D-ENTERPRISE- UMass Boston
Abstract
Students from racially/ethnically minoritized backgrounds remain grossly underrepresented in ocean sciences. National data illustrates that People of Color # Indigenous, Black, Latine, Asian American, and bi/multiracial # comprise nearly 39% of the U.S. population, yet, together, in 2016, represented only 13% of earned doctorate degrees in the ocean sciences (Bernard & Cooperdock, 2018). This continued underrepresentation in ocean science has far-reaching negative implications for generating and sustaining creative solutions that meet the ever-changing demands of the global landscape. To date, efforts to increase the number of Underrepresented and Racially Minoritized (URM) students in ocean science have focused on recruitment, with little to no attention on retention. To support the equitable advancement of URM students in ocean science and combat the sole focus on recruitment, this proposal describes an innovative wrap-around initiative that foregrounds a much-needed emphasis on retention. The Inclusion and Belonging in Ocean Science (IBOS) Collaborative is a robust, multi-tiered, mentorship program designed to support URM students# success into and through ocean science. The IBOS Collaborative is the East Coast regional hub of the D-ENTERPRISE Initiative and consists of three universities: the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez (UPRM), University of Massachusetts Boston (UMass Boston), and University of Rhode Island (URI). Both UPRM and UMass Boston primarily serve a URM student population and are Minority Serving Institutions. The IBOS Collaborative aims to support the retention of URM students through a multi-generational framework approach (Wilkins-Yel et al., 2022) that includes:1) Undergraduate Support Activities with high school student engagement, 2) Graduate Support Activities with undergraduate student engagement, and 3) Capacity Building Activities at the postdoctoral researcher and faculty levels to increase mentoring capacity for undergraduate and graduate students. Specifically, as part of the IBOS year-long experience, undergraduate students will engage in a series of activities, including: monthly career success workshops and belonging activities, research internships with ONR-Funded faculty, an immersive summer experience, and serve as ocean science ambassadors to high school URM students. IBOS graduate support activities will focus on a combination of direct financial support to graduate students coupled with Career Success Workshops. These workshops will be open to both the IBOS graduate fellows and the broader research community at each of the IBOS institutions. Finally, to build mentor capacity, we will support a postdoctoral position at URI and support 3 faculty in the Department of Marine Science at the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez, including 2 recent hires and one new hire during year 3 of the project. The IBOS Collaborative aims to improve recruitment and retention of URM students in ocean science through a multi-generational approach that emphasizes inclusion and belonging. To ensure the project is achieving its goals of increasing a sense of inclusion and belonging, the IBOS Collaborative will leverage professional services provided by UCSD as part of the broader D-ENTERPRISE initiative to evaluate the program goals. Additionally, the project coordinator will keep track of student retention rates of IBOS fellows to compare to retention rates of students not engaged in the programming provided by this proposed work. When successful this project will increase the representation of URM individuals with graduate degrees in the ocean sciences. The impact on DoD capabilities will be a reduction in systemic barriers such as tokenism, lack of belonging, invisibility, and isolation, increased awareness of DoD funded research, as well as increased production of creative solutions that meet the ever-changing demands of the global landscape.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Nov 09, 2024
- Source ID
- N000142412667
Entities
People
- Robert Chen
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Massachusetts