Creating an Ecosystem for Success: Elevating Hispanic/Latinx/e Voices in the Geosciences

Representation is crucial at every stage of a scientific career. Sharing the journeys and perspectives of both students and early-career scientists with their communities fosters the development of a stronger support network. This is vital for those who come from underrepresented groups, where sharing these narratives may serve as inspiration for others in the pursuit of higher education in the geosciences. Family support can influence educational pathways and college choices; and having a robust network that extends beyond immediate family is essential in crafting future professional success. Building these networks throughout and within a student’s academic environment is paramount in cultivating trust with families, ensuring student degree completion, and will contribute to empowering successful early career geoscientists while advancing efforts to diversify the geosciences.

In this presentation, we highlight our NSF GOLD-EN EAGER project “Elevating and empowering Hispanic/Latinx voices through video: Reducing barriers in academia and building an ecosystem for success in the Earth system sciences”. This project leveraged multiple strategies to develop an ecosystem of support for Hispanic/Latinx geoscience students including: 1) holding workshops on storytelling through video to empower participants to share their personal stories as they navigated the geosciences; 2) engaging family members in informal conversations, known as pláticas, about their student’s geoscience journey; and 3) using the videos as the basis for conversation with university faculty and staff. The goals for connecting with university faculty and staff were: to raise awareness of what others across the university community are doing to support Hispanic/Latinx students, awareness of the opportunity to collaborate across university departments to better support Hispanic/Latinx students, and to raise awareness of the challenges that can come along with pursuing higher education degrees. In this talk, we will specifically highlight four student participants, their career paths, and family perspectives on the decision to pursue careers in geosciences. We will also share findings on what universities, both Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) and Primarily White Institutions (PWIs), can do to better support Hispanic/Latinx students and early-career professionals. Lastly, we will provide our perspective on creating an ecosystem for success and share some opportunities to collaborate on these efforts.