Karina A. Sanchez, Amanda J. Bevan Zientek, and Emily A. Holt just released their study of college students’ awareness of institutional, structural, and cultural racism and sexism in the field of ecology. The team, all part of the University of Northern Colorado’s department of biological sciences when the study was conducted, first had students fill out a five-question survey on their own perceptions of racism and sexism in the ecological sciences. The students then collected and analyzed data to evaluate patterns in different publications and data, identifying those that might be problematic, and considered how racism/sexism affected the field. Following this intervention, the students were resurveyed.
All fields of science are now addressing legacies of injustice that can shape who participates in a given field, research projects, and policy outcomes, but many focus on research labs, or are top-down administrative changes. The authors identified college classrooms as centers of social change around the world. Starting there, they intend their work to help fill the research gap on how inequities are being addressed in colleges and universities.
The lack of diversity in ecological science has long been a matter of concern. Some years ago, npj Biodiversity, a journal within Science, posted an editorial identifying biodiversity research as a science of crisis. Over the millennia that crisis has been driven by unsustainable exploitation, and changes made to our landscapes, both directly and via human-assisted migration of nonnative species that may become invasive. The editors detailed how overemphasis on the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere and terrestrial ecosystems to the detriment of marine and freshwater ecosystems, drylands and other extreme habitats, all limit our understanding of interrelated forces, which in turn hampers our ability to improve outcomes. The editors also highlight the lasting impact of Darwin’s emphasis on competition among species. To them that has had a “tremendous, and to a considerable extent spurious,” effect on our understanding of evolutionary processes, perhaps especially our understanding of species co-exiting in diverse habitats. The “painfully consistent biases,” built into the ecological sciences also devalue the work of women, underrepresented minorities and indigenous peoples, as well as researchers from the Global South, all of whom have “unique knowledge” and views on how to proceed in our current crisis.
In their opening paragraphs, Sanchez, Bevan Zienek, and Holt note that efforts to reform medical sciences have intensified in part because social inequities in the field are so visible, and are now the focus extensive research. Ecological science has not had the benefits of this kind of intense scrutiny, and although the share of women has grown in higher education overall, in the ecological sciences, their focus here, there are persistent publication biases, as well as citation and funding imbalances, between men and women.
The authors note that “systems of oppression,” can affect study outcomes. For example, natural history museums tend to collect species with a slight overall bias to males among birds and mammals that can lead to significant disparities at the species level. In some cases just 27% of specimens are female, obviously a research issue. Further, habitats in underserved communities, as well as war-torn areas, are chronically under-sampled. The authors believe that systemic racism, gender bias, and colonialism have not only transformed ecosystems throughout the world, they continue to exacerbate unequal access to natural areas among marginalized communities.
We touch on much of this as reports come out. Two examples: biases toward the temperate north led to the short-sighted belief that only male birds sing, recently corrected by a team of female ornithologists who studied common ancestors of our migrating birds in Australasia where males and females were signing away.
A recent study by the venerable American Forests showed one can determine redlining practices used in the 1930s by forest canopies in our cities. The average canopy is 39%, running from 23% in formerly redlined communities, to 43% in primarily US-born white communities.
Sanchez and her team believe that although hiring of diversity officers and other administrative changes hold promise, they may get stuck in rhetoric with “minimal” long-term effects, and administrations are of course slow to change. Colleges have a long history of advancing civil rights, with women’s study programs advancing gender equality, and efforts to decolonize curricula and pedagogy picking up steam in the humanities and social sciences. But, again, science has lagged. The authors suggest that may be the fault of the narrative that tells us science is objective and value-neutral, and hence outside the realm of social justice.
The study included thirty-eight upper division undergraduates, primarily white, 68%, and female, 79%, with 16% Latino, 8% Asian, 5% multiracial, and 3% African-American participants. About 60% were continuing generation students, meaning at least one parent attended college. In the twelfth week of the sixteen-week semester, the students filled out a five-question open response survey, anonymously and without pay: who does ecology, are they aware of one prominent ecologist to whom they can personally relate, is the field racist, is it sexist, did European colonialism affect the field, and does it still? Two weeks later, the team introduced their intervention, designed to outline social justice issues in ecology, and identify demographic representation of field ecologists. Students worked in groups to identify under-representation and inequality in ecological data, including the nationalities of “parachute” scientists, those who drop into a developing country and complete data collection and analysis with no input from local scientists or the community. For example, in Indonesia forty percent of published studies of coral reefs included no local scientists.
