular and sort of ask her to talk about. Reckless. OK, thank you for that work. Yeah, OK. So I'm delighted to speak here and it's a great panel to be here and talking with you. And I just wanted to I'm representing the recs program. And if you look here, you might wonder why this doesn't look very diverse if you look at the rec students right here. And so what the program that we do, and I guess you're all familiar, the the arc of all these programs are summer research experiences that bring in students into an intensive mentor-mentee relationship over and they work on an individual project and authentic research. So our programs have slightly different length and have slightly different other components that we all provide training. We all provide some support for the students. We select them and then we select us mentors. And they at the end of the summer do a poster presentation and a talk just like an AGU style presentation so they really get to the entire scientific process as a summary for all these programs. And so what is just to maybe draw the differences, the recs program addresses community college students and thinking about diversity. Diversity is very different and there's a lot of different components. Of course, there's race, there's gender diversity, which we've heard. There's racial and ethnic diversity, but especially in the state like Colorado that has a very white population. There's also a lot of socioeconomic diversity and there's rule like opportunities and rule states, rule parts of the state are terrible. There's like they have like one outlet in a classroom. They have only four days of school each week because they can't afford school five days. So there's huge gradients within states like Colorado and we are drawing from these community college students that go can't afford a four year college, but they go to these less expensive colleges and we draw from these. They call them research limited institutions so they don't have exposure. If somebody comes to see you and it's an undergraduate, they get exposure to research right and left, but they don't at a community college, especially if they might have family, if they may be veterans, if they have first generation college students and don't have an inspiration from their family. So that's what Rex does and we draw local here. One of the advantages is to that then sometimes the students continue working in the lab. I know that one of the students that Greg had last year, she comes back and she comes to see you now and she works in your lab, for example. So that's an opportunity that a program like that offers. There's a lot of other models that have other advantages. So I'm just pointing out the differences. Yeah, so let's then go. So that's great. Let's go to Khadija to talk about sores from the UCAR perspective. Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for having me. Should I also talk about UCAR first? That would be great. Yeah, OK, so UCAR, everyone knows what that is, right? Their diversity efforts, they have an office of diversity, equity and inclusion, and it's focused on helping our organization reach its goals of creating an inclusive workplace that values all individuals and their perspectives, contributions and ideas in pursuit of the organization's mission. It is primarily funded by the NSF. So in 2017, this office was created. So it's only been two and a half years that they even created this office and they did a cultural survey, institutional cultural survey to evaluate areas that they wanted to focus on. And some of those specific areas were clearly communicating the code of conduct, reporting procedures, better supervisor training and changing the hiring procedures to recruit more diverse applicants, pool and create more inclusive processes. So many of these initiatives were written into their strategic plan, which is actually online. And part of their strategic plan is to support inclusive science practices through an organization called Rising Voices, which builds bridges and collaborations between indigenous and Western ways of knowledge. And this conference just actually happened last week. So that's the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The Chief Diversity Officer is not able to be here today, but we do have Kristen, Luna, Aponte. And if you go to their website, you can see who all of the people are. So the source program, which is significant opportunities in atmospheric research and science is a part of UCAR. It began in 1996 and it exists to increase the diversity contributing and impacting the atmospheric sciences community. This program is actually a model for many other REUs. This program is different in that the students, we call them protégés, are multi-year. They can come every summer for up to four summers. We offer ongoing support, mentoring. Protégés receive up to five mentors per summer. That's a writing mentor, a research mentor, a computational coach in case they need MATLAB, Python additional support, as well as a community coach and a peer mentor from the returning protégés. This program just started on Sunday. And so we have a cohort of 20 this summer and some haven't even arrived yet. But so they work in labs and throughout NCAR, as well as NOAA and CU Boulder. So this program has opportunity for people to write in a source student with their budget. We have a template, for instance, the climate program office at NOAA has four slots. For students, CU Boulder has proposals out that have written source into their grant. So that's another way to get students. So they get the 11 weeks of research. But also on Fridays, they do