About C-ChanGe
Geoscience is a critical discipline for today's world, integrating other physical and life sciences into a wholistic perspective with relevance to climate change, natural resource discovery and management, and understanding the origins and function of our planet. The number of graduates and students pursuing geosciences is not sufficient to meet the demand for geoscience expertise in the economy, which calls for expanding the pool of potential geoscientists (Velasco & de Velasco, 2010; Wilson, 2019; Keane, 2022). Ideally, all people who want to ask and answer questions about the Earth and other planets would have the ability to do so. Historically, however, this has not been the case (Gillette & Gillette, 1972; Bromery, 1972) and increasingly prevalent studies and personal accounts have shown that the culture of the geosciences can be hostile, exclusive, and bullying toward individuals with historically marginalized identities (e.g. people of color, women, first-generation, LGBTQIA+, returning or delayed entry, students with disabilities, etc.) (Bernard &Cooperdock, 2018; Keisling et al., 2020; Marín-Spiotta et al., 2020; Marín-Spiotta et al., 2023).
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While geoscience degrees can provide students with significant opportunities to learn and practice workforce-relevant skills (Keane et al., 2022; Gonzalez & Keane, 2022), many systemic barriers prevent equal participation. We are working toward a vision of the future where all people at each stage of their career experience academic geoscience as a safe and welcoming environment where they feel empowered to learn and contribute without stifling their identities, and the community recognizes contributions by all. Widespread cultural change is needed to create this environment where all geoscientists can thrive and pursue the work that is most meaningful to them (Ali et al., 2021; Marín-Spiotta et al., 2020). Many previous efforts have improved the climate of the geosciences, ranging from course-level interventions to large national programs. While these initiatives have had some impact, change is often difficult, slow, and implemented in disconnected programs rather than coordinated, sustained efforts (Karsten, 2019). True cultural change will require connected, coordinated efforts where the efficacy of interventions is measured, and best practices are shared, adapted, and implemented widely (Estrada et al., 2016; Hurtado et al., 2017).
C-ChanGe will contribute to this vision in two ways. The first contribution will focus on the individual faculty scale. Faculty members stand at a critical juncture in the discipline. They interact with hundreds of future geoscientists over the course of their careers and those students (andpeers) take cues about professional and cultural standards from them (Malm et al., 2020; Ormand et al., 2022; Posselt & Nuñez, 2022). Those interactions exert influence on the department and disciplinary culture positively (mentoring, being flexible, uplifting student experiences) or negatively (bias, harassment, microaggressions) (Dutt et al., 2016; Marín-Spiotta et al., 2023; Moss-Racusin et al., 2012; Núñez, 2022). Through intentional professional development (PD), we will create a corps of Change Agents (CAs) empowered to work in their own context to make successive, incremental changes, leading to positive cultural shifts within their home departments with the support of a community of practice made up of local and national peers (Gehrke & Kezar, 2016). The CAs will document their goals, activities, and outcomes so that others can replicate and adapt the results for themselves.
Our second contribution will focus on creating a network for the broader community of geoscientists with projects working to make positive cultural change. Recognizing that there are many other groups working towards an inclusive geoscience discipline, and that our collective effort is required to create significant cultural change, the web-based network will support awareness, recognition, and connectivity of national partner projects working on geoscience cultural change. The goal of the network is to raise the visibility of all the individual efforts happening across the country and enhance opportunities for collaboration. This will make it easier for interested community members to get involved with existing projects and help current project leads and participants see themselves as part of a national effort to evoke needed changes. The C-ChanGe program will contribute one modest piece of what is needed to create wide-spread and enduring change. Collating existing change programs in one place will allow individuals to situate their own programs in a larger context and will generate opportunities for exponential and accelerated impact.
These two project components will also have a reinforcing interaction. The materials, practices, and outcomes developed by partner projects in the network will be part of the PD for CAs, increasing the reach of their work. As the CAs create and implement programs in their home departments, they will contribute new materials to the network. In addition, the CAs will be exposed to multiple ongoing efforts that they may engage with more directly as part of their ongoing work for change.
This work is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant RISE-GEO 2403844