 Okay, I think we'll start in with our third panel now, and the third panel is on inclusive training and workforce development, promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. My name is Bala Chaudhry, I'm an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Dartmouth College, and I'll be moderating this panel today. We'll hear from four speakers, John Matsui from the University of California, Berkeley, Sarah Bambachi from Colorado State University, Milton Newberry from Bucknell University, and Bonnie McGill from the American Farmland Trust. So we'll have four presentations from our speakers, and then we'll have a Q&A session afterwards, so please hold your questions for the end. And we're going to begin with the first speaker, who is Dr. John Matsui from the University of California, Berkeley. John is an Assistant Dean of Biology and Director, Co-Founder of UC Berkeley's Biology Scholars Program. He's an evolutionary biologist and science educator with a dedication to make STEM more diverse, equitable and inclusive. Just for the sake of time, I'm giving short bios of our speakers. I wish I could go on and on about their illustrious careers, but just as a reminder, their full bios are in the agenda. And so now I will invite Dr. Matsui to speak. Thank you, Bala. And thanks to everybody who's on this Zoom. It's my honor to be here. And what I want to do in the short time that I have is to talk about a program that I've been working with for the last 30 years and the equity lessons and recommendations that come from that program. So we've been talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's kind of the DEI is the sort of the acronym of the day. And I just want to clarify what we mean by what I mean by diversity, equity, and inclusion. Diversity is really a number. It's a count. It's the number of individuals that come from a particular background or of a particular characteristic. Inclusion is a feeling. You could be present, but not feel like you belong. And I think feeling welcomed, like you belong, like you're relevant, is really, really critical to this work. And equity is how we go from diversity to inclusion. And so it's kind of the mechanism, the practice, the approach, the philosophy that we use to go from numbers to a feeling. And the question of why is DEI work so critically important? Well, there are any number of reasons to numerous to mention here. Developing a diverse STEM workforce is really critical. National security, also to do good science. Diversity and good science are intimately tied together. And the list goes on and on. I'm going to talk with you about BST or the Biology Scholars Program. And it's a STEM equity program from which I've derived this talk as well as many other talks. And I'll be talking about the what, who, the success, and also the how. I co-founded BSP in 1992. It's the STEM equity program, as I said. And the focus of the program is to develop versus skim talent. That is, we take students into the program who, by all standards, traditional measures aren't considered to be science material, and we develop their talent. We do this by providing inclusive support, both academic as well as psychosocial. Over the last 30 years, we've had about 4,000 Berkeley undergraduates. And here's the profile. And you can see it's a very atypical profile for success in STEM, and in this case, in biology. We have about 400 members study state, 100 graduate each year, and 100 new members join. So what do I mean by success? Students enter Berkeley in the program, enter Berkeley with lower GPAs and SATs. Yet they graduate at parity with biology degrees and competitive exit GPAs with biology majors at large. And what they do is they go on to post-grad programs and careers, primarily in healthcare. But many of them go into research and also education. And how do we do this? It's a comprehensive program. I won't list all the things here. But each of the components of the program are individually tailored to our students. We try to sustain their culture. There's a community-based participatory aspect to every single thing we do. We listen to our students. And the total cost of the program is about $3,000 per student per year. So what are the equity lessons, the STEM equity lessons that I want to share today? We need to rethink qualified. Our institutions are really good at developing expressed excellence. That is, we take students who are already on their way to success and we skim them. And we place them in our labs. We say that it's okay for them to declare majors and so on. But I think we need to really focus on developing potential excellence, yet unexpressed excellence. We also need to clarify where the problem lies, the diversity problem, in quotes. Equity gaps and underrepresentation are really symptoms of a broken system. They are not the problem. We need to fix our institutions and not our students. And we call this the inclusive excellence. And NSF, NIH, and HHMI have all focused on initiatives that focus on institutional change or inclusive excellence. We also need to rethink the role of program. This is another takeaway equity lesson. Our traditional direct service to students are really institutional workarounds. And I call this program 1.0. Program 1.0 is to help students, the use of program, to help students succeed in a system that is not designed with them in line. And this is a workaround, leaving the institution as it is with all of its biases and barriers and problems intact. We also must go beyond scaling. That is developing larger programs to serve more students or franchising. That is replicating programs at other institutions, replicating programs that work. Because this does nothing to really address the institutional problem. So I propose that instead we need to view programs as labs and incubators. I call this program 2.0. And program 2.0, it conceptualizes programs as developing and testing best practices to close equity gaps at scale institution-wide. And in this way, we can benefit all students, however, with most especially those from my minoritized groups. So which models should we use to guide us? The Americans with Disabilities Act provides great guidance in the sense that it talks about making institutions accessible to everybody. And it was brilliant in its conception. Along with this from the disabilities literature is universal design, making sure that anything we design is universally accessible and supportive. Community-based participatory research is yet another model that we need to think about where we involve communities that were researching. CVPR allows us to do things