have professional development, computational workshops, as well as scientific writing. And like Ann said, at the end, they have deliverables, which include a paper, an abstract to present at a conference and poster presentation. So these are the things that they are doing in order to penetrate the community. So this need is an opportunity to benefit from the nation's intellectual capital. Conversations about race, gender, physical challenges and minoritized communities demonstrate to the world that there is no monopoly on intellectual capacity. And there are national conversations happening right now that intellectual capacity is a natural resource. And this lack of diversity prevents all of us from benefiting. So source is trying to contribute to the conversation. Untapped are the marginalized and minoritized communities that are missing from the conversation and the nation is losing out. We are in our 23rd year. Awesome, thank you. And what I'll do now is actually pivot real quick to Aisha because prior to being at the National Science Foundation, she was actually at UNAVCO and can provide a little bit of background on recess. And then after doing that, Aisha, and then the question to maybe both you and Venkat is, from the perspective of the National Science Foundation, what are some ways that you might think about encouraging PIs, graduate students, postdocs to be plugging into these existing programs, you know, both sort of national and level, but maybe perhaps at their own institutions. And how might that sort of serve to make their proposals stronger? OK, well, I'll say a very minimal amount about recess as I'm no longer with the program. But recess is actually sort of a daughter of source. It's the solid earth version of the source program. So therefore, it has very similar programming components, multiple mentors, multiple years, students. They do independent research. They're primarily from groups that are underrepresented in the field. And at the end of the summer, they present their research in talks and in poster form. And they have the opportunity to attend a professional meeting in the fall or spring, following their summer, depending on what their interest is and what their research area of focus is. And if you have more questions about recess, I just want to point people to Andy Ellis. She's the recess program director at Unavco, so she'd be able to answer any questions you have about that program. Thank you. Did you want me to go or did you want Venkat to go? If you can go ahead and answer the sort of the second part of that question, then I'll bring it back to Venkat. OK, so ways to plug in. Well, the REU program is a great opportunity for people to write into their proposals as they're developing a proposal and thinking about how to have a strong, broader impacts portion of your proposal, because as you remember, proposals are reviewed through the merit review criteria, intellectual merit and broader impacts. And these folks on the stage, Anna and Khadidia, have great programs that you could actually just write in a student, communicate with them and then write in a student based on the support information that's in their programs into the proposal. So, I mean, I think that would make, it makes it a strong proposal because you're plugging into something that exists that's been proven to have an impact on the community. And it also takes some of the burden off the PI in terms of spinning up and supporting a student. So I'm not gonna, I've spent about 21 years in academia, 19 and a half years at the University of South Carolina, of which one and a half years as a rotator at NSF. So obviously I'll have to put my comments in the same proportion as the time spent. So the only thing about NSF I'll say is very important is that rotator, and that's the last one over there, I would encourage everybody at least once in their lifetime to do it. And you can do it for as short as one year or as long as three years. And I can tell you, without a doubt, I enjoyed my time there. And reading, evaluating proposals is only 30% of you, that's the main job, but you meet with other exciting people both in your division, in your directorate, and across other directors. I mean, I've met people in many other directorates. Of course, I cannot communicate with any of them for a year, so. But I really think it's a great thing to do. And NSF also offers assistance in housing, as well as money to travel, to do your research work one day a week. So it's all, it's a very, very good program. And this is the thing which they're looking for people. And I think every faculty member in this audience or every research scientist in this audience or in this room is qualified to do that job. That's it. And so with respect to diversity, I just have a few observations. So in the 19 and a half years I spent at USC, it's a state school in South Carolina. So you can think that it's a little bit of a, you know, an average sampling throughout the country. And there is good gender diversity in environmental science and in marine science. And when it comes to geology, there is still not that equity. And when it comes to racial and ethnic diversity, forget it. I mean, there is not much. And that's where we have to try. And at NSF, in my limited time there, I had discussions with people. And I don't know if you can really include that kind of diversity when students have graduated from high school and chosen their majors. I mean, the real thing is to go to the source. And you know, you're talking about middle school or even elementary school. If you can get even one kid excited in one school district