Tag: diversity

Marine Science Pride: The Significance of Representation in the Workplace

Morgan O’Rourke-Liggett, Graduate Student, OSU Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

October is LGBTQIA2S+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Asexual, Aromatic, Agender, Two-Spirit, plus) History Month in the United States. As a marine biologist and member of the LGBTQIA2S+ community, I publicly came out in 2016. Since then, I have been navigating coming out in the workplace. As a graduate student, I’m using this time to practice being an “out” marine biologist.

OutInSTEM, a student organization at Oregon State University (OSU), supports LGBTQIA2S+ students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). It provides mentorship and connection with faculty and other students in the LGBTQIA2S+ community. Another goal is to increase visibility in the profession and foster confidence in students as they continue their professional careers. Other initiatives like OutInSTEM exist in many forms across agencies and countries.

Within the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Marine Sanctuary System created the initiative #PrideInTheOcean to celebrate both Ocean Month and LGBTQIA2S+ Pride Month, which both occur in June in the United States. This program partners with Pride Outside, a group connecting the LGBTQIA2S+ community through outdoor activities.

Some notable LGBTQIA2S+ scientists in marine studies are members and alumni of the Marine Mammal Institute at OSU. One is Dominique Kone (He/Him) who is now a marine ecologist and science officer at the California Ocean Science Trust. He is a graduate of OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute and the GEMM laboratory. Dominique wrote about his story here on Ocean Wise. Another is Dr. Daniel Palacios (He/Him), Endowed Associate Professor in Whale Habitats and lead of the Whale Habitat, Ecology, and Telemetry laboratory (WHET Lab) at OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute. Read Daniel’s story here on 500 Queer Scientists.

Visibility and representation are critical for multiple reasons. One is creating an atmosphere where LGBTQIA2S+ members feel validated in their experiences, allowing them to express their opinions, and recognize their contributions. Without the stress of facing potential harassment in the workplace, we can be our genuine selves leading to a healthier work environment, increased engagement, and better results.

Not everyone can be “out” in all aspects of their life. Some may be out publicly, but not at work; only out to select friends, etc. If it’s not safe (financially, physically, etc.), some people are never able to come out. Personal safety usually drives this decision. Some don’t want to expose aspects of their personal life in the workplace. Others hide it until after they have been hired or passed the probation period. Some never share due to fear of reprisal, such as being passed over for a promotion.

Despite the presence of state and federal anti-discrimination policies, micro and macro-aggressions occur in the workplace, such as transgender people having to fight for appropriate housing assignments. As a fisheries biological technician in Alaska, I was moved around several times as they had never dealt with a non-binary, transmasculine professional in their dorm rooms. I was forced to move three times and was frequently misgendered and deadnamed (deadnaming is calling a transgender person by an incorrect name, often their birth name and no longer use upon transitioning). It was a difficult situation and negatively affected my personal and work experience. I felt demoralized, disheartened, and depressed. I lost my respect for the agency and my long-standing dream of working in Alaska. 

To avoid repeating my experience in Alaska, perhaps we can think critically about our labs and workspaces. The following is a non-exhaustive list of things to consider when including and thinking about LGBTQIA2S+ co-workers:

  • How are transgender and other gender-diverse co-workers treated?
  • Does your place of work have gender-inclusive restrooms on every floor of the building?
  • Are dorms or berths separated by binary gender?
  • Do the men’s restrooms have menstruation products and baby changing station(s)?
  • Does your field gear include sizing options for people who have non-conforming bodies?
  • If your lab does events including significant others, is the environment welcoming of same-gender spouses? How do you treat singles?
  • Are your field locations in places that could be dangerous for LGBTQIA2S+ and other marginalized identities threatened by extremists?
  • Do you have intake forms with gender or sex on them? Is it necessary?
  • Do you use gendered language when non-gendered language can be used? (Examples from Grammarly)
  • Have you examined your own preconceptions and possible role in microaggressions? (What is a microaggression? Common LGBTQIA2S+ microaggressions)

We work in an incredible profession with smart, kind, and fun co-workers. Let’s take action to ensure it is also safe and inclusive for all members.

If you wish to read other LGBTQIA2S+ scientists’ stories you can find them at https://500queerscientists.com/, https://ocean.org/blog/international-lgbtqia-stem-day-role-models-in-ocean-science/, and follow #PrideInSTEM , #LGBTQSTEMDay , and #PrideInTheOcean on social media. The first four articles in the reference section for this blog contain other peer-reviewed studies and testimonials about the importance of LGBTQIA2S+ representation in the workplace and fields ranging from geosciences to sports media.

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References

Fisher, Kathleen Quardokus, et al. “Developing scientists as champions of diversity to transform the geosciences.” Journal of Geoscience Education 67.4 (2019): 459-471.

