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

EVOLVED（嵌入一个愿景，以实现，提升和重视公平和多样性）是一套全面和综合的活动，将多样性，公平，包容，获取和正义的原则嵌入到水产科学学会联盟（卡斯）的骨干中。卡斯成员包括来自学术，政府和工业部门的所有职业阶段的20，000多名水产科学家。卡斯通过2021年BIO-LEAPS规划拨款启动了变革性的多样性，公平和包容性工作，为EVOLVED奠定了基础。在这一过程中，卡斯的领导层表现出对公平和包容的集体承诺，并希望将这项工作提升为社会卡斯的首要优先事项之一。EVOLVED计划将集中在3个领域的工作：（1）制定方案，为代表性不足的群体成员提供服务（广泛用于指来自STEM（科学，技术，工程和数学）历史上代表性不足的社区的个人，（2）重新构想卡斯的价值观，探索偏见和假设，并重新审视文化，将卡斯的气氛转变为一个欢迎不同人群和观点的开放论坛，（3）建立组织基础设施，以支持和维持卡斯的文化发展。该项目包括对所有主要举措进行综合评价。总之，EVOLVED活动将在多个层面上催化文化变革：在卡斯作为一个集体，在单个社会，并通过社会内的个人成员。进化计划将把多样性，公平，包容，获取和正义嵌入到环境，生态和生物生物学为重点的水生科学的文化结构中。 该计划将制定，实施和评估在三个行动层面（个人成员，社会和卡斯集体）扩大公平驱动进步的活动。EVOLVED将机械地连接结构和文化变革，旨在打破专业科学协会联盟内建立多样性，公平和包容性（DEI）的主要障碍，并作为集体联盟层面变革性文化变革的典范。为了实现这一目标，EVOLVED将：（1）制定方案，为代表性不足的群体成员提供服务（在本提案中广泛用于指来自STEM历史上代表性不足的社区的个人），（2）重新设想卡斯内的价值观和思维模式，将其文化转变为一个欢迎不同人群和观点的开放论坛，（3）建立支持和维持卡斯文化演进的组织基础设施。这项工作的更广泛的影响，包括增加与少数民族服务机构在卡斯，集成的DEI为重点的价值观在个别卡斯社会，并通过DEI为中心的政策，管理和保护工作在整个卡斯集体。拟议的活动扩大了在环境生物学学科中代表性不足的群体的参与;确保更多不同的声音参与以生物学为重点的政策，保护和规划;并最终促进学科卓越和环境正义。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

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.