Broadening participation of underrepresented groups in STEM through the virtual components of the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology

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Scientific conferences are essential for scientists to learn about the most current research in their fields and for forming research collaborations. Conferences are particularly important for early-career scientists, such as graduate students and postdocs, to develop their professional networks and to establish themselves as members of the scientific community. Given the importance for early-career researchers, conferences are also important gateways for bringing members of underrepresented groups into the scientific enterprise. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many scientific societies to convert to virtual conferences, and the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) will hold a virtual scientific meeting in January and February 2021. This project focuses on recruiting participants from groups underrepresented in science for the SICB 2021 virtual meeting, providing a welcoming and inclusive virtual meeting environment, supporting diversity and inclusion workshops, and evaluating to what extent the goals of creating an inclusive climate and broadening participation were met by the SICB 2021 conference. The intellectual merit of this project is to contribute new methods for broadening participation, creating an inclusive climate, and evaluating the success of virtual scientific meetings for broadening participation in the field of integrative organismal biology. The broader impact will be an increase in the number of scientists from currently underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) is a comprehensive scientific society for integrative organismal biology research. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, SICB is planning a virtual 2021 SICB Annual Meeting during the months of January and February 2021. SICB’s efforts to develop innovative online delivery of scientific content, networking opportunities, and ways to broaden participation may be transferable to other scientific societies. Hence, the primary goal of this project is to undertake a formal evaluation of the efficacy of the new meeting formats for reuse in future SICB meetings and dissemination to other scientific societies. SICB will reach out to other scientific societies in the field of integrative organismal biology with meetings planned for spring and summer 2021 to offer opportunities to replicate the meeting evaluation. The evaluation will include a formative plan that will focus on the processes of the conference, such as the quality of the overall program, satisfaction with conference offerings, and the mechanisms for communication. A summative evaluation will focus on the short term and more intermediate impacts, such as diversity of participation in the 2021 SICB Annual Meeting, the feelings of inclusion and camaraderie of those participating in the meeting, and expansion of diverse representation among SICB leadership. The intellectual merit of the project is to develop and evaluate innovative and inclusive virtual scientific meeting formats and the broader impact is to broaden participation by increasing the number of science, technology, engineering and mathematics professionals from underrepresented groups, especially in the area of integrative organismal biology.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.