with communities rather than to communities. And which STEM equity program should we adapt and scale? They must be inclusive. That is including the range of students that have an interest and passion for science. They must be generalizable, irrespective of institution type or selectivity of admissions of our students. They must be cost-effective and also sustainable. And so in closing, my recommendations for NSF, number one, we need to learn from the 50-plus years of program knowledge. We've been doing programs for over 50 years, and there's a repository of useful information that we can actually apply to institutional change. We need to identify evidence-based, inclusive, and cost-effective best practices that do the following two things that have closed equity gaps and also could be scaled institution-wide. Thirdly, we need to fund ongoing advancing practice workshops. We're to help faculty, staff, and students learn about more equitable practices in advising, mentoring, and teaching, derived from our program knowledge. And we also need to incentivize change. We need to make participation count for stakeholders, including departments and administrators. We also need to have sufficient staffing to do this work, funding for sufficient staffing. This is labor-intensive work, working around institutional change. And finally, we need to have rigorous evaluation in collaboration with social scientists to determine what works for whom and under what conditions. Thank you very much. Thank you, John. That was great. Perfect timing. Thank you. And just as a reminder, we'll take questions at the end, and we'll move on to our next speaker, Dr. Bonnie McGill. Dr. Bonnie McGill is an ecosystem ecologist and a senior climate and soil health scientist at American Farmland Trust, a national nonprofit organization working to protect farmland, promote environmentally sound farming practices, and keep farmers on the land. She has authored and co-authored several peer-reviewed papers on promoting DEI injustice in academia and on decolonizing conservation and believes ecologists and conservation biologists have a particularly important role in transforming the relationship between Western science and the land. Dr. McGill, please begin. Sorry about that. I think my internet might be too slow for me to do video and share my screen. So I'm going to go ahead and just share my screen right now. Great. And so you're seeing my slide. Yes, looks great. OK, great. Let's go ahead and jump right in. Thank you so much for having me. And I'd like to start by acknowledging that I'm joining you from the area known today as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is within the ancestral lands and rivers stewarded by the Seneca, Manangahela, Lenape, Shawnee, Wynda, and Osage peoples for millennia. These peoples continue to make important contributions to our modern understanding of the ecology and conservation of their ancestral lands. Often the scope of diversity, equity and inclusion work is focused within academia, but it is critically important that as we train STEM professionals for jobs outside of academia, we're preparing them to apply DEI principles to a variety of contexts. So the objective for my brief comments here are for how providing examples for how DEI and anti-racism fluency are important for STEM professionals conducting and applying multidisciplinary research at the continental scale. I work for a nonprofit called American Farmland Trust, and we work to protect farmland from development, get more conservation practices on farmland, and ensure the viability of farms. So to give you some context for where my comments here are coming from, I want to share that working in agriculture means that I'm a STEM professional working in a sector with a deep history of systemic racism in the US, a history that largely goes unacknowledged and certainly is not taught in our schools. I don't have time to get into the full story, but here are a few key points. 98% of farmland in the US is owned by white people, and that's not a coincidence. Black agricultural landowners have lost 12 million acres in the last century, most since 1950. One key piece of hard evidence of systemic racism in agriculture is Pigford versus Glickman, the largest class action lawsuit at its time, where black farmers sued the USDA for systemic discrimination such that more federal funding and low interest loans went to white farmers instead of black farmers. The parties settled the case, and black farmers have been awarded some money to compensate for decades of discrimination by the USDA. Even today, black farmers received disproportionately fewer federal loans than their white counterparts. So recognizing this context, the current administration has made addressing systemic racism an ag of federal priority. For example, the new partnerships for climate smart commodities have invested $3.1 billion to expand markets and revenue streams for farmers and ranchers, and commodities while also implementing climate smart practices like cover crops with a focus on underserved farmers. These partnerships have been awarded to universities, corporations, nonprofits like ours and tribes to serve underserved farmers. We're leading a $3 million partnership in our partner in a $90 million one. This is a lot of money and we need to get this right. So part of these grants are aimed at reinventing systems of delivering technical and financial assistance to black and additional underserved groups of farmers and not using these funds to perpetuate the status quo. So this begs the question, how do we train STEM professionals to authentically engage in this kind of anti-racism work at their workplaces? I'm going to focus here on how to train white scientists to engage in anti-racism. And you might be thinking, I thought we were supposed to focus on people from marginalized groups, and you're right. But also as white folks, speaking as a white person, we have a lot of work to do within ourselves so that we can engage in anti-racism work without perpetuating trauma and harms on black, indigenous, and other black people of color. Nothing on this slide should be considered exclusive to white students. But part of the reason I'm emphasizing white students here is to normalize talking about whiteness, a step towards recognizing it and how it affects people of color. This recognition should be embedded in the frameworks we use. Whiteness and settler colonialism help white people see natural systems as separate from people. Think of fortress conservation. When in reality, we need to embrace complexity, seeing couple of human and