Where Science, Diversity, and Inclusion Issues Meet
This is a press release from HSU News & Information:
Korinna Domingo (left) and California wildlife scientist and HSU alumna Emily Monfort (right), who is seen removing black bear hair from a wire snag. HSU students like Domingo and others created a film that explores the issue of diversity and inclusion among wildlife biologists. (Courtesy of Christopher Collier)
Wildlife biologists often espouse the importance of biological diversity, but what about diversity among wildlife biologists? HSU students and an alumna, plus a student from UC Davis, were determined to answer that question by creating a documentary film.
Hundreds of miles, 15 interviews, and several all-nighters later, they produced Diversify Wildlife, which debuted at The Wildlife Society’s Western Section (TWS-WS) conference this month.
Their project underscores the call for more diversity in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. According to a study by the Pew Research Center, even with the increase in STEM jobs in the U.S. over the last few decades, African-Americans only make up 9 percent of the STEMworkforce, while Hispanics make up 7 percent. The overall number of women in STEM occupations has increased, especially in healthcare. Even so, they remain underrepresented in computer science and engineering jobs.
To support and encourage more historically underrepresented students in STEM fields, Humboldt State created a place-based learning community called Klamath Connection for first-year students. Launched in 2015 and funded by several grants, the science program has a built-in support network of students, staff, and faculty to improve a sense of belonging and boost academic success. It’s now one of several HSU science learning communities: Stars to Rocks for incoming Chemistry, Geology, and Physics & Astronomy students and Rising Tides for Marine Biology and Oceanography students.
HSU alum Bayan Ahmed (‘18, Wildlife), co-producer of the film, leads the TWS-WS diversity committee and helped pull together the team that includes Jaclyn Aliperti, who is pursuing her Ph.D at UC Davis, and HSU Wildlife majors Korinna Domingo, Christopher Collier, and Ximena Gil.
The most rewarding aspect of the project, says Ahmed, was hearing everyone’s stories and learning about the different barriers they have had to face. “It really goes to show that we all have struggles that we have to overcome when pursuing our passion.”
Cal State Long Beach Biological Sciences Professor Theodore “Ted” Stankowich — who taught the team how to capture, chemically immobilize, and mark skunks — addressed the importance of removing those barriers.
“Science is enough of a barrier for anyone, so if you have extra barriers beyond that, it makes it that much harder,” he says in the film. “So one of my jobs is to try to lift those barriers and make it easier for students to find the success they want to have.”
Domingo believes diversity and inclusion are more than good practice. They’re vital for the future of the wildlife field.
“In order for the wildlife field to remain relevant in an age of rapid change we have to diversify,” she says. “Scientists need to increase access to scientific information and extend outreach efforts to underrepresented communities using creative methods. Youth need role models, and we need diverse perspectives.”
What does diversity mean to you? Share your thoughts using the hashtag #DiversifyWildlife.
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These (and all) fields are already open to everyone.
Are “whites” underrepresented in the field of African-American Studies? Are men underrepresented in the field of Gender Studies? If so, will there be special programs to fix those “problems”?
[edit] obviously you can’t read & comprehend the articles points nor have the courage or audacity to go to the campus and comment yourself. You’re bothered and upset about outreach programs & access to scientific information…[Edit]
Do you have anything other than personal insults to contribute?
Probably not.
Perhaps you are the ignorant one who is short on reading comprehension ability and is bothered and upset.
I understand perfectly well what is going on here.
Maybe, if they create a special program for you, you can figure it out too. 😉
This is a direct insult to another commenter.
Deep breath, folks. Argue the merits not the personal characteristics of the person with an opposite point of view.
Sounds so easy but how it works out in a bureaucracy such as educational institutions is that there is administrative pressure to prove that employees and students represent the current demographics of the population even if that population arrived yesterday, unprepared and untested. So space is carved out for these students by eliminating some of the “non diverse” students who might very well be better prepared and have worked harder and longer, then-since the special students have in essence been told they are there because they have been picked to compensate for the bigotry their group has been subjected to- their lack of preparation is compenated by special programs to ensure they get extra help and extra opportunities above that offered to historically well represented groups.
In other words, one student will be left to his own devices to succeed or fail (and pay for the privilege) while another student will be assisted and held to a lower standard lest there be accusations of failure to “encourage diversity…” and if the non supported student objects, they can be assured of being attacked as racist. This is said as a person who had to ensure the success of students who could not read, write or use English well yet, because they were willing to be there, were considered too valuable to the demographic stats be allowed to fail no matter how resistant they were to trying.
