Collaborative Research: Utilizing Professional Societies to Achieve a Reinforcing Transformative Culture (UPSTART Culture)

The geosciences professions are an area of critical national need that ensures the energy, natural resource, and environmental security of the United States. To satisfy demand for a sufficiently competent and technically skilled geosciences workforce, Utilizing Professional Societies to Achieve a Reinforcing Transformative Culture (UPSTART Culture) deploys a program of staged professional development for aspiring geoscientists to create an iteratively reinforcing learning ecosystem that is deliberately inclusive of all participants. The goal is to promote the humanity of geoscientists to create an ever-growing scientific workforce respecting the dignity and autonomy of individuals toward career success. The Geological Society of America’s (GSA) On to the Future (OTF) program is a professional development program for students from groups structurally underrepresented in the geosciences. GSA’s definition of underrepresentation includes traditionally protected classes as well as non-traditional student categories (e.g., 1st-generation college students, single parents, veterans, students from under-resourced school systems in both urban and rural settings, etc.) The current effort scales OTF to a multi-year program of cohort activities as well as mentor-focused workshops. Stage 1 introduces OTF scholars and professional society mentors to activities for identity appreciation/development, building social capital, and networking with professional societies. Stage 2 features professional societies providing OTF scholars with skill-building workshops, short courses, and field trips with critical feedback to societies related to promotion of inclusive norms. Stage 3 tasks OTF scholars with mentors/professional societies to refine inclusionary practices and develop leadership within society functions. Stage 4 returns OTF scholars as emerging leaders to Stage 1 activities to reinforce best practices promoting diversity and inclusive cultural norms such that the nation sustains a robust and representative workforce of highly skilled and competent geoscientists. UPSTART Culture will create an innovative, dynamic, and reciprocating learning ecosystem leveraging investments in several culture-transforming programs: GSA On to the Future (OTF), HHMI Geoscience Ambassadors, NSF GEOPATHS, and NSF Geosciences Associated Societies Committed to Embracing & Normalizing Diversity Research Coordination Network (Geosciences ASCEND). Grounding powerful principles of system dynamics in sociocultural conceptualizations of identity development and cultural change, UPSTART Culture will deliberately disrupt Geoscience Culture, establish a critical process and iterative routine for long-term systemic norming. The approach centers the premise that all those practicing science are informed by their identities and pathways. Storytelling centers agency and responsibility in creating an inclusive geoscientific community as a necessary counter to assimilationist norms; e.g., that one becomes a scientist by learning a way of being, doing, and compliance with a demonstrably toxic cultural milieu. Professional societies convene communities to reinforce professional norms and practices. UPSTART Culture will activate professional societies for change by developing safe spaces that link transformational processes of storytelling and co-design for critiquing exclusive, oppressive, unjust norms and promoting more equitable, inclusive democratic and just norms at scale. 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.