Increasing Diversity in the Earth and Space Sciences: Coordinating the Efforts of Scientific Societies

American Geophysical Union, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

Intellectual Merit: This proposal seeks partial funding in support of a Joint Society Conference on Diversity in the Earth and Space Sciences, to be convened in June 2003. The American Geophysical Union has recently begun a new initiative to work on increasing the participation of women and minorities in the Earth and space sciences. The challenges associated with making progress on this problem are large and varied, and thus it is essential that AGU's diversity-related programs be fully coordinated with similar programs provided by other scientific societies that support these fields. This conference will help to identify existing programs, programmatic gaps, and allow an honest dialog about which strategies are most effective. Further, AGU feels that a collaborative "coalition" effort by the societies can have even greater impact than parallel efforts of individual societies, and this conference offers an important first step toward establishing this coalition.