As a male friend said to me, I realized i dont understand the problem with patriarchy because its not happening to me.
Unless youve been there, you have no idea how differently people of color are often treated. Most folks dont even think about how awful it is knowng you are being judged by the color of your skin.
Thats why there are all these huge discussions about institutionalized racism. Its so deep and there are so many layers, it cant be summed up quickly.
Bottom line people of color have been marginalized and kept in poverty in many places in our country. They have not been afforded the same education for their kids. Theres no money for college, its hand to mouth.
By not giving everyone who wants to study and work in a field the opportunity to do so, we’re shooting ourselves in the feet. The person who comes up with the cure for cancer could be in a ghetto right now desperately trying to get to college. We’re creating a huge brain drain. Its dumb.
Basically if you can find it in yourself take some time everyday to put yourself in someone elses shoes. Spend a few days living on the food budget of a single mom making 10buks an hour.
I can tell you one field lacking in diversity and thats farm workers.
Wont see a white person except the one driving by in the air conditioned car looking at their crop.
No white people want those jobs, i would actually respect the word of people like stars in commrpents, if they were actually willing to go work some of these jobs where you quickly see how near impossible it is for those workerz kids to go on to professional careers like this.
you must be a hsu graduate or current student
“Most folks dont even think about how awful it is knowng you are being judged by the color of your skin.”
Like if people want you in a field primarily because they fetishize your ethnicity, or ethnicity/racial diversity? Or if people want you in a field less because there are already too many of “your kind”?
The conditions in agricultural jobs is abhorrent BECAUSE of the availability of illegal immigrant labor. Otherwise the conditions and pay would have to improve, and farmers would have to make less profit.
We should have free college and livable minimum wages. That much is true.
Nothing “free” is ever valued. It is wasted by people who use it out of boredom or carelessly. Certainly they feel no pressure to use it efficiently. After all it doesn’t cost them anything if they screw up.
However, if you look to places that offer free schooling, you find that while the students pay little, the number of students is very restricted, usually by a strict series of tests and/or academic pathways. No mediocre or unprepared students allowed. In the US, anyone can at least attempt to get a higher level decree.
And a “liveable” minimum wage is a chase after something always just out of reach. A person always pays the amount for housing, taxes, food, goods that can be expected they can afford to pay. Having more just means having to pay more for the same things. The reason minimum wages exists is that the law makers of the country routinely act to shore up the profits and power of the businesses that contribute to their elections then feel called on to ensure the workers are not so screwed over in the process that they riot.
~yeah, the parroting “minimum wage” mantra is as out-dated as left, right, lib, conserve crapola.
you can understand something even if it hasnt happened to you, you just dont have the experiences. like you may never have had a heart attack so you dont understand the pain. yes you can understand the pain (the idea) even though you dont have the experience of said pain. i think people (most) can understand oppression because most people have been oppressed in one way or another, even if it isnt because of race, even though everybody has received prejudice because of their race. this article is a fact of that.
Good article,
Just because you may not have worked a minimum wage farm job, don’t assume others haven’t and don’t still.
I first pulled corn tassels for minimum wage when I was 13 years old. Most (but not all) of my coworkers were, believe it or not, “white” skinned!
You may not know it but it’s not just dark skinned people who work their asses off for low wages. It’s not just teenagers either. The world is no picnic for unskilled, eneducated people of any description (skin color, gender, religion, etc.). There are, unfortunately, millions of those people of every description. They are all equally deserving of help.
Since you brought up farm work, I will add that illegal immigration contributes to wage suppression, particularly for unskilled jobs like many in agriculture.
i worked at a cattle rice and fish ranch for minimum wage as an adult. guess what i am white and so were the other workers. and dont ever talk bad about somebody that works on the farm or another farm because guess what they are almost always related to someone else that owns a farm
one way i was explained it is: if people wont work on a farm for minimum wage then you have to pay them more, so instead of a head of lettuce being 1$ it would cost 3$. that is how capitalism is supposed to work. this is assuming you dont have the option of paying an illegal alien less than minimum wage under the table.
That’s a bullshit argument. If a person were to hand pick lettuce, lets say they can do five a minute, for 300 in an hour. If they’re being paid ten dollars an hour, that’s 3.3 cents per head attributable to labor.
