[LTER-diversity] ESA INCLUDES proposal

[Teresa Mourad]

Dear colleagues:

I wanted to update you on ESA's INCLUDES proposal. I am hoping that someone from the LTER network would be interested in serving on the Steering Committee. This person might be either from the NCO or the diversity committee.  Please treat this update confidentially and kindly do not circulate.

I will not belabor the background for broadening participation as you are all familiar.  Suffice it to say that despite many great programs and a lot of investment of hundreds of millions of dollars, we have not moved the needle much. Our premise is that the successful programs operate in silo and so it is now time to form an alliance for collective impact! Our overarching goal is to develop a comprehensive, fully-integrated, fully-linked network of pathways, exposures, experiences, training, and advisors and peers for uderrepresented minority groups in ecology especially at critical transition points from high school through all stages of career development and achievement.  The project will develop, facilitate and sustain connections-  horizontally and vertically -  among existing programs and activities, leverage the investments that have already been made and fill critical cracks that our students fall into.

For the pilot, the alliance will develop the 1) career materials to be disseminated to faculty, counselors, parents and students; 2) culturally relevant mentoring workshops for educators and society meetings; 3) cadre of Youth Ambassadors formed from partner program alumni; 4) two career tracks coupled with virtual mentoring - a) research b) management with requirements leading to the earning of digital badges (at the pilot stage, we will develop this for undergraduate audiences only);  5) series of two or three webinars or virtual courses on science /skills content to support each set of guided career tracks to be offered by partners; 6) showcase of student work via a national competition with three topical strands; 7) set of lab exercises, BioBlitz or Citizen science activities that will provide hands-on experiences to students.

Commitment of SC committee

*                 Two in-person meetings of the Steering Committee per year

*                 Monthly conference calls of Steering Committee

*                 Actively participate in designing the work of the alliance - you can choose to lead specific activities that resonate with LTER (examples in the second list below)

*                 Contribute to collective outputs e.g. career materials, requirements for career tracks, diversity mentoring resources etc.

*                 Participate in discussions about evaluation results
For LTERs in particular, some initial possibilities of involvement include (suggestions only):

*                 Running workshops for LTER scientists who wish to engage diverse students at your meetings, (something I think the LTER diversity committee wants to do anyhow). The alliance will share best practices on that.

*                 Contribute science content e.g. on long term monitoring, etc. through workshops, webinars or other avenues

*                 Help form a cadre of scientists willing to mentor students virtually.

*                 Share info about REUs and other opportunities at LTER sites to recruit students
Apologies that this is coming so late but it did take time to solidify - and is still evolving. I welcome your input.
Thanks and have a great weekend.


Teresa
Teresa Mourad
Director, Education and Diversity Programs

ESA Office of Education and Diversity Programs<http://www.esa.org/esa/?page_id=250>
SEEDS - Diverse People for a Diverse Science<http://www.esa.org/seeds>
EcoEd Digital Library (beta)<http://esa.org/ecoed/index.php>  - Advancing Outstanding Ecology Education


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Ecological Society of America
1990 M Street, NW Suite 700
Washington DC  20036
202.833.8773 x 234
202.833.8775 Fax

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