October 9, 2020
Results from survey on DEI Learning Opportunities & Group Discussions
Hello there SAFS community!
We are excited to share with you the results from our survey on DEI Learning Opportunities & Group Discussions. Responses were received between September 15th – October 2nd, 2020. (The survey questions, as well as the pie and bar charts described below, can be found here.)
There was a total of 68 respondents. About 50% of faculty, more than 80% of graduate students, 15 research staff and postdocs, two undergraduate students, one administrative staff, one visiting scholar/collaborator, and one Emeritus Research Faculty responded to the survey.
Most folks (63/68) were interested in training workshops led by a professional, and a good number (54/68) were interested in group discussions.
The topics that garnered the most interest were related to support for Black, Indigenous and People of Color in ecology and evolutionary biology, class & gender barriers in STEM, bystander intervention to disrupt discrimination, implicit bias & dissonance, and SAFS research on equity and environmental justice. All suggested topics had at least one third of respondent’s interest. Some suggestions of other topics were diversity in fisheries, how SAFS can maintain its core mission alongside further engagement and integration of DEI, Indigenous rights & natural resources, and effective outreach to address the leaky pipeline in STEM.
The format of events most favored were for a short article & 1-hour discussion and a training workshop (half day) led by a professional. These results match well with the previous results about topics and types of events.
Respondents preferred having events during the lunchtime hour and for 1-2 hours during work hours with approval from supervisor.
With regards to barriers to participation, it was clear that folks are busy! Most respondents said that lack of time and scheduling conflicts were the greatest barriers. This helps explain why most respondents preferred the lunchtime hour and short time periods during their work hours with approval. Still, we noticed that a number of folks do not know about events, are unsure if participation is allowed, feel that there is lack of support/enthusiasm, are not feeling welcome, and have difficulty attending due to locations of events. We will keep these in mind as we strive to make events as accessible as possible to members of the SAFS community.
Almost all respondents were interested to some extent in attending another lab’s meeting discussion related to DEI.
More than half of respondents were willing or interested in helping facilitate a 1-hour discussion.
More folks were open to repeating a DEI-related lab meeting discussion that went well with the rest of the SAFS community. We understand that some respondents may not be associated with a lab and thus this question was not relevant to them. We invite folks like undergraduate students and administrative staff to reach out to us with their questions and ideas related to DEI.
Thank you to all who responded. This will help us plan events for this academic year. As well, thank you to those who have already expressed their willingness to help facilitate some of these events. We will reach out to you shortly.
We realize that similar topics are often covered in webinars, panel discussions, training, etc. at the College of the Environment, the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity, other units at UW, and beyond our University. We still think that it is important to hold these events at our School to help build and strengthen connections among all of us at SAFS. We can also tailor topics and needs of the SAFS community better at our own events.
Thank you and take care,
Jennifer, Danielle, Jan, Mark, Eleni
Education & Community-Building workgroup, Equity & Inclusion Committee, safsincl@uw.edu