in the country, in each school district in the country to become an earth scientist, you know, who is gender and racial and ethnic diversity. Trust me, you'll triple or, you know, you'll probably achieve equity in the same time period. So I really think that the problem arises from young age because earth sciences is not taught in high school. Most high schools, some high schools probably have it. So that's where you have a problem with diversity. Thank you, Venkat. That's a great pivot to sort of our next point. But one thing I wanted to do real quick before we move on is how many of you are aware of sort of existing programming at your home institutions? Things like the LSAMs, the Lewis-Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, McNair, which addresses first generation families. How many of you are aware of those? And okay, now raise your hand if you have sort of recruited students through those programs. So those are great environments because I think that they're localized, right? They help you with recruiting and the vast majority of them do provide additional sort of support for professional development, community development, mentoring that I think is really valuable. And so if you're not aware of those programs, then I would strongly encourage you to sort of reach out to them and look for them at your home institution as soon as you go back home. Venkat brings up a sort of very good point, right? Which is I think a lot of us have this struggle of, how do we, we know that we have a sort of a challenge when it comes to diversity in the earth sciences and the geosciences. I guess one question to both the panel and to the audience are, you know, what, you know, we recognize those challenges, but are there things that we as, as modelers, right, as computational thinkers as data scientists, are there things that we're doing where we can actually exhibit leadership with respect to the recruiting diverse and equitable populations? And so I'd put that to the panel and to the audience. You know, what are the kinds of things that we should be playing up about who we are as a systems community and who we are as sort of more computationally minded folks and what might we, what might that look like and how we might leverage our strengths that we have here to be leaders when it comes to diversity, equity, inclusion and in the earth sciences. One of the things that we've seen in the REX program is that the students and our diversity, as I said earlier, is not so visible as other diversity. It's not, you can't say, oh, this is a student of color, but the students that come in from community colleges or from any other diversity, they come often in with an imposter syndrome. They feel like they don't belong there and it's often, they always ask us, why did you select me? Like, why out of anyone that applied, would you think I'm qualified? And often they actually come in with less preparation that maybe some undergraduates that have taken your classes already come in. So what we've seen is really important is really strong mentorship and really helping the students and being aware that they may not feel included. So if you want, especially computational skills, you can really overwhelm students, but they can do it. And if you help them and maybe pair them up with a grad student or something, if you get people excited and provide mentorship that's thoughtful and not just science-based, but also checking in and saying, how are we doing? We really value your here. I think these are small things, but they go a really long way. So this is Katie Barnhart. Hi, Aisha. My question has to do with the sort of dimensions of mentorship and where the dimensions of mentorship need to expand. So in the source program, you listed like 10 different types of mentors. And I can, five, five. I was impressed by the number. And as someone who's mentored students in the RECS program, I can definitely relate to how all of those dimensions are really important because as a scientist, I have my expertise in how I mentor a student. And I often feel like I get out of my element in the ways in which the students need mentorship. And so I think my specific question is, as coordinators of these fantastic programs, what are their additional sort of aspects of sort of types of mentorship that you feel like the students would benefit from but are not getting? And then what do you see your role as helping mentors meet the students where they need to be met? Well, I just started in February, but I did come from a program, the NOAA Center for Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology at Howard University. And we had internships and we had a weather camp for high schoolers, which was national. And so at the center, which is a cooperative science center that NOAA funds, we would have community science best. We would participate in STEM fairs and doing atmospheric science experiments to maintain and contribute to the pipeline. But as far as mentoring goes, so we had an educational lead and for the mentors at the SOARS program, we have, it's volunteer. So that's a, but having descriptions of the types of mentoring that the students need is also helpful so that people know what they're volunteering from. We also have mentor training. And I met with all of the mentors for all of the students prior to their arrival to talk about the mentoring, the different aspects of mentoring, and to offer support in any way that we can. So if you're incoming, which is first year for us, you get a coach who's not related to the research that you're doing at all. They're more checking in on you, checking in