natural systems in order to achieve sustainable and equitable systems. And I would have made that point regardless of whether Jack was chairing the committee or not, in case you're wondering. Also, as white researchers, like myself, we bring a history of extraction and harm to black, indigenous peoples in the name of research. So we need to recognize this and reckon with it in our methodologies by using frameworks like knowledge co-production, community-based participatory research, which John also mentioned, and also integrating methods for decolonizing research. I also recommend centering a few principles when training white scientists. One being that activism and advocacy doesn't have to wait until you have tenure. The world is burning out here, so use your privileged voice thoughtfully to bring attention to issues and solutions when those in power are not listening. Implicit bias is real. Know how to be an anti-racist by looking to the work of Abram X. Kendi and Idioma Aluo, for example. Also, value, credit, and engage with different ways of knowing. In my field, the new hot term is regenerative ag, which is now co-opted by white dominant agribusiness and industrial farming, without recognizing that this knowledge came from centuries of knowledge building by black, indigenous, and additional marginalized groups of farmers. Also, building and awareness, continuously building that awareness of people's history and modern experiences of the places we work, our disciplines and sectors, and how our disciplines are complicit with systems of oppression, so that we can transform our disciplines to be more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. I also have a number of 21st century skills and qualities to foster in students, so I'm going to skip ahead to my next slide for the interest of time. So you might be wondering, how do we do that? So even though the previous slide focused on white students, I'd like to put that aside and consider how to change training and STEM in general. And one key area is to prioritize admitting marginalized students and interns for so many reasons, but just one of them being that white privilege is real in regards to admissions, as well as owning and operating farmland in the U.S. Included readings, such as those I've cited here and many others in your seminars courses, even in comprehensive exams, to move DEI work out of an auxiliary space and integrate it more centrally into your everyday work. Pay, BIPOC-led consulting organizations to facilitate anti-racism trainings for faculty and students. Write these kinds of trainings into your grants. And finally, lead by example, and I'm going to skip to the bottom point, and this actually comes from the National Academy's page for resources on diversity, equity, and inclusion. And it says that research can shed light on the factors that drive systemic racial inequities with the goal of finding solutions based on evidence. So that's where researchers we can come in and contribute to this kind of work. For example, a paper that I published with several colleagues called Words Are Monuments, Patterns in U.S. National Park Place Names, Perpetuate Settler Colonial Mythologies, including White Supremacy. We did this to use data to make everyday complicity with white supremacy more visible to white people. Some white people say, I don't see a problem. So we set out to use the settler colonial tools of statistics and the written word to demonstrate the problem. Ecologists, like myself, work in lands with complex histories. Part of decolonizing our practices is to expose settler colonial biases and recognize the histories of colonized lands and the peoples who have stewarded these lands for millennia. To provide a quantitative example of settler colonial biases in a familiar context, we examined the origins of over 2,200 place names in 16 national parks in the U.S. Through iterative thematic analysis of place name origins and meanings, we classified place names according to emerging categories, which enabled the quantification and spatial analysis of place name meanings. All national parks examined have place names that tacitly endorse racist or more specifically anti-indigenous ideologies that's perpetuating settler colonialism and white supremacy at the system scale for future generations. So on this last slide, I want to leave you with resources for starting conversations. And I hope I've provided fodder for the committee to consider how to change the status quo of training STEM professionals. Please feel free to reach out. I have my work cited here that I'll share with the committee. You can get them at this URL or QR code and I'll leave it at that. I look forward to my fellow panelists comments. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks so much. OK, I think we'll move to our next speaker, Dr. Milton Newberry. Dr. Newberry serves as the director of the Sustainable Technology Program at Bucknell University, where he guides the development and implementation of research and outreach projects on renewable energy, environmental conservation and community engagement with natural resources. Currently, Dr. Newberry centers his research on exploring the lived experience of black, indigenous and people of color scientists and STEM professionals working in their discipline, the racist behavior and dirt and pathways for success, despite the encountered racism racism. Dr. Newberry, please begin your presentation. All right. Thank you all for that wonderful introduction. And thank you, John and Bonnie, so far for what you presented to the panel. I really appreciate what you had to say and know that I am going to somewhat corroborate what you've mentioned so far. And also just want to highlight one for my specific talk with this panel is thinking about what we can do from a more, I'll say, a ground level approach to how we can try to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and even go further with thinking about sensible longing as well as accessibility. Can everyone see my slides? I just want to make sure. All right. Thank you. I appreciate it. And so with that going forth, the first thing I want to do is try to introduce the current issue. And I'm sure all of you already know the current issue that exists within the United States, as well as globally in the context of life sciences as well as continental biology. But the idea that our current system and the way we run life sciences and biology and even research is operating the way it's meant to it was developed. This was created from a Eurocentric approach that then became a U.S. dominant approach and has