RCN: GOLD-EN: Virtual Ice Community Engagement

Despite significant growth over the past decade, the cryosphere community, like the broader geosciences, has failed to diversify. To address this lack of diversity in cryosphere sciences, this effort offers an intervention designed to foster a more inclusive community with shared values, norms, and a sense of belonging that can serve as both support and refugium for marginalized scholars and allies within the cryosphere community. Because the impacts of climate change, including sea-level rise, are acutely felt at the community level with the most vulnerable either not consulted or excluded from key decisions, the lack of diversity limits our ability to build a workforce of future educators and researchers necessary to address local to global challenges of climate change. This project is aimed directly at workforce development to ensure the cryosphere community is able to meet current and forthcoming challenges. The overarching project goal is to provide structural support for an inclusive cryosphere community that is supportive of marginalized scholars at all career stages and better positioned to facilitate inter-and-multidisciplinary research needed to advance the cryosphere sciences. To do this, virtual networks of cryosphere science scholars will be created, referred to as Virtual Ice Community Engagement Squads. These Squads will be organized around topics of interest to the community or by geographic region with the aim of supporting and fostering collaboration between scholars. The Squads will be key nodes in supporting a more cohesive cryosphere community through objectives that include 1) establishing community norms and articulating evidence-based DEI best practices, 2) providing professional development and inclusive leadership training to scholars across career stages, and 3) developing a resource hub for the cryosphere community. 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.