Johns, Nikara. “Pride Month: Nike’s Jarvis Sam on the Importance of Queer & Black Representation in the Workplace.” 18 June 2021. Footwear News.

Kilicaslan, Jan and Melissa Petrakis. “Heteronormative models of health-care delivery: investigating staff knowledge and confidence to meet the needs of LGBTIQ+ people.” Social Work in Health Care 58.6 (2019): 612-632.

Magrath, Rory. “”Progress…Slowly, but Surely”: The Sports Media Workplace, Gay Sports Journalists, and LGBT Media Representation in Sport.” Journalism Studies 21.2 (2020): 2545-270.

Palacios, Daniel. Daniel Palacios. 2022. https://500queerscientists.com/daniel-palacios/

Robinson, Chloe. International LGBTQIA2S+ STEM Day: Role Models in Ocean Science. 18 November 2021. Webpage. https://ocean.org/blog/international-lgbtqia-stem-day-role-models-in-ocean-science/

Uncommon baselines in social justice

Leigh Torres, Assistant Professor, PI of the GEMM Lab, Marine Mammal Institute, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Oregon Sea Grant, Oregon State University

Writing a blog post this week that focuses on marine mammals seems inappropriate amidst the larger social justice issues that our country – and our global community – are facing. However, I have been leaning on my scientific background recently to help me understand these events, how we got here, and where we can go.  But first I want to acknowledge and thank the people on the front lines around the world who are giving a voice to this fight for equality. Equality that is deserved, inherent, and just.

There is a concept in ecology, and in particular in fisheries management, termed shifting baselines, which was developed by the brilliant scientist Dr. Daniel Pauly in 1995 (who, by the way, is a person of color but that’s not the point here). Shifting baselines has to do with how humans judge change based on their own experiences and perceptions, and not necessarily on objective data collected over a longer period than a lifetime. Over one generation, knowledge is lost about ‘how the state of the natural world used to be’, so people don’t perceive the change that is actually taking place over time.

This article has a nice description of the shifting baseline theory: …due to short life-spans and faulty memories, humans have a poor conception of how much of the natural world has been degraded by our actions, because our ‘baseline’ shifts with every generation, and sometimes even in an individual. In essence, what we see as pristine nature would be seen by our ancestors as hopelessly degraded, and what we see as degraded our children will view as ‘natural’.

The concept of shifting baselines explains so much about why convincing policy makers to protect natural resources is challenging. People with short-term goals (political election cycles) and short-term memories don’t see the long-term trends of environmental degradation.

This week I have been thinking about how the concept of shifting baselines can also be applied to the social injustice we are grappling with today and for centuries. Yet, rather than shifting baselines, its more akin to uncommon baselines.

In school, we hopefully learn about the realities of slavery, the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, Fredrick Douglas, Jim Crow laws, the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and more. Often, this information comes to us in an incomplete, white-washed, biased fashion. So, if we are white and privileged in this country, we may pat ourselves on the back for what we’ve been taught is progress; for example, we might be proud of seeing integration in schools, and feel good about regularly using words like diversity and inclusion. But my baseline is very different from a black American’s baseline. Where I see progress relative to an old standard, black Americans continue to suffer from a legacy of slavery, poverty, and discrimination. My baseline cannot just be progress while people of color are still experiencing the same race inequality, police bias, economic injustice and an imbalanced power structure as their grandparents and great grandparents.

Our uncommon baselines are shaped by our previous experiences, which are culturally based, and create different perceptions of where we are in the trajectory of social and economic justice.  When scientists want to adjust for the influence of shifting baselines in ecology, we first need to recognize the influence of shifted baselines and then probe for ‘historical data’ (e.g., whaling records of the actual numbers of whales killed) or speak with those who know what it was like “before” (e.g., traditional ecological knowledge) to help us account for a broader scale of change. Thus, we can use a better baseline. Perhaps in this social justice context, to achieve more common baselines of race equality across cultures, we need more conversations with people of color to share past and present experiences and perceptions.

While these recent events have been heart wrenching to witness, I do feel this period is a critical reality check, forcing those of us who are privileged and powerful to acknowledge our uncommon baselines. I hope to learn by reading and talking honestly with others so we can all work toward a common baseline of equality and justice for all.

One last thought:

Vote.

Vote for the change you want to see.

Voting is powerful.

Vote.

References:

Pauly, Daniel. “Anecdotes and the shifting baseline syndrome of fisheries.” Trends in ecology & evolution 10, no. 10 (1995): 430. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0169-5347(00)89171-5

What areas on the landscape do you value? Application of Human Ecology Mapping in Oregon

By: Jackie Delie, M.S. Student, OSU Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Human Dimensions Lab (Dr. Leigh Torres, committee member providing spatial analysis guidance)

 

Mapping sociocultural data for ecosystem-based planning, like people’s values or cultural land use practices, has gained importance in conservation science, as reflected in the use of terms such as social-ecological systems (Lischka et al. 2018). The emergence of the geospatial revolution – where data have a location associated with it – has changed how scientists analyze, visualize, and scale their perceptions of landscapes and species. However, there is a limited collection of spatial sociocultural data compared to biophysical data.