on how you are here in Boulder and offering you an outlet, so to speak. The writing mentor is focusing on the deliverables that we have for the poster, the abstract, et cetera. The research mentor guides the research and we try to have work plans with benchmarks to track progress because 11 weeks really is not that much for research, but the fact is they're learning methodology in their different areas. And so I think that those are certain ways to try to understand the model. So it's, but it's mutually beneficial. So it's not just mentors giving of their time, effort, and energy. It's also them learning from the students. So that's an important point to remember that the arrows go both ways. I have a quick follow-up on that, which is do we feel like we, right? So I like this idea of sort of, you know, you know, pairing undergraduates or graduate students with, you know, for instance, rec students. Are there a set of best practices or are there a set of resources that we as advisors can help our, you know, our graduate students to be better mentors? I mean, I think that I potentially see that as a gap, right, in that, you know, often that, that onus falls on them to say, okay, well, you know, we want you to sort of be working along, but with this, you know, with this undergraduate student, but, you know, are we doing a good enough job of preparing the graduate students to be mentors? And if not, then how, you know, how can we be better at that? That's a good question. There's, and it really comes by with personalities. So there are some people that naturally are very driven to mentoring and can put themselves in the shoes. So I think knowing the student that you're matching with the incoming student is a really good idea. And I do think, you know, you went from the, from these more advanced researcher mentors that Soros has to the graduate student mentors. And we've actually seen that in recs. The near peer mentorship is really helpful because it's so much easier to ask somebody who's closer in age to say, I really don't understand this or what does that acronym that everyone uses in this group here mean? Because they don't want to ask their mentor because they don't want to be stupid. And so I think having like this near peer mentor is very helpful and, but then supporting, like seeing if this grad student really connects with it and we can help with, on programs like us can help with, there's a lot of mentor tips. We have, there's mentor training. So if you are in the Boulder area, you can connect with our programs. If you're outside of the Boulder area, there's also a lot of resources we could share with any of your students that may be matched up. And then we can help with the mentor training. That's great. And I was just going to add as well, I was going to add as well, the REU Geo Resource Center is hosted by, I'm just giving your information, Candidia hosted by UCAR. So that's a really great online resource where you can get a lot of information, most practices about mentoring. And I think it's a great idea for graduate advisors to train graduate students to be effective mentors and to remember that as a mentor, you don't have to be everything, which is the beauty of the multiple mentoring or a constellation of mentors model because that's a lot of work for one person to do. Was there a question there? So I see a lot of focus here on like early stages, Venkat sort of described a pipeline problem. The trouble is that as a community, especially as senior members of a community to focus disproportionately on the pipeline is an abdication of responsibility or systemic biases within one's own community, within all the other levels. And so my question, I guess, what are the effective ways that we can promote diversity, say from early career levels through senior levels? I don't know if I can answer your question directly, but in the Columbia area, there used to be a summer workshop for high school science teachers for geology. Again, they don't teach geology in schools. So I think what an organization like systems can do, and again, with funding from one of these sources, is to try to reach out to high school or middle school science teachers because instead of going to one student at a time, which is very difficult, you train the trainers and then see how that will play out in the future. I think this is the point of what I'm trying to ask, which is like within our professional community, so everybody should read this article. It's in Nature Ecology and Evolution by Katie Grogan. The title is How the entire scientific community can confront gender bias in the workplace. The data there is about gender bias, but there's a nice diagram there about the leaky pipeline and how the systemic biases at every stage, through graduate school, PhD, early career, senior levels, all of those stages, the systemic biases are working against diversity. And that's something that as a community, we need to address. Focusing on the K-12 level and how to promote things there, it is one ingredient, but it is not where we need to spend all the time. To address that question, at CERES we have a diversity inclusion director who does a lot of thinking about that question, especially focused not just at the early career, but also on the hiring process and it really comes to the hiring process in many instances. And that starts obviously at the advertisement process. I mean, if you look around the room here, you'll see already, and that's why the panel is here, but that there's not a lot of representation also across. So making sure you have on the hiring committee, you have females, you maybe