Anti-racist behaviors, principles, and actions are critical to meeting the mission of our organization and ensuring our community can thrive. We believe our work should begin with the core of our community - the SML staff. SML staff members are currently engaged in diversity and equity training with New Hampshire Listens to deepen our understanding of institutional racism, unconscious bias, micro-aggression, allyship, and inequality in marine science, academia, and beyond. This learning program includes inviting our community to help identify any barriers and challenges to eliminating inequities, setting goals, and defining actions that will enable us to make meaningful change.
We hope you will join us for a community conversation on race and racism moderated by NH Listens. This will be a time to openly share our perspectives and learn together as we continue to assure Shoals Marine Lab is a place of belonging for everyone. We will be offering two separate hour-long sessions to accommodate different schedules: the first on February 4th at 7:00 PM ET and the other on February 5th at 12:00 PM ET. If you have any questions about this event, please contact us at shoals.lab@unh.edu.
We are committed to the following actions, and we are eager for this list to evolve as we continue to learn:
- Educating ourselves about institutional and individual racism.
- Identifying safe modes of communication for reporting and discussing issues of discrimination and barriers to equity at SML.
- Improving recruitment communications for diversifying our programs and staff.
- Engaging people of color and diverse individuals in future career panels and SML marine science seminars.
- Working with our home institutions to incentivize and enhance participation of students of color and from diverse backgrounds in our research, teaching, and training programs.
- Understanding and identifying institutional policies and practices that create barriers and working to reduce them.
- Developing a formal strategic plan for SML to address diversity, equity, and inclusion.
This work is our shared responsibility and opportunity. As such, we are taking progressive action towards building equity and diversity within our community and in science.