I have tried to do a better job of building student's science identity by incorporating (with the major help of colleague Seth Miller) more material about scientists from underrepresented minorities as well as offering a writing assignment on these scientists. I feel like I am just scratching the surface of this. I am hoping to introduce more resources on these scientists similar to the slides provided in the Profiles PPT so that students can learn more about them! I think it would be great to also humanize scientists more in class-----scientists are normal people with outside lives who have fun hobbies and interests. I also think that introducing the times scientists were wrong or seen as wrong is important to remove any initimidation students have about them. Wegener wasn't viewed as legitimate in his time until further studies of plate tectonics were established! Finally, I admit I have not read the article fully yet, but I may try the Scientist Spotlight assignment in the future so students can not only hear about the underrepresented scientists but also give a reaction to what they learned about them.

I would like to incorporate students communicating science more, and would love to hear if anyone has achieved this in an online course! I wish I could do the Oceanside chats, but it'd have to be a modified version since I wouldn't be able to tell if students are using notes or not. The idea is tremendous!

I am very gung-ho about establishing more research opportunities in our program. Given that we teach introductory geoscience courses, the best route is likely a special course for research, a service learning project or possibly a summer opportunity, which would ideally include a collaboration with a 4YC geoscience program (we have agreements with two of them for seamless transfer). I have been lucky to work on letters of recommendation for AACC students to go off to REUs for the summer, but to have opportunities in house would be spectacular! I feel we have lots of connections in the DC-MD-VA area that we need to take advantage of (NOAA, NASA, etc). I would like to learn more from any who have had experience with this, and I know this will likely come up next activity!

I have used the strategy of "Identifying Role Models". For example, when I talk about sea floor spreading, I talk about Marie Tharp. When I talk about Ekman pumping, I introduce it with a slide that I call "Scientist or Supervillain" and I have three pictures: Isabella Abbott (the first Native Hawaiian woman to get a science PhD), a cartoon villain, and a picture of Fridtjof Nansen looking insane. Then I use Dr. Abbott as the example of the scientist, talk about her nickname "The First Lady of Limu" (seaweed in Hawaiian), her accomplishments (describing 200 seaweed species), and her background. I think this resonates with many of my local and Native Hawaiian students. Then I ask them to guess if Nansen is a scientist, supervillain, or both. I talk about Nansen as a mediocre student who wanted to spend time outdoors (which resonates, I think with many of my students), but became a scientist and explorer. Then I touch on his Nobel prize to make the point that scientists should also be ethical and care about society (humanizing them). I try to do this throughout the course, by using pictures of scientists and trying to humanize them.

I've also tried to develop students scientific selves- In my lab, I've instituted a semester long "scientific investigation project". This is an experiment relating to marine science that students have to design and complete outside of class. I start this the first class, by circulating as they work on the first week's lab and talking to them individually about the project. Usually students have no idea where to start, so I ask them about what beaches they regularly go to, why they go to the beach, what they do there. I have them describe the beach, and ask them leading questions about differences between beaches or at a beach. Throughout the semester I try to scaffold the project: I have them generate three initial research questions, then discuss individually with students how they could address each question (in terms of the time available and the resources i can provide). Then we generate hypotheses, a method/protocol for carrying out the experiment. In the labs, I've tried to build in practice at generating the kind of tables and graphs that might be useful in showing data that they collect. Students must come to the final class with their written experiment- question, hypothesis, methods, results (including a graph or table of some kind), and then introduce to a group of their lab mates what they did and what they found.

Some students do the minimum, of course, but some really get into it. I had a pair of students who are avid fishermen, who teamed up to test whether they caught better fish at a full moon or not, and spent hours out fishing and collecting data. They did a really nice job and put together a report that was really high quality. I think it also changed how they saw themselves as students.

What questions do you have based on these resources?

• Where do you find topics/events/news relevant to students’ daily life?
• How do you implement “students doing science like the real scientists” in lecture-format classes? This is naturally the case in a lab environment where most work is hands-on.

A student wrote me later to tell me that she had never felt comfortable or welcome in her college courses until that moment, and thanked me for putting her at ease. That email made me realize how important it was to help my students see themselves in science

I definitely think it's important to show scientists from diverse backgrounds, but I think there is a need to consider how we are recreating the structures that caused a lack of diversity in the first place.

Well, this is a topic that gets me a little bit too fired up, so I am going to have to try and moderate myself when I write about it.

We live in a Nation where the last medal of freedom went to Rush Limbaugh. I am sure that he is great at… playing golf? But, in general, the number of scientists in this list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidential_Medal_of_Freedom_recipients
is dishearteningly small, the great accomplishments of scientists in our society is poorly understood, rarely celebrated. Throughout history, female and LGBT scientists have been treated even worse.

In class, I think these 3 stories, if told in full detail, are powerful teaching tools:

For chemistry, and as a great example of a female scientist:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie

As an example of a LGBT scientist:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imitation_Game

For biochemistry, and as another example of a female scientist:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin_and_DNA


For professional development, I found this conference to be an invaluable occasion to learn about diversity and science identity:
https://www.sacnas.org/

Yes, I know, I shouldn’t use Wikipedia links, it was just very convenient in this situation.