been further influenced by U.S. cultural norms. So think about the idea of heteronormity, the idea of only the affluent can participate in research, the non-disabled can participate in research, or participate in life sciences in general, or even neuro-typical. And because of this viewpoint and cultural norms that have permeated within our view of life sciences and continental biology, it's then excluded other ways of viewing or conceptualizing environment, nature, wilderness, and wildlife. And because of this, it is further than shaped how we then conduct our research. And with that shaping and conducting the research, it has left certain marginalized populations out of the equation when actually entering these fields. Not saying that these fields aren't meant for, let's say, BIPOC individuals to participate in because as a planet, we are the people of the global majority and other nations outside of the continent of Europe and, say, United States, and we'll say we can maybe even run Canada into this, you have a number of people from marginalized populations that you would consider United States actually participating in this work. However, we are leading, quote unquote, leading the way in the context of research and practice in guiding the planet on what is being done. And so how we behave is in how the rest of the planet behaves. And so it's understanding that with this dominant culture and how it has affected, I should say, life sciences and our research, then it's going to then permeate across the planet. And so one example I gave here on the slide is thinking about the North American model of wildlife conservation and how we don't necessarily consider, let's say, indigenous views of wildlife and nature into this equation, then how we then structure policy based upon what we do, let alone structure research on what we do. And so as you see, one of the bullet points I have here, idea of management and policy dictated by scientific facts going through values, legislation and politics, we try to be objective through our work, but it's still a subjective concept because we're still humans. We still have our own biases that place into that. And so with that being said, policy is being created based on that. And so policy is still being created based upon scientific facts viewed through the dominant US cultural lens. And so that needs to be able to change. And so with all of this occurring is created a system from academic departments through state and federal agencies, through nonprofits that have restricted access to entering and engaging with life sciences for a number of individuals from marginalized populations. And so with that occurring, not only has the system restricted, but it further creates barriers for them to part further participate even if they're invited into the fields. As we've seen over the past 20 years, we've seen a number of different agencies and universities strive and strive again to try to recruit. We'll say, for instance, I identify as a black US scientist. I've seen many of my colleagues try to recruit other black scientists, other black students, individuals to become scientists. However, they don't necessarily consider the barriers that are within the system that prevent those individuals from being successful once they enter our disciplines. Once they enter biology, once they enter ecology, we just say, well, you're here, good luck versus actually changing the system to ensure that people are successful once they arrive. And so we don't consider the idea of racist behavior within our labs or when people enter the field. How do you help not only the BIPOC labs members that you have, but also their white peers in dealing with situations of racism, such as someone using racial slurs while you're conducting fieldwork? How do you deal or help train somebody to deal with a situation of approaching or being faced with violence based upon somebody policing their ability to be outside? And furthermore, how do you deal with if they're not getting support from their peers? How do you deal with the lack of having access to field-based experiences prior to actually trying to go to graduate school, for instance? And so the number of these systemic barriers are in place. So even if we want to bring in people, they're not going to be successful. So we had to really consider dismantling the whole system and starting from the ground up to incorporate and make accessible to everyone. Because in that case, both people of dominant cultures and these marginalized populations are going to be successful and we're truly going to be able to conduct our work and really help this planet. And so in this case now, I'm going to provide a number of solutions that my colleagues and I have found through our research, through narrative inquiry of working with other BIPOC scientists and ecologists in the field and seeing what they faced and how they become successful and what they do with their peers as well as their students that try to ensure their success. So first, I want to make sure that we have to promote the counter narrative that BIPOC scientists and professionals exist. We do exist, we exist, we persist, we thrive. The whole narrative that, let's say for instance, in the United States black people don't go outside, that's wrong. We do go outside, we do do the work outside. As Bonnie just mentioned, there's a number of black farmers that existed in this country currently that have existed to our history. We've helped build this country with indigenous populations that may have already existed here. We are here and we're working outside. So we have to dispel the narrative in that myth. Next, the idea of remove the colored tax. I say it like this because it's the onslaught or the plethora of microaggressions that BIPOC scientists face when they are conducting work. So yes, welcome. We want you to be a part of here, but then they are faced day in and day out of dealing with the essentially horrific behavior from their white peers or from peers that may not necessarily look like them. And it wears them down to the point that they might lead, they might go to a different discipline. And so the people who have been successful, they have essentially one had to find ways of de-stress and dealing with mental health, which that in itself is already an issue with, let's say, at least for the black community of finding mental health professionals that really can empathize with us, as well as trying to find community to ensure that you can stay there despite the microaggressions. Next, I would say one minute, eliminating and the policing of BIPOC scientists