Community

Our Community 

Our department consists of a diverse community of undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and staff. Approximately half of our graduate students and faculty identify as female and about a quarter of our graduate students hail from abroad, though these are just two of many intersectional identities that individuals in our department have. Thanks to the broader university community, with many student organizations, UGA offers a home away from home to this diverse group. 

Organizations within our department supporting this community and offering near-peer mentoring include: 

We also organize weekly seminars to highlight research efforts from UGA faculty and collaborators as well as external early career researchers, host annual symposia and career workshops with help from MSGSA, and connect with our online community via social media (see UGA Marine Sciences, SkIO in Savannah, MSGSA, and Ocean Initiative). Many of us also engage in broader community building activities, e.g. via mentoring facilitated through the graduate program and beyond, the Society for Women in Marine Science, Black in Marine Science, and Out in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (oSTEM). 

Nevertheless, there are areas in which we strive to improve. Historically, participation in STEM disciplines are does not reflect the diversity of the U.S. population (e.g., Bernard and Cooperdock. 2018. No progress on diversity in 40 years. Nature Geosci 11, 292–295 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0116-6), a finding that is also true for UGA Marine Sciences. To better serve our stakeholders, we strive to lower barriers to the participation of underrepresented minorities and welcome change that allows us to do so.  

Community in the Field 

One such barrier to diverse participation in marine science can be that of fieldwork. Field courses can be powerful tools that foster inclusivity and guide students towards becoming successful scientists. These experiences, however, can also be subject to inequity before the course starts with improper planning, creating an additional risk of negative experiences. Field courses often lead to extra costs to the participant (specialized equipment, the need to take time away from work, manage childcare, etc.) resulting in limited enrollment by students with a low-income background. Such barriers have resulted and continue to result in low engagement from underrepresented minorities in field courses (e.g., Funkhouser et al. 2024. Promoting inclusivity in ecology, evolution, and behavioral biology education through course-based undergraduate research experiences. BioScience 74(8), 567–576. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biae060). 

Field courses and research therefore need to be well structured and planned, placing importance on the inclusion of the whole student consortium. Our undergraduate Ocean Science majors enroll in a semester at Skidaway and our PhD students are required to complete 14 days in the field during their studies – our department is eager to provide resources (e.g. swim lessons, loaned field gear, lab and field safety plan, and field safety resource compilation) to lower the barrier to participation in these experiences.  

Successful fieldwork also requires an understanding of the communities and cultures inhabiting the field. We acknowledge that indigenous land colonized by academic institutions like UGA with the Morrill Act of 1862 continues to generate revenue that indigenous people cannot access as they remain largely absent and underrepresented in academia (Matos et al. 2023. Academic Spaces and Indigenous Places: Native American Dispossession and the University of Georgia. https://cicr.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/cicr-occasional-paper-land-takings-2024.pdf). Research conducted at the Skidaway Institute for Oceanography and through the Georgia Coastal Ecosystems LTER Project on Sapelo Island takes place within the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, where communities of the Gullah Geechee people – descendants of African slaves brought to the Atlantic coast – still live today.