If wages went to fifteen dollars an hour, that would be 4.95 cents per head, and even assuming the employer is paying into workman’s comp, Social Security, etc. the cost would not be over ten cents per head, up from six or so, so I don’t know where you get a head of lettuce going from one dollar to three dollars, just from paying the pickers more.
The price of a head of lettuce is based on many things , of which the labor to pick it is probably the smallest.
There’s the labor of preparing the land, growing out the seedlings, planting, doing the feeding/weeding/watering, maintaining the equipment and land, cleaning up after the harvest. Only someone who never maintained a garden thinks the easiest part- harvesting- is the only labor cost involved.
The important thing is the margin between what it costs you to grow something and what you can get someone to pay for it. That in light of legislation allowing foreign competition from places that do not have costly labor or environmental regulations so that your customer can usually find a cheaper version from other places if your price has to rise too much.
Whites are not underrepresented in AA Studies at HSU. Ilikestars
🕯There is no such thing as a white race. If you believe in God we came from the middle east. If your an Evolutionist then we started in Africa.
If you believe in science as the final arbiter, the place of origin of humanity is still not set especially since the definition of when “humans” became enough like us to be called human is still open no matter where that actually happened. And color as in race does not mean the same as place of origin. No doubt that black, white and everything in between evolved to their present colors in different places over diffent times.
🕯Good morning read and information Oliver, thank you.
‘Their project underscores the call for more diversity in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.’
at first glance it looks like they want a diversity of academias but no, just a racist article. then they never give you a number of how much of what percent of which race they want in each field. they dont even say they want the races to coincide with demographics and which demographics. i remember an article not to long ago about how there are a higher percentage of hispanics going to hsu than the demographics of the whole state of california
Diversity of skin color is a piss poor poxy for diversity of thought. Don’t judge others based on their race or ethnicity.
Help impoverished potential wildlife students regardless of their color. That is the moral way to democratize the field.
Poor urban kids have less access to nature regardless of their race. A kid should not be denied outreach because of their skin color.
This is the progressive, egalitarian way to address the problem.
I’m glad that people are making an effort to overcome discrimination.
Our diversity efforts will be more effective and less divisive if we recognize that white working class and underclass points of view are missing from many discussions in which they would be valuable. Class discrimination among white people is truly an injustice. The cultural differences and prejudiced behavior that exclude minority people from many fields also exclude working and poor white people.
Thanks for saying that. It’s very true.
I hope it’s a uniting statement for all the commentors.
when I was in junior high and high school, the State bussed in 2 dozen or so urban kids from Boston to my school which was very white, still is very white and I could never afford to live there now as an adult. at the time my mom told me about how the mom’s protested it when it started in the 70s, you can google it to see the craziness for yourself. they still bus kids in today and for the reason that it works. those kids do better in life and contributed to society, not all, but most.
just wondering what kids did better? the ones being bussed in or the ones at the school already? plus it is a little different i think when you talk about upbringing and teaching as opposed to a career and solutions. like if you wanted to have a diversity of races in bridge engineers, well that good and all until you are on said bridge and it falls because they didnt use merit based system for employment
Good Grief; can we not at least watch the movie before going ballistic about it’s topic and/or premises?
as you see, 2 women that are white are in the photo, women are also underrepresented in the sciences. interesting so many are threatened about outreach programs… I’d guess you’re white males. It’s also wrong to assume all these young kids are from a specific place or poor, how narrow minded.
Just out of curiosity, is there anybody reading this that thinks Mexico is to Brown, Africa is to Black or China is to Asian?
Uhhhh, what do you mean?
I think it would be clear if you substitute “too” for “to” in his post.
O. That makes more sense… sort of. What are you getting at, THC? Is it that there is a sort of national hypocrisy in that these other areas spend no time or resources making themselves “inclusive” and “diverse” when in comes to integrating “white” people into their society?
what? Are you insinuating that White people are Native to America? I know there aren’t that many Natives in America because White people committed genocide and murdered most of them. Native Americans are another group that’s included in diversity. You’re so insecure & threatened by diversity & inclusion, it’s insane. Do you feel this way because your population growth is zero and your losing your oppressive power?
That would be less of a worry if not for people like you making it clear that you think to revel in acquisition of “oppressive power” and so indulge in excessive hate in revenge.
🕯👍🏾