You are invited to be part of this network and we would love to stay in touch! If you are interested in receiving updates on our activities, you can opt-in to our mailing list.
Follow our Student Advisory Board on Twitter @UnideSab.
Help expand the network: Please let other faculty members and students know about UNIDE! Send us names of people you think might be interested, please contact Maria Miriti (miriti.1@osu.edu).
Other ways to get involved
Participate in pedagogy working group
The Undergraduate Network for Increasing Diversity of Ecologists (UNIDE) is soliciting colleagues interested in participating in a working group to collaborate on revising ecology and environmental biology curriculum. This effort builds on results from analysis of focus groups we conducted to examine the relationship between identity and participation in ecology and environmental (EE) disciplines. Our findings show a cultural mismatch between traditional presentations of nature and the environment that suggests that inclusive, culturally responsive pedagogy can increase retention of under-represented students in EE. Our pedagogy working group will review, curate and develop resources that present strategies that have been used to successfully broaden participation in STEM fields, especially ecology and environmental sciences. We will also discuss classroom-related barriers such as sense of belonging, stereotype threat, or students’ ability to see themselves as scientists that are documented to impede student retention. We will evaluate assessment tools used to measure or mitigate these barriers and identify assessment gaps.
We aim to develop inclusive, culturally responsive pedagogical tools and to assess the effectiveness of these tools for fostering diverse student retention in EE disciplines. We anticipate that working group members will meet virtually once a month to discuss inclusive teaching and its evaluation. We aim to share our efforts/products at the SABER meeting in summer, 2024. Working group members will be expected to attend one, hour-long meeting per month, for 1 year, with some work done outside of the group meetings.
Graduate students, Post-doctoral scholars, Undergraduates, Staff, and Faculty who are interested in joining this working group are invited to contact: UNIDE.ecology@gmail.com by June 5, 2023 with a brief statement of interest (2-3 sentences).
Participate in individual interviews
We are recruiting participants 18 years of age or older to participate in one-on-one Zoom interviews regarding your sense of identity in your Ecology or Environmental (EE) field, aspects of your personal identity, your views on nature, and the influence of the academic context on your sense of belonging in your EE field. We anticipate that the one-on-one interview will take about one hour to complete. For more information about interviews visit the recruitment page or contact Dr. Ariel Rawson (rawson.29@osu.edu) or Dr. Becky Mansfield (mansfield.32@osu.edu).
Participate in focus groups (inactive)
The focus groups are not only a great way to contribute to our project but are also a way to get to know other members of UNIDE. We are conducting Zoom focus groups to investigate variation in sense of belonging in Ecology and Environmental Science (EE) fields both among those typically included and those underrepresented based on ethnicity or race. The focus groups investigate personal stories, shared experiences, and narratives of how individuals became interested in EE fields as well as personal and professional ideas about nature. We run separate groups for faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students. For more information about focus groups, please contact Amy Kulesza (kulesza.5@osu.edu).