have underrepresented people that can bring different perspective and really make sure that you pool, that you're drawing from, that you have applications and you encourage one-on-one like Leho said earlier, that you say we have this position open and we want you to apply because we think you are a qualified person in the first place and then awesome, you're also diverse, you know? You're not a token person, you're an awesome researcher and that's what you should apply. How many of you just a real quick poll of the audience? How many of you, particularly those that have served on hiring committees and maybe the past couple of years were required to attend an implicit bias training workshop before sitting on that committee? So those of you that are on hire, so this is one mechanism at least that, if your university or institution does not have that requirement, I think that that's a good place to start, right? To approach HR, approach the Title IX office and say, hey, this is a problem. We folks need implicit bias training before they sit on these committees and it needs to be, right? Those skills and understanding and identifying and reducing those implicit biases are perishable and therefore this is why people need to sit on, you know, go through that training every time before you go to, you know, before you sit on a hiring committee. So that's one step I've seen sort of in my experience that can help at least with the hiring. So I think the point about training graduate students to mentor is a really good one but I would also say that we need to train faculty to mentor and I guess I kind of have multiple ideas that I wanna put out and see how people can react to. So one thing I think I've found is that things that I am not aware of are very important to some of my students. So for example, one of my students said that one of our seminar speakers came in and he was a white male, but he had his pronouns on his title slide and how important that was for her to be able to see that. And these are things that I need to learn these things. I don't necessarily know these things and as a department that I am in, we are not doing the job that we need to do and I feel like there are signals and things that we could do to put out to say, you know, I use she, her and that's gonna talk to some people and let them know that we are open. So, but beyond that, we need also all of the faculty to be on board because we need to not just say we have this environment that is gonna be helpful or support and mentoring many ways, people from all backgrounds, but we also have to have an environment that is supportive for people of all backgrounds. So I feel like we need training, not just for our faculty as to how to mentor and work with diverse people, but how we can also signify to others that we are open to people because I feel like in the earth sciences, we have a diversity problem on many levels. It's socioeconomic, it's people of color, it's people with disabilities. And so, are there resources? Are there trainings? Are there things that we can do to kind of improve? I mean, I feel like at the faculty level, we need to improve if we're gonna be really able to embrace different people, you know? Another real quick question of maybe new hires and or early career faculty, how many are required to have a diversity, equity, inclusion like statement as part of either the application package or their annual evaluation? All right, well, yeah. Thank you so much for this panel. I just had a question regarding the kind of the, a lot of these programs, particularly the REUs and even things like graduate fellowships that a lot of institutions have. And I know there's a lot of diversity across different institutions in terms of like, what criteria they use, what focus those programs are, but what can institutions and agencies like the NSF do to encourage and make sure that a lot of these programs like REUs that are ostensibly designed to help promote and increase the type of candidates, the type of diversity that we bring into our field, not simply become just another kind of checkmark or stamp on someone who's already gonna be successful anyway. So I've seen with students that I've mentored at the undergrad level, they've applied to REUs only to be told that essentially they weren't competitive unless they already had a publication. And when you're a sophomore undergrad, that is just completely insane. And so I know there's a huge diversity of the type of programs and what their focuses are, but I also have a feeling and I've seen with things like NSF, GRFP and other things that they more often than not kind of end up being defined by merit in some sense, but our criteria for merit are very kind of tailored to people who are already in a very strong position to succeed. And so they end up not really playing a big role in kind of broadening the type of people that we're bringing into our field. So what can we kind of do to address that? So in the RU community, I know that we have an annual PI meeting and at the PI meeting, there's a lot of conversation about how do you write application forms? And there has been the last meeting in last summer was really focused on how do you make it inclusive? How do you bring more people? And so don't ask what are your research experiences, but what experiences do you bring that are why this benefits? So there's like slight differences in how you ask these questions that are more inclusive. So somebody who hasn't had a lot of opportunities to do internships unpaid and this and that can still talk about something meaningful in the application. And so there is