in the field. We exist here. You shouldn't necessarily have to question why we are in the field and the work that we can do. Next, the idea for students, the idea of recruitment, try to provide scaffolding for success for them to be in your lab. So they need extra training. What can you do to provide for that? What can you do in asking your departments or asking your institutions for providing funding to help them be able to participate in field research if they're an undergraduate that didn't help train them to become a graduate student for people who are younger than that? What can we do to try to introduce younger people to participating in life sciences and biology and ecology early so that they can be trained and prepared once they get to an undergraduate institution? And lastly, I want to say ensure the safety of your BIPOC individuals and colleagues and so make sure that we address some of the issues that they may face while participating in work. And then what you can do when training everybody in anti-racist behaviors. And so this way, if somebody does face a situation of racist behavior, they have the support of their peers to quell in that situation and know that they're going to listen to them and go forth. If you have several, if you have several scientists who identify. All right, Melton, if you could just wrap up. OK, I will. Thank you. So no worries, I'm sorry about that. So long story short, what can we do to provide support for our BIPOC individuals here in the life sciences and sit there and make sure that they not only can enter the field, but also be successful and not try to leave itself. So thank you very much. Thanks so much, Melton. Great, great presentation and comments. OK, we'll go to our final speaker now, Dr. Sara Bambachi, who's an assistant professor in the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology at Colorado State University. Dr. Bambachi has over a decade of experience conducting research, teaching and outreach to foster greater equity inclusion in academia. Also, her research blends conservation science and social science to explore how ecological systems interact with social and environmental gradients. I want to give a warm welcome and invite Dr. Bambachi to give her presentation. Sorry about that. I had to figure out how to unmute. Are you able to hear me now? Yes, we hear you great. Super. And you can see my slides. Yep. Fantastic. OK, thanks. Yeah, thanks for the introduction, Paula. I am going to be briefly sharing some takeaways about systemic changes I think really need to happen to promote DEI and the future science workforce that are going to complement a lot of the thoughts and ideas that my colleagues have shared already on most of this is drawn from research that I've done. And I'm going to be pasting a link to the chat for the papers since I won't have time to go into any of the details now. And also a few of these takeaways are just drawn from practice, from doing this for quite a while now. And the first of those that I'd say is more drawn from practice is that DEI is a journey, not a destination. It's a journey that doesn't have an end point. We're always learning, unlearning and relearning. Also, this work is emotionally draining, so it's important to give yourself and others the grace and space to learn and grow. I think this is especially important as DEI becomes more politically contentious. And as we lean into these challenging and courageous conversations that need to be had, the tools of empathy and perspective taking are going to be our allies because no matter what side of the political aisle you are on, we can all agree that the future science workforce should be comprised of and serve everyone regardless of identity. My second takeaway builds on that point. So creating inclusion starts with you. I truly believe that if we want to broaden participation in the science workforce, we must start with ourselves. With understanding our own biases and privileges, how those show up in the roles that we play as educators, mentors and researchers. And once we've done that self work, we will be better at creating inclusive spaces that will attract diverse groups to the future science workforce. Yet I feel that many institutions and individuals sort of start at the end of this hierarchy. If we get more diversity in the room, we'll fix our diversity problem. Right. But that's I don't think how it works. And a lot of the experts agree with me. So this insight that I'm sharing is supported from a recent study that I conducted with Dr. Pachar to develop a framework for evaluating diversity statements in the faculty hiring process. So we surveyed experts across the country to get their opinion on what factors make for a strong contribution to DEI and therefore could be considered when evaluating candidates. There's suggestions aligned with the six broad themes that are showing here. But I want to focus in on the fact that nearly 40 percent of the references were to building one's own DEI and cultural competency alone. So this includes things like having awareness of your own bias and privilege, having a clear understanding of DEI concepts and terms and a record of training in DEI. So the takeaway that these DEI experts think is critical is doing that work on oneself, that self awareness and competency. So the next point I want to make is that we need to be careful about what has been called the diversity tax. So as a Latina scientist that also does research on DEI, I'm frequently asked to do a lot of DEI service work. But these activities are not highly valued in tenure and promotion. So they come at a tax to my time. And this experience relates to another study that I was part of focused on quantifying how often underrepresented faculty engage in DEI work. And we found that those that identified as racial or I think minorities, women and first generation scientists put more time into DEI work, including recruiting minority students and faculty doing K through 12 outreach, serving on diversity committees, organizing and attending diversity workshops and offering diversity publications. Faculty in the study also reported that this work was not valued in tenure and promotion. So they were doing the heavy lifting of advancing DEI without getting rewarded for it, which has been described by others as the diversity tax. And these findings suggest that we need to be more thoughtful about how that workload of advancing DEI is distributed and rewarded if we don't want to risk losing the diverse scholars we already have in the science workforce. So if we really want to promote DEI and leadership, we