Students were given plenty of time to research their topics, to discuss them fully, and to look for patterns, and decide if the patterns they discovered represented problems. When the intervention was completed, students were resurveyed using the same five questions.
And the responses had indeed changed. The share who believed anyone with interest could participate in the field dropped by 16%, and shares agreeing that ecology was influenced by sexist or racist rose. In this day and age we need to point out that the idea was not to force beliefs on the students, but to discover how exposure to different data changed their thinking. In fact, the authors were unsure if some students had wondered about racism and sexism in ecology, but didn’t feel safe sharing those feelings until the study project was complete. They also stressed that some students expressed an interest in promoting diversity in their own careers after the intervention, and explored possible routes in study groups. And to us their statements included greater nuance in the second survey.
Fun fact: For generations, Draw-a-Scientist studies produced a stereotypical white man in a lab coat from K-12 students, despite ongoing changes in science. Other interventions cited in Sanchez, Bevan Zientek, and Holt’s study helped students move beyond this stereotype. Instead of scientists being defined as “people who do experiments,” descriptions focused instead on traits like curiosity and specific interests. Sanchez et al. suggest this may help potential ecologists both relate to scientists and to see themselves as scientists. And incorporating topics like discrimination and oppression helps “disrupt the façade of neutrality in science,” helping students understand that ecology is “imbedded in humanism with all its biases.”
And, as you might guess, the authors sign off with an acknowledgement that this is one step, which they classify as a transformational approach, and many more are needed to build curricula focused on solutions, and to increase opportunities that will support a diverse scientific community.
The New York Botanical Garden has long included diverse scientists in their programming, including indigenous scientists who are guiding restoration efforts with their own practices.
If of interest, you can watch some webinars here.
Photographs: Field science projects are a great way to involved diverse students. Eel populations are in severe decline, and Bard College students, along students from the region, help catch, count and release the glass eels caught in the fyke net to monitor their levels. The glass eels you see in the second photograph just spent the last year drifting up on the currents from the Sargasso Sea.
Credit: Philippa Dunne
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How to Diversify Ecological Science
Karina A. Sanchez, Amanda J. Bevan Zientek, and Emily A. Holt just released their study of college students’ awareness of institutional, structural, and cultural racism and sexism in the field of ecology. The team, all part of the University of Northern Colorado’s department of biological sciences when the study was conducted, first had students fill out a five-question survey on their own perceptions of racism and sexism in the ecological sciences. The students then collected and analyzed data to evaluate patterns in different publications and data, identifying those that might be problematic, and considered how racism/sexism affected the field. Following this intervention, the students were resurveyed.
All fields of science are now addressing legacies of injustice that can shape who participates in a given field, research projects, and policy outcomes, but many focus on research labs, or are top-down administrative changes. The authors identified college classrooms as centers of social change around the world. Starting there, they intend their work to help fill the research gap on how inequities are being addressed in colleges and universities.
The lack of diversity in ecological science has long been a matter of concern. Some years ago, npj Biodiversity, a journal within Science, posted an editorial identifying biodiversity research as a science of crisis. Over the millennia that crisis has been driven by unsustainable exploitation, and changes made to our landscapes, both directly and via human-assisted migration of nonnative species that may become invasive. The editors detailed how overemphasis on the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere and terrestrial ecosystems to the detriment of marine and freshwater ecosystems, drylands and other extreme habitats, all limit our understanding of interrelated forces, which in turn hampers our ability to improve outcomes. The editors also highlight the lasting impact of Darwin’s emphasis on competition among species. To them that has had a “tremendous, and to a considerable extent spurious,” effect on our understanding of evolutionary processes, perhaps especially our understanding of species co-exiting in diverse habitats. The “painfully consistent biases,” built into the ecological sciences also devalue the work of women, underrepresented minorities and indigenous peoples, as well as researchers from the Global South, all of whom have “unique knowledge” and views on how to proceed in our current crisis.
In their opening paragraphs, Sanchez, Bevan Zienek, and Holt note that efforts to reform medical sciences have intensified in part because social inequities in the field are so visible, and are now the focus extensive research. Ecological science has not had the benefits of this kind of intense scrutiny, and although the share of women has grown in higher education overall, in the ecological sciences, their focus here, there are persistent publication biases, as well as citation and funding imbalances, between men and women.