conversations in the RU programs about that. But I don't know, that doesn't quite answer the question of what the center could do. So we've talked a lot here about positive things that we can do, mentorships, RU's, programs like source and recess. But if you look at the numbers, it's hard to see how that's where the problem is. For example, I'd guess that there are something like 40 or 50 students in recess and sores every year. And that's more than the total number of underrepresented minorities who get Geoscience PhDs every year. Even these students with all of the positive mentorship that we can possibly give them through great programs like that are not all getting all the way through. So what I'm wondering is where are the negatives coming in? Can we focus on those and getting them out of the way? More specific questions. So usually the most I can do for diversity is to leave the room, right? But this summer I'm really lucky. In Woods Hole we've got this partnership in education program and I've got a black student from University of South Carolina who's coming up. And specifically, how can I keep him from sporting out of the pipeline? What can I do to be a good mentor for him? Hi, I don't know. It depends on what the student wants to do. I mean, they're all not going into academia. The Sores program was designed to be a graduate bridge program. So not everyone decides to go that way and that's their right and there's pathways into the career as well. But I mean, if they've shown the aptitude and the capacity, then of course opportunities are important. I think that understanding the wealth of opportunities is the most important thing. So, you know, private sector, government, and then of course academia because that's where I think like this lady was saying, the faculty have the real benefit and opportunity to show the opportunities within that field. It's really the faculty that excite the student. Maybe one last question and then we'll have to wrap up so that Greg can close the meeting. So, Effie, yeah, I catch the best. That's maybe the more important thing. Effie, do you? I was impressed to see in the application of the future faculty members that they listed there. First line, like, you know, birth date. Here is not allowed, but birth date. The other, married number of children. Two years maternity leave or paternity leave. And then publications and even comments such as my publication records very strong, despite my maternity leave. And the committee was looking very positively in that. They said, look, you know, the maternity leave or paternity leave is kind of not even for asking. It is given to them. It's not a question I don't want it or whatever. They pay you and all of this. So, this is a much more open culture, especially in Sweden that I've seen in many committees, where, for example, this is not something to hide for a woman or for a father that has little kids, et cetera. And it does not act negatively in any way. In fact, I've seen it so positively. The other thing, I was in the so-called water prize-nominating committee. No public statement would make or no TV channel would come if it was not 50-50 representation in the panel. Meaning, absolutely no. So there were some rules, especially in Sweden, that were imposed from above. And the culture has changed in a way that's a little more natural to have a career, have your children, declare it in your resume, be part of the back. If you did some work even during the year that you were in maternity leave, that's a plus. So anyway, I just wanted to say that we are cultures behind some other countries. Can I just say one sentence that maybe ties this and the other comment together? I think the way what you can do to answer that question as every individual in this room is if you care about these people that are with you, that may be pregnant while they are in your group, and then you can really provide opportunities. If you provide mentorship and have a student, even if they are not in touch, but then you just send them an email and say, I really still care about you, that means a lot. And that's going to keep people in the field if they know there's a community that cares about me and I don't have to fight to be in there. And that could be on all levels. And it could be pretty small. I think that's something any of us could do. Great. Well, I think we'll have to wrap it up there. But perhaps on a positive note, which is that although this is going to require cultural change, cultural change is something that we ourselves as individuals can sort of instigate. So let's thank our panelists here and for their time and perspective. And I'll pass this over to Greg to close this out. So it feels awful to cut that conversation. What feels like short? I think this has been really great. And thanks again to the panelists for joining us for that. So I don't have much to say other than first a note of thanks for everyone who made the meeting possible, so that you know who you are. Speakers, poster presenters, clinic leaders, workshop leaders on Monday. You're all listed here. The roasters from last night, and the Roasties, breakout leaders and scribes, and the integration facility staff who have worked really hard to put on these last three days. So one last note. Next May, 2020, we've reserved this space for Systems 2020. We already have a theme. The theme will be ecosphere and geosphere. As you know, our themes are not exclusive of all the great science that you do, but that'll be a unifying theme about living things and being organic or how those things function together. So thank you all and see you next year.