should be incentivizing the work through tenure and promotion. So the next point I want to make is that to promote DEI in the science workforce, we also need to think critically about our field practices. So for many biological fields, field technician and internship positions are important informal learning opportunities for students that provide critical links between college and careers. So it's important to think about how accessible these opportunities are for students. My field experiences are not always inclusive as I found in my research. So my colleagues and I wanted to study the barriers to entry for these critical experiences and we recently published some research with this goal in mind. So we found that limited income was a barrier to student participation in field experiences for nearly half of our student undergraduate respondents. When we ask the students how much do you need to be paid to accept a field internship position that's full time and provides field housing and transportation, eight dollars and sixty eight cents per hour was the average that they reported they needed to be paid, but only sixty five percent of jobs posted to job boards at the time paid that amount. When we looked at just those that identified as racial minority students, sorry, ten dollars and eighty cents per hour was the average amount they needed to be paid, but only fifty six percent of jobs paid that amount. And then the amount that a job would need to pay to retain ninety percent of our student respondents was twenty dollars per hour, but only three percent of jobs paid that amount at the time. So if we really want to attract the various students to these critical stepping stones to a future science workforce, we really need to provide adequate pay, think about flexibility and have inclusive spaces. Oh, sorry, there was one more point there. So the flexibility part comes from the fact that students identified other barriers, including conflicts with work, school or family commitments, lack of transportation or housing in the field, mental or physical health, constraints and concerns in the hospital work environments and a lack of inclusive spaces. Also, there's a need to make field experiences more inclusive for the LGBTQ community. So I recently worked with a student on a paper that focuses on strategies to improve LGBTQ inclusion in the outdoor and field work. And there's far more details in the paper about some major takeaways on how we can better support our LGBTQ community in the field, including using gender inclusive language, gender mutual gear, LGBTQ sensitive medical and emergency response, inclusive travel accommodation, inclusive field work activities, friendly LGBTQ friendly community guidelines and building competency among leadership and participants. And then finally, the last point I want to make is that promoting DEI in the science workforce can help us think more broadly about our research. So an example comes from a paper that my team and I currently have in review. So in this study, we found that noise pollution across 83 US cities was higher in red line neighborhoods. These are neighborhoods that tend to have higher proportions of lower income communities and communities. So we paired this with a systematic literature review of noise impacts to urban wildlife and found that the impacts of noise become more diverse and widespread as noise reaches those higher levels found in our red line communities, which are shown on the bottom part of the figure in the panel. And so this project was a collaboration among my team of researchers that have diverse identities, diverse interests. And so this is the benefit, I think, of having diverse teams that sort of nexus of different ideas and perspectives helps us think about our work in a really different way and a different light and can lead to really interesting ways of approaching our research. So I encourage you to think about how DEI intersects with your research. Can it shape the way you think about a problem? The problems that you typically research or the way you interpret your results and how might supporting a diverse future workforce help us think more broadly? One minute. OK, so that's all I have to share. This is certainly not an exhaustive list of strategies that can help promote DEI and the science workforce. Certainly our colleagues in the previous session focused on decolonial practices, which are incredibly relevant and needed. And my colleagues in this session have shared a lot of great ideas, but I'm happy to talk more about anything I've shared today. Thank you all for your time. Great. Thanks so much, Sarah. And I should mention that I think we're going to make resources from this session available. Many of the speakers, we were there's just a lot to say and we we talked about the need to share resources that couldn't necessarily be explained fully in talks later because there are many, many resources that we can share on the topic. OK, great. I think we'll move into the Q&A session now. And I will open it up for questions. I have a question, but I will I'll see if somebody else has a question first. OK, I will ask my question. So just to kind of tie back to the theme of the committee, which is continent scale biology, and we we've had sessions this morning around indigenous knowledge and also lots of different data sources and data integration. And I was wondering if if you thought anybody on the panel, if you think that the science of continent scale biology faces particular challenges when it comes to growing and equitable and inclusive workforce, maybe due to issues around scale or interdisciplinary science. I think I can take a first stab and then let my other colleagues respond. But I think one issue is the idea to find kind of generalizations over a large scale, whereas in ecology, but also with indigenous knowledge, it's very hyper local. And so valuing that and finding ways to communicate that and learn from it in other places is key. But anyone else want to chime in? OK, I'll ask another question then. One challenge, particularly when we're thinking about training is often we think about D.I. work through training programs aimed at early career researchers or students. But a major challenge is diversity, equity, and inclusion at all ranks, particularly among leadership. And so I was wondering if folks on the panel had ideas about diversifying leadership and management. So I'll jump in and share a little bit about what I've seen be more helpful. So one of the things that we do in our department, my department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology at Colorado State University is we sort of integrate those trainings. We make it a goal to have one of those trainings in our faculty meetings every semester. So everybody's expected to come to our faculty meetings. You know, there's sort of this everybody set aside that time. So it's a nice way to sort of make that part that infusion of like just it's a regular practice. It's something we are always thinking about and people don't really have the excuse to not show up because they're expected to be there anyway. So that's one thing that I think has worked really well. I'm going to echo what Sarah mentioned and go a little bit on top of that. It was something a little more radical in the context of your question, Bella. And so a lot of people shy away from this, especially in academic circles. It's hard to do this, especially based upon how our system is built. But if you ingrain it within the actual fabric of or the essence of the department itself, that you are truly embodying your diversity, your equity, including your sensible longing and your accessibility efforts, either you're on the bus or you're off the bus. And that's where it becomes hard. It's very easy with junior or early career professionals to say, well, you're off the bus, we can just cut you out and hire somebody new. But for somebody who already exists, it takes it takes a department-wide pledge and commitment as well as having the support of your superiors, that if somebody doesn't want to get on board with your efforts for DEI, that they there should be there should be something that leads to that. And I hate to say that we shy away from that, especially in the context of tenure. But it's like we talk about diversity hires. We don't talk about diversity fires. And that I said that the colleagues and that's almost taboo because everyone goes, you can't do that. This is academia. And I said, but if we really, really want change, that happens. We see that change happen at the administrative level. It can happen at our level too. And we really need to get on board with that and have everyone really, truly embody it. HR makes us take sexual harassment training because as a country, we've gone on board with that. And so the same thing needs to I think the same thing needs to apply because one thing with trainings, as much as it's necessary, I still say that we have to have trainings for some people out there. They feel because they participated and completed the training, it's a check mark and that absolves them from their behavior. Well, I didn't do any I didn't have any microaggressions. I did not perform a racist behavior. I completed my DEI training. I did everything right. Therefore, I am doing the good thing. And like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, more needs, more can be done. And that's why I say it's radical, because that really shakes the fabric of what we view as academia. I'd like to make a contribution and maybe to even tie this back to your first question, Bala. I think to change, we need to be incentivized. We need to take a look at the reward structure. There are carrots and there are sticks. And when we talk about a change of behavior, people are going to ask what's the minimum I can do and have it count, whether it be, you know, do a training or whether it be, you know, go to a retreat. But if you tie, you know, this work to promotion and tenure, career advancement, I think people will respond, whether they be junior or senior faculty. I think money matters, resources matter and so on. I think in terms of collaboration across disciplines, I think it's important to incentivize that, too. If you if you publish outside of your area of specialty, you know, I don't know how that's viewed in terms of, you know, the review of your of your portfolio, we need to take a look at that as well. So I'm a strong believer in reward. I prefer carrots than sticks. But if sticks are necessary, then I think I think that has to happen. And, you know, I really think think about my students when, you know, when I'm teaching something and they ask, you know, is this going to be on the exam? In other words, what they're asking is, is this going to count? And I think faculty and administrators said the very, very same thing. Thank you. Louise says has her hand up. And so I wanted to take a question from Louise. Yeah, thank you. Great discussion. I just had a question about interacting with communities upfront. So we heard about with Indigenous knowledge and interacting with tribes to develop projects rather than going with a project and asking to collaborate. So I'm wondering, have any of you thought about and I'm guilty of this, I write a grant proposal and then I add DEI at the end. Have you ever thought about how we might change our grant writing strategies? So we actually address that in the beginning of developing proposals rather than at the end and how that might be feasible or, I don't know, I just I'm just going to have an interesting thought. I would like to start on this tackling this, Louise. And so one thing I want to I'm not going to I can't tackle the whole question itself, I think one thing for us to consider in the context of grant writing, including DEI in the beginning, is when you're thinking about your research questions and thinking about then the broader impacts of your research questions, that's where it comes into play. And so if you're doing if you're doing work on, say, fungal communities or, let's say, on herbertophanel, urban herbertophanel communities, let's say in say Baltimore, Atlanta. Yes, the foundational level that doesn't necessarily deal with people because your data is not necessarily people focused, but the broader impacts of that is the people. And so that has to be incorporated and concluded in the beginning of you actually starting this research project. And when you incorporate that in the beginning, you have to then approach those communities, not very similarly to how we approach indigenous communities in conducting this work in many different people. We're not we're not homogeneous communities out here, homogeneous populations, so it takes a lot of efforts to work with these communities in the beginning to then get their buy in to be able to do the work that you want to do. And then that's how we can introduce our DEI efforts into the grant writing process early. That's that's what I've seen so far. And sometimes it's successful. Sometimes it's not because it takes, again, the the funding sources to really to really value that. And I think we're slowly starting to see that at least within NSF and let's say maybe