UMEB: Student Travel Awards to the Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting

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NSF funding will allow the Ecological Society of America (ESA) to increase the participation of underrepresented minority undergraduates its annual scientific meeting. As part of its Strategies for Ecology Education, Development and Sustainability (SEEDS) program, ESA routinely brings 20 students from underrepresented groups to its meeting; the NSF UMEB award will allow 13 additional students to attend. Of the greater than 7800 members of the ESA, less than 8% have identified themselves as a member of an under-represented minority group. In order to increase the numbers of minorities pursuing ecology, the SEEDS program seeks to address key barriers to recruitment, one of which is a lack of student awareness of ecology as a viable course of study and career opportunity. Over 3500 ecologists and environmental professionals attend the ESA meeting sharing research results with their peers. This provides the perfect venue to engage students in one of the most important facets of doing science - communicating intellectual merit and new knowledge with the scientific community. Students are encouraged to present their research results and special events and activities are planned for student participants, including scientific field trips and workshops, welcome and orientation sessions, roundtable discussions on environmental justice, traditional ecological knowledge, and a career workshop.The broader impacts of this activity include: 1) the increase in participation of underrepresented (African American, Latino, American Indian) undergraduate students at a scientific meeting, 2) the enhancement of networks and partnerships between traditional ESA members and underrepresented groups and 3) the establishment of mentor/student relationships. A key aspect of the travel to meetings program is the establishment of student-mentor relationships. The matching of students with both peer and scientific mentors will assist in developing links and infrastructure within the communities (student and faculty) that will cultivate future leadership. The meeting is a perfect venue to facilitate representatives of underrepresented groups to view the broad possibilities within the environmental sciences since many aspects of ecology, such as environmental justice issues and traditional ecological knowledge, are highlighted along with scientific ecological research.This activity is funded by the National Science Foundation Undergraduate Mentoring in Environmental Biology (UMEB) Program.