Oceanography | Vol.35, No.2
BROADENING
PARTICIPATION IN TOS
THROUGH HONORS NOMINATIONS AND AWARDS
The Oceanography Society (TOS) Honors
Program provides opportunities for its
members to amplify the Society’s val-
ues (https://tos.org/about) and to recog-
nize and celebrate the accomplishments
of colleagues. However, individual and
systemic biases can affect the nomina-
tion and selection process. In fall 2021,
the TOS Council postponed a cycle of the
Honors Program due to lack of diversity
in nominees (https://tos.org/tos-news-
june-2022). The TOS JEDI Committee
(https://tos.org/diversity) is considering
ways to generate a large and diverse pool
of nominees by embedding TOS’s justice,
equity, diversity, and inclusion goals into
the honors and awards process. This arti-
cle highlights some of those suggestions
and invites TOS members to weigh in.
As of 2022, TOS has three honors cate-
gories: Fellows, Medals, and Awards. The
oldest honors offered by the Society are
the Munk Award (established in 1993),
the Jerlov Award (established in 2000),
and The Oceanography Society Fellows
(established in 2004). The other medals
(Wallace S. Broecker, Mary Sears) and
awards (Mentoring, Early Career, and
Ocean Observing) are relatively new.
The nomination criteria for all awards
(https://tos.org/honors) at present focus
on a nominee’s impactful, innovative,
and/or transformative contributions to
original research; impact in educating
and mentoring students and early career
scientists; and their significant interdisci-
plinary and/or collaborative research. It is
sobering that to date, the lists of awardees
remain predominantly from a particular
demographic—White men from North
America or Europe. For example, of the
13 Munk Awardees, 12 are White men.
Of the 11 Jerlov Awardees, 10 are White
men. Of the 45 TOS Fellows, 31 are White
men. While other societies in oceanogra-
phy also predominantly honor men, the
gender statistics for TOS honors are the
least diverse (Legg et al., 2022).
Part of the reason for the lack of diver-
sity in nominations may be how TOS
members and nomination supporters
interpret merit. For example, when one
of us (FM-K) attempted to nominate a
female scientist from a developing nation
for a specific TOS medal, he was not able
to obtain letters of support. Scientists
from renowned institutions in developed
nations agreed that her contributions
were multiple and commendable, but also
felt that this nominee would likely not be
considered by TOS because she could
not be equated to one of the people rep-
resented by a named medal. This experi-
ence suggests that there may be unwrit-
ten rules preventing many of our peers
from being nominated, let alone selected,
for these awards. We suggest that TOS
can more clearly articulate its values in
a redesigned process that is sensitive at a
number of different levels, such as indi-
vidual identity, socioeconomic status,
culture, and geography.
We offer six initial suggestions that
may help open the TOS nomination
and awards process to broader sets of
contributions and contributors. These
suggestions are consistent with efforts to
reconsider awards processes in other geo-
science societies (e.g., Holmes et al., 2020;
Ali et al., 2021).
1. Focus the award guidelines on the
holistic essence of a career. Criteria
could introduce a more comprehen-
sive definition of achievement beyond
the publication record alongside the
overarching value of a person’s efforts
to improve community well-being
at local, regional, national, and/or
international levels.
2. Change the nomination guidelines
to better support individuals at each
stage in the honors and awards pro-
cess. Simplify the package that nom-
inators provide and allow supporters
to sign on and/or add a short con-
curring letter. Guarantee need-based
support for awardees, such as travel
and lodging to attend the award cer-
emony, meeting registration fees, and
interpretation services.
3. Allow nominations of non-TOS mem-
bers for all TOS honors. Clearly, there
are many TOS members who deserve
honors and awards, but TOS mem-
bers should not be restricted to look-
ing only inside the Society to cele-
brate excellent role models. This is an
important mechanism to highlight the
fact that our Society has broader val-
ues and real-world commitments. It
may also serve as a new avenue for
membership recruitment for nomi-
nees and their networks.
FROM THE TOS JEDI COMMITTEE
By Frank Muller-Karger, EeShan Bhatt, and Erin Meyer-Gutbrod