Planning Grant: Building Women Leadership at field stations and marine laboratories

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Field stations and marine labs (FSMLs) provide a network of facilities that enable observations and experimental research on a myriad of biological processes to monitor the effects of a shifting climate. Field-based institutions represent a unique resource in the nation's scientific infrastructure and present invaluable opportunities for the translation of scientific discovery into education, public engagement, resource management, and policy. FSMLs face unique challenges, including their remote locations, limited resources, group living conditions, and constrained communications. The extent to which these challenges pose barriers to ensuring diversity and equity in participation in field science is poorly understood. While participation of women in the biological sciences has been generally increasing, equity in leadership positions, salaries, and career advancement continues to lag behind expectations. The value of the nation's network of field stations is compromised in the absence of inclusive and equal participation in science by all members of the community. The long-term vision for this project is to increase the number of women leaders at field-based institutions and create an inclusive culture in which women feel prepared, supported and empowered to lead. With this grant, funds are provided for planning activities to gather data about the needs of women leaders in order to fully define the status quo, to design an effective strategy for leadership training with experts in the field and who have experience with issues of equity and inclusivity, and to identify training workshop deliverables. Through a community survey and a facilitated planning meeting with a diversity of participants, this project will assess the current state of gender equity in leadership at FSMLs and identify areas of need and opportunities. These will be used to form a set of design requirements for a pilot leadership training program. The project will work closely with the relevant societies such as the Organization of Biological Field Stations and the National Association of Marine Laboratories. A final deliverable will be a strategic plan for identifying barriers and potential solutions to increase and support women leadership at field stations and marine laboratories.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.