GOLD-EN Broadening Participation in Coastal and Estuarine Sciences: A Workshop of the 26th Biennial Conference of the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation

CERF's Rising TIDES (Toward an Inclusive, Diverse, and Enriched Society) workshop will support broader, cross-cutting efforts by the NSF to increase participation in STEM by under-represented minority (URM) individuals. Support of this workshop strengthens CERF’s commitment to and capacity in broadening participation, including participation in an NSF INCLUDES Alliance and additional URM activities.

Through this workshop, CERF will leverage other NSF-funded programs, specifically the INCLUDES SEAS Islands Alliance and IUSE:GEOPAths C-StREAM projects. The proposed morning workshop session will be dedicated to building and strengthening relationships between underrepresented student scholars (URSS) and professional and near-peer mentors, inspiring URSS participants to see themselves as science professionals and part of the CERF and coastal and estuarine science and management community, and providing URSS with tools useful to achieve their career goals.

The afternoon workshop session will train participants on addressing implicit bias in their academic and professional settings; the session will be open to all CERF conference attendees (with 50 anticipated workshop attendees). The afternoon workshop develops diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) champions who can return to home institutions with additional DEI skills.

Efforts begun at the workshops will be scaled up throughout the conference through various structured activities involving student and professional participants.

Broadening participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is widely recognized as critical to the science and engineering enterprise. There is still a wide gap in U.S. STEM educational attainment between URM individuals and whites and Asians, and coastal and estuarine science faces similar gaps in URM representation.

In recognition of this gap and to incorporate fundamental change in the way the CERF community supports and addresses the individual needs of all members, CERF seeks to support diversity and inclusion efforts at its 2021 Biennial Conference. Specifically, these efforts include: (1) enhance URSS professional development, including cohort building, mentoring, and participation in a URSS-focused workshop, scientific sessions, and other conference and post-conference activities; (2) build the capacity of CERF to achieve DEI objectives through a workshop open to all attendees, and through additional learning opportunities throughout the conference; and (3) ensure broad engagement of the CERF community by infusing DEI throughout the conference.

Evaluation of the workshop and broader conference DEI efforts will improve future Rising TIDES actions and provide transferrable lessons for similar DEI conference programming.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.