Collaborative Research: IMPLEMENTATION: EVOLVED - Embedding a Vision to Operationalize, Lift up, and Value Equity and Diversity in the Consortium of Aquatic Science Societies

“进化”（嵌入实现、提升和重视公平和多样性的愿景）是一套全面和综合的活动，将多样性、公平、包容、获取和正义原则嵌入水产科学学会联盟（CASS）的骨干。中国科学院的会员包括来自学术、政府和行业各个职业阶段的20,000多名水生科学家。中国社科院通过2021年BIO-LEAPS计划拨款启动了变革性的多样性、公平性和包容性工作，为evolve奠定了基础。在这一过程中，中国社科院领导层展示了对公平和包容的集体承诺，并希望将这项工作提升为中国社科院的首要任务之一。进化计划将把工作重点放在三个方面：(1)为代表性不足的群体成员（广泛用于指在STEM（科学、技术、工程和数学）中历史上代表性不足的社区的个人）制定服务计划；(2)重新设想中国社科院的价值观，探索偏见和假设，重新审视文化，将中国社科院的氛围转变为一个欢迎和开放的论坛，欢迎不同的人和观点；(3)构建支持和维持社科院文化演进的组织基础设施。该项目包括对所有主要计划的综合混合方法评估。总之，进化的活动将在多个层面上催化文化变革：整个社会科学院作为一个集体，在单个社会中，以及社会中的个人成员。“进化”项目将把多样性、公平、包容、获取和公正融入以环境、生态和有机生物学为重点的水生科学的文化结构中。该项目将制定、实施和评估在三个层面上扩大公平驱动进步的活动：个人成员、社团和社会科学院集体。进化将机械地将结构和文化变革联系起来，旨在打破在专业、科学协会联盟中建立多样性、公平和包容（DEI）的主要障碍，并作为集体联盟层面的转型文化变革的典范。为了实现这一目标，evolve将：(1)建立服务于代表性不足群体成员的程序（在本提案中广泛用于指来自历史上在STEM中代表性不足的社区的个人），(2)重新设想中国社科院内部的价值观和思维模式，将其文化转变为一个欢迎和开放的论坛，为不同的人和观点提供服务，(3)建立组织基础设施，以支持和维持中国社科院的文化演变。这项工作的更广泛影响包括增加与社科院少数民族服务机构的接触，在社科院各个社团中整合以少数民族为中心的价值观，以及在社科院集体中采用以少数民族为中心的政策、管理和保护工作。拟议的活动扩大了代表性不足的群体对环境生物学学科的参与；确保更多不同的声音参与到以生物为重点的政策、保护和规划中；并最终促进学科卓越和环境正义。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

EVOLVED (Embed a Vision to Operationalize, Lift up, and Value Equity and Diversity) is a comprehensive and integrated set of activities that embeds the principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, access, and justice into the backbone of the Consortium of Aquatic Sciences Societies (CASS). CASS membership includes 20,000+ aquatic scientists from all career stages working across academic, government, and industry sectors. CASS initiated transformative diversity, equity, and inclusion work through a 2021 BIO-LEAPS planning grant, which laid the groundwork for EVOLVED. In that process, CASS leadership demonstrated a collective commitment to equity and inclusion and a desire to elevate this work to one of CASS’s primary priorities. The EVOLVED program will focus its work in 3 areas: (1) developing programming to serve members of underrepresented groups (broadly used to refer to individuals from communities that are historically underrepresented in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), (2) re-envisioning CASS’s values, exploring biases and assumptions, and reexamining culture, to transform the CASS climate into a welcoming and open forum for diverse peoples and perspectives, and (3) building organizational infrastructure to support and sustain CASS's cultural evolution. The project includes a comprehensive mixed-method evaluation of all major initiatives. Together, the EVOLVED activities will catalyze cultural change at multiple levels: across CASS as a collective, in single societies, and by individual members within societies. The EVOLVED program will embed diversity, equity, inclusion, access, and justice into the cultural fabric of environmental, ecological, and organismal biology-focused aquatic sciences. This program will develop, implement, and assess activities that scale-up equity driven advancement across three levels of action: individual members, societies, and the CASS collective. EVOLVED will mechanistically link structural and cultural change aimed at breaking down major barriers to building diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within a consortium of professional, scientific societies and serve as a model for transformative culture change at the collective consortium level. To operationalize this, EVOLVED will: (1) build programming to serve members of underrepresented groups (broadly used in this proposal to refer to individuals from communities that are historically underrepresented in STEM), (2) re-envision values and mental models within CASS to transform its culture into a welcoming and open forum for diverse peoples and perspectives, and (3) build organizational infrastructure to support and sustain CASS's cultural evolution. Broader impacts of this work include increased engagement with minority-serving institutions within CASS, integration of DEI-focused values within individual CASS societies, and adoption of DEI-centric policy, management, and conservation work across the CASS collective. The proposed activities broaden participation of underrepresented groups in environmental biology disciplines; ensure more diverse voices are involved in biology-focused policy, conservation, and planning; and ultimately foster disciplinary excellence and environmental justice.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.