Oceanography | Vol. 36, No. 4
INTRODUCTION TO
THE SPECIAL ISSUE ON
WHY THIS SPECIAL ISSUE NOW?
In his inaugural “The Oceanography
Classroom” column for Oceanography
in 2000, Dean McManus noted: “A par-
ticular challenge for higher education
is to include more members of under-
represented groups in the study of the
ocean. Fifteen years from now, 40% of
the traditional undergraduate- age pop-
ulation will consist of these under-
represented groups, but today the ocean
sciences have the lowest participation by
underrepresented groups of any science”
(McManus, 2000). Why should we care
about this lack of diversity in the ocean
sciences? As a recent US National Science
Foundation report puts it, “A diverse
workforce provides the potential for
innovation by leveraging different back-
grounds, experiences, and points of view.
Innovation and creativity, along with
technical skills relying on expertise in sci-
ence, technology, engineering, and math-
ematics (STEM), contribute to a robust
STEM enterprise” (NSF, 2023a). To put
it more succinctly, “diversity is not dis-
tinct from enhancing overall quality—it
is integral to achieving it” (Gibbs, 2014).
Having a diverse, inclusive, and equitable
workforce is not only a valuable objective
and moral imperative, it is essential for
fulfilling future workforce needs.
We are now more than 20 years beyond
the McManus column, and the numbers
have only slightly improved. While gen-
der diversity has significantly increased
in the ocean sciences during that time-
frame (Orcutt and Cetinić, 2014; Lima
and Rheuben, 2021; Legg et al., 2023),
the same cannot be said for other his-
torically underrepresented and margin-
alized groups (identified in various parts
of this special issue as Black, African
American,
Hispanic,
Latino/ Latina/
Latinx/ Latine, Native American, Alaska
Native, Indigenous, Asian American,
Pacific Islander, LGBTQIA+, and People
with Disabilities). Little substantive
progress has been made in increasing
diversity in the graduate school popula-
tion in the broader geosciences over the
last 40 years, as demonstrated in a 2018
article published in Nature Geoscience
(Bernard and Cooperdock, 2018) and in
data from a National Science Foundation
survey of current graduate students
(NCSES, 2021). Indeed, the NCSES data
show that in 2019, only ~8.8% of those
surveyed identify as coming from a
group that is considered part of a mar-
ginalized community in the United
States (Garza, 2021).
With heightened acknowledgment of
the diversity imbalance in ranks of ocean
scientists, the inequitable experiences
of those not from the dominant cul-
ture (Berhe et al., 2022), and community
determination to implement changes that
will support a successful future for the
field (e.g., Behl et al., 2021), the time was
right for publishing a compendium of
articles that strives to educate the ocean
sciences
community—and
beyond—
about how to recognize inequities and
mitigate barriers, and that provides tools
for implementing best practices for build-
ing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the
field. We also wished to share pedagogi-
cal approaches that can be adapted to rec-
ognize cultural and learning differences.
This special issue builds on the existing
body of knowledge distributed through-
out the peer-reviewed literature, in vari-
ous workshop reports, in funding agency
By Ellen S. Kappel, Benjamin E. Cuker, Corey Garza, Deidre Gibson, Catalina Martinez, Wendy F. Todd, and Cassie Xu
BUILDING
DIVERSITY,
EQUITY, AND
INCLUSION
IN THE OCEAN
SCIENCES