The topic surrounding Science Identity is very personal for me. As someone who came out in college, I am a huge proponent of having more students in the LBGTQ+ community study science. As my good friend and work colleague, Dr. Santorelli, stated, it is important to humanize scientists. Many of my students believe scientists are a bunch of old, white, straight men who live boring lives. That is clearly not the case, and nor should it be. Instead, we need to do a much, much better job of bringing in students of all backgrounds. When I hear a student saying that I changed their perspective on science - that someone who is openly gay, plays sports, and renovates houses in his free time - it justifies how important it is to show that scientists, are in fact, 'cool'. Furthermore, the majority of my students are interested in climate change, but many of them do not vote. They realize throughout the semester, however, just how valuable it is to vote in order to change culture, perceptions, and, having people represent their values (like doing something about climate change). So, in closing, I try to reach out to ALL of my students, no matter who they are and hope that, at the end of each semester, I was able to persuade students to major in a science, especially if that is where their passion lies.

I recently attended a workshop on stereotype threat that prompted me to thumb through the chosen text for my course. I was horrified to discover that most of the images depicting scientists 'at work' were men of European descent. In addition, there were several examples where women and people of color who made important contributions to the field / topic were noticeably absent in the text. As a woman in science, I suppose I had just become numb to this and I was truly disappointed. I was lucky enough to attend a women's college where I saw a lot of really smart, successful female scientists. Seeing someone 'like me' in that role empowered me to pursue a degree in science. I wonder if I would have followed the same path had I not had those influences.

This past semester I have made an effort to promote diversity in science (specifically geoscience) by periodically incorporating a scientist spotlight segment in the instructional component of my course. I have seen a noticeably increase in interest in science in general, since this often prompts discussion. It's still too soon to be able to really evaluate the impact of this message on students, but my hope is that it will promote a shift in stereotypes and allow students the ability to personally relate to science.

Well, this is a topic that gets me a little bit too fired up, so I am going to have to try and moderate myself when I write about it.

We live in a Nation where the last medal of freedom went to Rush Limbaugh. I am sure that he is great at… playing golf? But, in general, the number of scientists in this list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidential_Medal_of_Freedom_recipients
is dishearteningly small, the great accomplishments of scientists in our society is poorly understood, rarely celebrated. Throughout history, female and LGBT scientists have been treated even worse.

In class, I think these 3 stories, if told in full detail, are powerful teaching tools:

For chemistry, and as a great example of a female scientist:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie

As an example of a LGBT scientist:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imitation_Game

For biochemistry, and as another example of a female scientist:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin_and_DNA


For professional development, I found this conference to be an invaluable occasion to learn about diversity and science identity:
https://www.sacnas.org/

Yes, I know, I shouldn’t use Wikipedia links, it was just very convenient in this situation.

In my courses, I used to be very casual about being gay, and if it happened to come up naturally, then I was honest about it, but otherwise was pretty quiet about it. Then a couple of years ago, during national Coming Out Week, I directly told the class I was gay (while describing what a "strait" was during a portion of class describing oceanographic features, natch). A student wrote me later to tell me that she had never felt comfortable or welcome in her college courses until that moment, and thanked me for putting her at ease. That email made me realize how important it was to help my students see themselves in science, and it made me wonder what it would've felt like to have a queer teacher at some point in my education (and maybe I'd had one, but they hadn't told us, so I never knew). When I'm introducing myself now, I always include a slide with a picture of my husband and our daughter and explain that we moved to the area for his work--and every semester a student tells me that that was an important moment for them.

Beyond introducing my fullest self, I make sure in my courses to introduce scientists who aren't straight, white, able-bodied men. I start every class with a slide highlighting the work of one of these scientists, and note the barriers that were thrown up in front of them. Donn, you mention Marie Tharp, and the picture I have of her on her slide is one of my favorites--smoking a cigarette and looking like she has no time for this misogynist BS because she has to go make the most important map of the seafloor ever. Some of the students clearly don't care, but others are really into it. I had a student this semester ask on the day of a test, "Why don't we have a scientist slide today?" and it totally made my week.

It was interesting to see the example of the assignments regarding scientist profiles. I liked how they were current scientists in the field, and that links to additional information were included. I have an assignment this semester (for which I have to shout out right back at Anthony Santorelli) where students research a scientist of their choosing who doesn't check all of the privilege boxes. It's not due for a few more weeks, but I'm really excited to see what they come up with.

And all of this talk about research projects has gotten me jazzed up again about developing a research course. At a SAGE2YC workshop at Ocean Sciences in Portland a couple years ago, we talked a lot about research projects and heard from people who had successfully implemented programs at their colleges. That idea has been on the back burner for a while now, but I'm wondering if it needs to shuffle towards the front after a couple of other things that are in process get moving.