DEI Spotlight: Working Toward Tangible Change
How CICOES employees are working to build and foster an inclusive, equitable, and diverse workplace.
By Abby Zorn, for CICOES Magazine
While Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion have always been an important part of research and outreach efforts at CICOES, a group of employees came together in July 2019 to form the first official DEI working group at CICOES (then JISAO). Since then, the working group has planned and executed numerous DEI initiatives that have helped to educate employees, decrease bias in HR processes, and build community within CICOES. These working group members come from all of CICOES-UW’s locations and represent the institute’s wide range of research programs. For Executive Director John Horne, “it is important to not only support but to facilitate efforts to develop DEI awareness within our community.”
As with many groups in the DEI space, George Floyd’s murder in May 2020 and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests inspired a broader reckoning about what institutions were doing to increase the participation of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and other underrepresented groups in science. Dozens of CICOES employees attended a series of open community conversations with topics ranging from outreach and recruitment to how to improve inclusion for current CICOES employees. At these community discussions, employees shared their desires to invest more time into DEI efforts at CICOES. As a result, the DEI working group grew to include three new sub-committees to better execute on the ideas that came through during the open conversations.
The Employee Experience sub-committee has focused its efforts on how employees connect with each other and on improving the recruitment process. One initiative this sub-committee started was “Conversations,” where CICOES employees are paired up with each other or with an employee at PMEL each month. So far, this program has resulted in nearly 100 casual conversations between employees, most of whom either did not know each other at all or who knew each other by name only. One participant noted after one of these conversations that they “would not have otherwise reached out, and appreciate this simulated ‘hallway discussion’.” Lucia Upchurch, a CICOES Research Scientist at PMEL who leads this initiative, says that “Conversations” has been “an easy way to get to know new people that have joined since the pandemic forced everyone to work remotely.” She hopes it will lead to coworkers conversing more with people outside of their immediate bubbles and that is also “increases collaboration among projects, and injects a smidge of fun and variety into our current working situation.”
“It is important to not only support but to facilitate efforts to develop DEI awareness within our community.” CICOES Director John Horne
The Outreach sub-committee formed to answer scientists’ calls that there be better ways to engage with underrepresented groups in the local community. The subcommittee has been in contact with Seattle MESA, and organization that helps underrepresented groups at the high school level with science, and hopes to plan outreach events through MESA’s network. Zack Gold, a CICOES postdoctoral scholar who works at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, joined this group “to leverage the incredible science done at CICOES to support the career development and training of a more inclusive and representative generation of scientists.” One of the initiatives in this sub-committee that most excited Molly McCormley, another member and Research Scientist at the Marine Mammal Lab, was a panel that fellow scientist Burlyn Birkemeier organized so that CICOES interns could engage with individuals in the field with diverse backgrounds. Molly thought it was a great success, and that it was “quite impressive how prepared the students came and the depth of the questions that were asked, as well as the thoughtful answers the panelists were able to give.”
The programming subcommittee spearheaded a book club where over 30 CICOES employees were mailed a copy of Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho and then attended discussions to share what they learned. This group also plans joint workshops with the PMEL Diversity committee. John commented that these workshops “have all been well attended and provided great content to participants,” and that he is “grateful for the work done by both DEI committees to organize and conduct these events and to the participants to be actively engaged in the workshops.”
Looking to the future, John is excited to see the working group and subcommittees expand their efforts in the outreach and education arenas. He hopes to see the members explore how CICOES can increase exposure to STEM education and careers to those that may not have access, and how the institute can recruit future members of our workforce that will increase diversity in our community. Many CICOES scientists and PMEL colleagues participated in URGE (Unlearning Racism in Geosciences), a series of educational modules that seek to spark policy change in research institutions. Zack is looking forward to “facilitating CICOES engagement with young local scientists from underrepresented backgrounds and opening doors into the sciences while sharing the exciting work being done at the institute.” “I hope to see us make a tangible change,” adds Molly, “in whatever form that might be.”