Planning Grant: From Classroom to career: Building a Culture of Access for Geoscientists with Disabilities

University Of Florida, Gainesville FL

Investigators

Abstract

In the geosciences, the perception of disability as a barrier to a successful career and the inaccessible culture of degree programs discourage many people with disabilities from starting or staying in geoscience degree programs. Disabled degree-holding individuals in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) disciplines also have a significantly higher unemployment rate than their non-disabled peers (NCSES, 2021). Until there is change in the prevailing culture of inaccessibility and normalize the support and success of disabled geoscientists, there will be continued exclusion of many from the geosciences. Today’s disabled early career geoscientists are the vanguard of the ‘ADA generation’, born after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. The ADA generation doesn’t just hope for accessible learning and work conditions, they expect it. As the ADA generation comes of age, there is need of better characterization of the disabled experience in the geosciences across all career stages (see Kingsbury et al, 2020). There is also a compelling need to examine the biases and racism within the Disabled identity. While access barriers impact us all, racism compounds the biases faced by disabled BIPOC individuals (e.g. Garcia, 2019), yet little is known (outside of anecdotal evidence) about how that impacts students and career professionals in the geosciences. The leaders of this project aim to solicit input from - and build community with - geoscientists from diverse backgrounds, all career stages, and work sectors. Disabled geoscientists with diverse academic experiences and life paths are realizing disabled scientists need more than anecdotes and individual advocacy to transform the culture of geosciences. The goal of this planning grant is to facilitate this culture change by first identifying and characterizing significant barriers faced by people with disabilities on geoscience career paths by surveying disabled geoscientists within the community and then strategizing specific initiatives that could address those barriers via a hybrid workshop attached to a national geoscience conference. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.