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Seeking Diversity in the Geosciences

When Black Lives Matter

Sherilyn Williams-Stroud, Illinois State Geological Survey/University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois 61820, USA

INTRODUCTION of human bias. One study concluded that cases, and a study published in the Harvard
The death of George Floyd on 25 May judges’ bail determinations for the riskiest Business Review found that voluntary diver-
2020 ignited already high tensions in the criminal suspects were incorrect nearly 50% sity programs in the corporate environment
U.S. Black community after months of shel- of the time (Kleinberg et al., 2018). The are the most effective at achieving equity
tering in place to prevent the spread of promise of the machine to eliminate bias was (Dobbin and Kalev, 2016). These findings
COVID-19. Much higher rates of lost lives very quickly dampened by the realization of are also applicable to academia, consistent
and jobs occurred in communities of color just how difficult it is to keep human biases with the assertion by Golom (2018) that
than in White communities. The confluence out of the machine learning process (Zou and institutional culture is a significant obstacle
of events highlighted systemic inequities Schiebinger, 2018). While we were examin- to change.
for People of Color (POC), making them vis- ing our biases, representation gave way to Another possible problem with diversity
ible to others. In the mostly peaceful pro- diversity, thereby softening the focus on par- initiatives is that they are often implemented
tests that took place all over the world, an ity. The result was that measuring all students beneath an umbrella covering all underrep-
interesting and positive observation could and faculty by the same metric prevented the resented groups. The most effective solu-
be made—there were many White partici- desired increase of those underrepresented in tions for each group can be different, though
pants, signaling a change in the understand- academia (Tapia, 2010). overlapping. Conflating diverse groups
ing of the phrase “Black Lives Matter.” The The numbers of women geoscientists have together may have had a detrimental effect
wave of protests sparked a wave of a variety increased since prior to the start of my pro- on the success of POC in higher education
of organizations and businesses issuing state- fessional career at the U.S. Geological (Shapiro et al., 2017). In the past few years,
ments of support. GSA was one of the first Survey in 1988, but I am still usually the the number of white female Ph.D. recipients
organizations to do this, while acknowledg- only person in my combined category (Black has reached near parity with White men but
ing that the geosciences have not done a woman geoscientist) in the room. This real- Black and other POC still fall significantly
good job of advancing diversity. The cur- ity is reflected in the fact that the number of short of representation. Issues related to
rent mindset provides an opportunity for geoscience Ph.D.s awarded to Black and retention, support, advancement, and free-
us to interrogate the discipline’s failure to Native American people has remained nearly dom from sexual harassment have become
achieve equity while it is experiencing a constant in the 38 years of data shown in more important for women than recruitment,
mood of receptive inquiry. This article Figure 1, obtained from the National Center as shown in a study done at Columbia
examines some of the historical data on for Science and Engineering Statistics University (June, 2018).
diversity in the geosciences and cites stud- (NCSES), illustrating where progress has (or
ies that provide possible reasons why repre- has not) been achieved regarding parity of DISCUSSION
sentation has not increased. A recognition POC in the academy. Parity relative to the Recruiting POC students to earth science is
of previous and existing programs currently U.S. population would mean an earth-sci- a critical part of the solution. A successful
generating more POC geoscientists is key: ence department faculty is 13% Black, but program of recruitment and access that is
Building upon them can provide a path to the portion of Black faculty remains signifi- exposing students to geosciences at the mid-
successfully improving diversity in the geo- cantly below that, less than 2%. The data dle to high-school level is the Mathematics,
science community. analyzed for this article is personally rele- Science, and Engineering Academy (M-SEA)
vant for me; it tracks my involvement in the at Fort Valley State University, implemented
NEARLY FOUR DECADES OF field starting with my undergraduate study. in 1993 as part of their long standing (ca.
DIVERSITY GAINS? Since 1980, the proportion of Ph.D.s 1983) Cooperative Developmental Energy
The concept of “implicit bias” caught fire awarded to Black recipients averaged 2.6%. Program (CDEP). A total of 419 STEM gradu-
in recent years as an explanation for how Martinez-Acosta and Favero (2018) sug- ates have been produced from the programs,
people’s choices and expectations impact gested that diversity efforts were unsuccess- 47 of whom received geoscience degrees.
evaluation, hiring, and promotion decisions. ful because the culture of academia may not An analysis of data on Historically Black
More recently, machine learning applica- truly be inclusive. Organizational culture Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) from
tions were expected to eliminate bias because change resulting from diversity training the NCSES shows that more than 30% of
models trained with just data would be free appears to have been short-lived in most STEM bachelor’s degrees awarded to Black

GSA Today, v. 31, https://doi.org/10.1130/GSATG476GW.1. CC-BY-NC.

28 GSA Today | February 2021