The authors note that “systems of oppression,” can affect study outcomes. For example, natural history museums tend to collect species with a slight overall bias to males among birds and mammals that can lead to significant disparities at the species level. In some cases just 27% of specimens are female, obviously a research issue. Further, habitats in underserved communities, as well as war-torn areas, are chronically under-sampled. The authors believe that systemic racism, gender bias, and colonialism have not only transformed ecosystems throughout the world, they continue to exacerbate unequal access to natural areas among marginalized communities.
We touch on much of this as reports come out. Two examples: biases toward the temperate north led to the short-sighted belief that only male birds sing, recently corrected by a team of female ornithologists who studied common ancestors of our migrating birds in Australasia where males and females were signing away.
A recent study by the venerable American Forests showed one can determine redlining practices used in the 1930s by forest canopies in our cities. The average canopy is 39%, running from 23% in formerly redlined communities, to 43% in primarily US-born white communities.
Sanchez and her team believe that although hiring of diversity officers and other administrative changes hold promise, they may get stuck in rhetoric with “minimal” long-term effects, and administrations are of course slow to change. Colleges have a long history of advancing civil rights, with women’s study programs advancing gender equality, and efforts to decolonize curricula and pedagogy picking up steam in the humanities and social sciences. But, again, science has lagged. The authors suggest that may be the fault of the narrative that tells us science is objective and value-neutral, and hence outside the realm of social justice.
The study included thirty-eight upper division undergraduates, primarily white, 68%, and female, 79%, with 16% Latino, 8% Asian, 5% multiracial, and 3% African-American participants. About 60% were continuing generation students, meaning at least one parent attended college. In the twelfth week of the sixteen-week semester, the students filled out a five-question open response survey, anonymously and without pay: who does ecology, are they aware of one prominent ecologist to whom they can personally relate, is the field racist, is it sexist, did European colonialism affect the field, and does it still? Two weeks later, the team introduced their intervention, designed to outline social justice issues in ecology, and identify demographic representation of field ecologists. Students worked in groups to identify under-representation and inequality in ecological data, including the nationalities of “parachute” scientists, those who drop into a developing country and complete data collection and analysis with no input from local scientists or the community. For example, in Indonesia forty percent of published studies of coral reefs included no local scientists.
Students were given plenty of time to research their topics, to discuss them fully, and to look for patterns, and decide if the patterns they discovered represented problems. When the intervention was completed, students were resurveyed using the same five questions.
And the responses had indeed changed. The share who believed anyone with interest could participate in the field dropped by 16%, and shares agreeing that ecology was influenced by sexist or racist rose. In this day and age we need to point out that the idea was not to force beliefs on the students, but to discover how exposure to different data changed their thinking. In fact, the authors were unsure if some students had wondered about racism and sexism in ecology, but didn’t feel safe sharing those feelings until the study project was complete. They also stressed that some students expressed an interest in promoting diversity in their own careers after the intervention, and explored possible routes in study groups. And to us their statements included greater nuance in the second survey.
Fun fact: For generations, Draw-a-Scientist studies produced a stereotypical white man in a lab coat from K-12 students, despite ongoing changes in science. Other interventions cited in Sanchez, Bevan Zientek, and Holt’s study helped students move beyond this stereotype. Instead of scientists being defined as “people who do experiments,” descriptions focused instead on traits like curiosity and specific interests. Sanchez et al. suggest this may help potential ecologists both relate to scientists and to see themselves as scientists. And incorporating topics like discrimination and oppression helps “disrupt the façade of neutrality in science,” helping students understand that ecology is “imbedded in humanism with all its biases.”
And, as you might guess, the authors sign off with an acknowledgement that this is one step, which they classify as a transformational approach, and many more are needed to build curricula focused on solutions, and to increase opportunities that will support a diverse scientific community.
The New York Botanical Garden has long included diverse scientists in their programming, including indigenous scientists who are guiding restoration efforts with their own practices.
If of interest, you can watch some webinars here.
Photographs: Field science projects are a great way to involved diverse students. Eel populations are in severe decline, and Bard College students, along students from the region, help catch, count and release the glass eels caught in the fyke net to monitor their levels. The glass eels you see in the second photograph just spent the last year drifting up on the currents from the Sargasso Sea.
Credit: Philippa Dunne