To address the restricted spatial sociocultural data available, scientists (such as social scientists), community leaders, and indigenous groups have used various mapping methods for decision-making in natural resources planning to capture people’s uses, values, and interaction between people and landscapes. Some mapping methods are termed community values mapping (Raymond et al. 2009), landscape values mapping (Besser et al. 2014), public participation GIS (Brown & Reed 2009), and social values mapping (Sherrouse et al. 2011). Mclain et al. (2013) applies the umbrella term Human Ecology Mapping (HEM) to refer to all these mapping approaches that span across academic disciplines and sub-disciplines. HEM focuses on understanding human-environmental interactions, intending to gather spatial data on aspects of human ecology that can potentially be important to ecosystem-based management and planning. As an early career scientist, I embraced the opportunity to incorporate a HEM approach, more specifically the mapping of landscape values, into my thesis.

My research explores the human-black bear relationship in Oregon. The American black bear (Ursus americanus) is one species identified by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife with a stable or increasing population (25,000 to 35,000 individuals) where many human-black bear interactions occur (ODFW 2012). One component of my research incorporates understanding how recreationists use the landscape and the values they associate with different places. For 18 days in the summer of 2018, I was at various trailheads throughout Oregon, approaching people to request their interest in taking my survey (Image 1 & 2). The consenting participants were asked to identify on the digital map of Oregon the primary places they use or visit on the landscape. Participants had the option to draw a point, line, or polygon to identify up to three places within the state (Image 3). Then, participants were asked to choose the type of activity they prefer at each primary location from a list of 17 recreational activities (e.g., hiking, hunting, fishing, camping, etc.). Finally, they were asked to select one primary value they associate with each identified place from a list of five standardized landscape values (Brown & Reed 2009; Besser et al. 2014). The most important values for my study are aesthetic, economic, intrinsic, subsistence, and social. An example of an aesthetic value statement: “I value this area for its scenic qualities”.

Now that my data is collected, I am creating GIS layers of the various ways recreationists uses the landscape, and the values they assign to those places, showing the distribution of aggregated uses (Image 4) and their relationship to known human-black bear interaction areas. The approach I employed to collect social-spatial data is just one strategy out of many, and it is recognized that maps are never fully objective representations of reality. However, mapping landscape values is a useful tool for identifying and visualizing human-environment relations. The geographically referenced data can be used to map areas of high value (density) or associated with different types of values (diversity). Further, these maps can be overlaid with other biophysical and land use layers to help land managers understand the variety of landscape values and activities.

 

Southern Oregon in August 2018. Lots of fires in the area during this time and that had an impact on where I could collect data as certain forest areas were closed to the public.

 

Me collecting data at Upper Table Rock Trailhead in Southern Oregon

 

Use of an Ipad and the software Mappt to collect socio-spatial data while at trailheads in Oregon. Participants used the digital map to identify up to three places they primarily use the landscape.

 

Preliminary map displaying all the areas of preferred landscape use (orange) marked by survey participants.

 

References:

Besser, D., McLain, R., Cerveny, L., Biedenweg, K. and Banis, D. 2014. Environmental Reviews and Case Studies: Mapping Landscape Values: Issues, Challenges and Lessons Learned from Field Work on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington, Environmental Practice, 16(2): 138–150.

Brown, G., and Reed, P. 2009. Public Participation GIS: A New Method for Use in National Forest Planning. Forest Science, 55(2): 162-182.

Lischka, S., Teel, T., Johnson, H., Reed, S., Breck, S., Don Carlos, A., Crooks, K. 2018. A conceptual model for the integration of social and ecological information to understand human-wildlife interactions. Biological Conservation 225: 80-87.

McLain, R., Poe, M., Biedenweg, K., Cerveny, L., Besser, D., and Blahna, D. 2013. Making sense of human ecology mapping: An overview of approaches to integrating socio-spatial data into environmental planning. Human Ecology, 41(1).

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW). 2012. Oregon Black Bear Management Plan.

Raymond, M., Bryan, A., MacDonald, H., Cast, A., Strathearn, S., Grandgirard, A., and Kalivas, T. 2009. Mapping Community Values for Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services. Ecological Economics 68: 1301–1315.

Sherrouse, B. C., Clement, J. M., and Semmens, D. J. 2011. A GIS Application for Assessing, Mapping, and Quantifying the Social Values of Ecosystem Services. Applied Geography, 31: 748–760.