Collaborative Research: Supporting Leadership in Diversity, Professional Development, and Geoscience Capacity Building for Veterans in STEM: The VRC-CDLS Veterans in STEM Program

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This project aims to sustain a cross-institutional geo/environmental science diversity leadership program, between East Los Angeles College (ELAC) and The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), which recruits from the veteran community. The veteran community is comprised of people who, through their service, have been exposed to a leadership-driven background which often develops unique skills, experiences, and mindsets. This makes veterans prime candidates to serve as diversity champions in the geo/environmental science communities. But as with many underrepresented communities in the geoscience, environmental science, and the STEM community overall, veterans face additional barriers which must be addressed to facilitate their development as diversity leaders. By developing a plan to recruit from and simultaneously address these barriers the PIs plan to create unique experiences to develop champions of diversity in veteran communities and create faculty leadership empathy towards the veteran community to better inform them how to create expansion efforts to enhance inclusion.Many veterans are from under-invested communities; therefore, the PIs will focus efforts on recruitment from these communities, which will contribute to broadening participation efforts in the geosciences. The PIs desire to create a data-backed model program that can be used at various institutions to inform larger veteran inclusion and leadership development efforts that can directly, and effectively address the “Supporting Veterans in STEM Careers Act”. The PIs are looking to employ a multi-dimensional approach that will simultaneously address social, personal, and academic issues; strengthen veteran involvement in the geo/environmental science research communities; further develop essential skills to become effective leaders in these fields; and create a model that can be used to address veteran inclusion and leadership development at various types of institutions.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.