During May and June 2021, CSCCE staff conducted nine 45-minute interviews with members of the EDSIN community with the goal of ascertaining perceptions about the community and its purpose, and possible next steps for its growth. We carefully selected participants to gain a representative range of perspectives across career stages, organizational affiliations, and current engagement levels within the community. We asked a series of questions regarding their current roles and responsibilities, relationship with EDSIN, current needs, and the value they obtain from EDSIN membership.

Of the nine people we interviewed, four were junior faculty members, one was a postdoc, one was a PhD student, and three were administrators and leaders from a university, a federal agency, and an infrastructure organization. Two had attended the 2019 EDSIN conference. At least four are currently engaged members of the community, meaning that they are active in the EDSIN Slack workspace and/or regularly attend meetings such as the monthly community calls.

Staff from the Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement, Lou Woodley and Camille Santistevan presented on their findings from their EDSIN member interviews and provide recommendations on next steps for the community. 

Faculty play a key role creating a learning environment that is either supportive and affirming or marginalizing and hostile. Accordingly, it is imperative that faculty carefully examine ways their syllabi, assignments, language, and classroom culture may inadvertently raise barriers to students’ success. Faculty must proactively create positive classroom cultures where all students feel valued, respected, and safe.

This tool was developed for faculty to examine their syllabi, teaching practices, and classroom environment. The goal is to support faculty in implementing the ideals of diversity and inclusivity in their classroom.

Questions to Consider:

• What types of diversity do you anticipate seeing in your student population? (Consider

  race / ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, ability, first generation status,

  learning styles, experience (preparation in high school, parenthood, etc.), language, etc.)

• How does your syllabus and course curriculum support or marginalize these students?

• How can you vary the course readings, teaching methods, class activities, assignments,

  and assessments to better support the diverse identities and needs in the classroom? This tool includes:

• A checklist of syllabus basics

• Rubrics to evaluate syllabus content and classroom culture

• Guidelines for inclusive language

• Ground rules for class discussions

• Glossary of terms

• List of resources for going deeper

n 2017 National Science Foundation data revealed that in the United States the professional biological workforce was composed of ~ 69.5% “whites”, 21.3% “Asians”, and only 3% “African American or Blacks” (National Science Founda- tion, 2017, https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/doctoratework/2017/html/sdr2017_dst_03.html). There are problems with the categories themselves but without too deep an investigation of these, these percentages are representative of the demography of biology as a whole over the latter portion of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century. However, evolutionary biologists would argue (and correctly so) that the representation of persons of African descent in our field is probably an order of magnitude lower (0.3%). This commentary focuses on the factors that are associ- ated with underrepresentation of African Americans in evolutionary science careers.

Alycia Crall provided an overview of the Culturally Responsive Education in Environmental Data Science (CREEDS) workshop that occurred on August 10 and 17. Following, there was a discussion on next steps to support this work among our members. 

Here is a great website that includes demographic data as well as a score for tree cover. 

There is also a link for Tazo's Tree Corps. 

Really cool set of ideas...for nclusive teaching