NIH and EPA. And so that's where I say you should start in that in that context. Thank you. I'll add on to that. I think that is absolutely important. I'll also add sort of the funding structures themselves. So, you know, again, sort of building off what I'm just said, those funding timelines are often very limited and don't allow you to have that sort of time for engagement. And maybe that's you've already done that great work for that work of building those relationships with community. But sometimes there needs to be longer timelines to support that kind of work. And then on top of that, the funding structures also kind of building off the paper that I shared should be such that we can actually pay our students. Right. We can pay them a living wage when they're going out to the field. And I would actually push even further and say that the funding agencies should be requiring us to show how we're not being exploitative. Right. Show how we're not actually just, you know, hiding under the covers that we're going to be taking volunteer students out to the field to get the work done that we're proposing to do, but that we have to demonstrate that we're going to be able to accomplish the work that we're proposing to do and pay our students a living wage. Right. So I think that we need to think harder about those funding structures and how they're limiting our capacity to do DEI focused work. Thank you. Great answer. I have a question and maybe we can start with John, because I well, I had a question. My question was going to be, you know, could you describe an example of a successful program that could be employed elsewhere? But then you made this comment about franchising. And I want I was wondering if you could address that. So so how do we build good training programs by modeling off of good programs without franchising? So let me be really, really clear. And I may have come across as I was that I'm anti program. I'm not programs are for today's student. OK. But if we think of programs as permanent solutions, then institutions never change. And so I really do believe in programs. I mean, I've been running the biology scholars program for the last 30 years. Four thousand students. So that's been great because the institution is not really set up for their success. So today's students are really, really important. I really think to actually link program with institutional change at a given institution and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Institute is doing just that in driving change, they are providing grants to fund a program for today's student, but also tying that to institutional change. And so the two can coexist. And so I think that's really important. But to simply replicate a program that works across the country isn't going to solve our problem. Great. And I think Shai has his hand up and this will probably be our last question. Hey, thanks, everyone, for a really interesting conversation. I've been a chair of the department for a long time and president of a society. So we deal with these issues on a 20% basis. Thanks to hear this perspective. I don't want more sort of focused questions because it seems to me and a number of us are sort of recognized, it's a lot of issues are local where we often have a local concentration and you can scale it to sort of global cross cutting issues as well. When thinking about continental scale, something that one of my colleagues said, she was actually very opposed to local source, local source. That actually is a really advantageous to people who have small farms or small local farms. A lot of times, you know, it's a way to empower people who are not part of the group of corporate funds and stuff. But the reason she was opposed to it is because she says that there are people in the world who then who really depend on the global markets. And we do more harm to them by focusing on the local way where I could say that focusing on the continental is the same sort of issue. You know, what we decide to do here is really going to be connect to the local and maybe in a sort of abstract way, you know, when we deal with diversity issues very often, we will hire somebody from Africa or Asia and include that as diversity. When in fact, I feel that much of the motivation has to do with your Native Americans, Asian Americans, Latin Americans and so forth. So this this this connect between global and local is something I wanted to see what we folks thought about. You can probably just start with the idea that supporting local actually would harm the global markets, which a lot of people of color and a lot of people of lesser means depend on. I certainly don't have an answer, but you bring up a very good point. And I've seen that myself. And so I wonder if one part of a solution would be making part of our diversity metrics more specific, which has kind of an awkward feeling about it. But I guess that would be that would be one way of tracking progress on this and saying what we mean by diversity. Well, Shahid, you've adequately blown our minds. Can I say this? I mean, very quickly, Shahid, and I'm really, yeah, you have blown my mind with this. And I I think I go back to when we look at like something from a top down approach from a ground level, a bottoms up approach or a grassroots level approach. Why does it have to be either or? Why does it have to be a dichotomous situation that we approach and how we view our work in the eye from a continental scale to a local scale? We need people to do both. And because the local scale, hopefully as they expand, will make that connected network to be continental scale, you need someone to be able to look at it from that bird's eye view and also look at it from the ground view and then work together. That and that's where it becomes a little bit difficult with you, because how do you totally all these different people, organizations and entities that really make this work? But I think that's where really that's what this session is all about. I think we're really seeing the need for that and the importance for that and having to try to go from small scale to big scale and make those connections. I don't I mean, that's how I interpreted your question and statements of looking at it. I don't view one or the other. I think we have to do all of it and I think it's important. Maybe I'm wrong if that's what you're trying to articulate. I apologize. Now, I think that's great. I kind of am leaning in that direction. I worry that continental may have to be more integrated to be effective. I think that's what you say. OK, I think that brings us to the end of our session.