You are welcome here: A practical guide to diversity, equity, and inclusion for undergraduates embarking on an ecological research experience

Abstract

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Anti-racist interventions to transform ecology, evolution and conservation biology departments

“…Building on this, instructors can include in lessons on biodiversity and conservation the acknowledgement of multiple ways of understanding and valuing nature, including cultural, aesthetic and spiritual values, as well as non-Western valuation of ecosystems and biodiversity 67,68 . To connect this content to immediate societal issues, curricula can also include modern examples of the ecological and evolutionary consequences of systemic racism on human communities 66,69,70 , as well as themes of environmental justice and contemporary efforts to address these issues 4,71,72 . Instructors can additionally highlight examples of notable research by scientists of colour and explicitly discuss societal and institutional barriers they overcame and highlight barriers that continue to hamper representation of BIPOC in STEM 12,31,73 .…”

“…Once BIPOC have joined the laboratory, research laboratories are the daily environments where the great majority of mentormentee and peer-peer interactions take place in science. Therefore, it is essential that laboratories host open conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as how racism manifests in macroand microaggressions, unspoken expectations, routines and wealth disparities 72 . Discussing and formalizing goals and actions helps to set expectations for promoting anti-racism.…”

Ethnobiology Phase VI: Decolonizing Institutions, Projects, and Scholarship

“…Emphasizes interdisciplinary collaboration to address pressing human-environmental issues such as climate change (e.g., Reyes-García et al 2019;Salick et al 2009) work oriented toward all the above phases and usually blend them together. We call for a Phase VI to address colonial legacies in the field and ongoing colonialism globally.…”

Intentional mentoring should increase inclusivity in ecology

“…These factors can substantially increase the amount of responsibility on a graduate student mentor (Beltran et al, 2020;Emery et al, 2019). Furthermore, inexperienced undergraduates can be unfamiliar or unprepared for the high physical demands of data collection at remote field sites (McGill et al, 2021;Pickrell, 2020). This can be complicated by the nature of fieldwork, which may be conducted in rural and/or ethnically or culturally homogeneous spaces, summoning issues about racism, sexism, and differences in cultural worldviews that might be less overt on a university campus (Krymkowski et al, 2014;Zavaleta et al, 2020).…”

“…This can be complicated by the nature of fieldwork, which may be conducted in rural and/or ethnically or culturally homogeneous spaces, summoning issues about racism, sexism, and differences in cultural worldviews that might be less overt on a university campus (Krymkowski et al, 2014;Zavaleta et al, 2020). Thus, graduate student mentors may unknowingly bring undergraduate mentees into situations where they feel socially and culturally isolated, physically inadequate, or unsafe (McGill et al, 2021;Nelson et al, 2017;O'Brien et al, 2020;Weigel, 2015). Graduate students may also experience these feelings themselves (Pickrell, 2020).…”