Establishing Early-Career Scientific Ocean Drilling Learning Communities

Time: August 8-10, 2023

Location:  International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Gulf Coast Repository, College Station, TX, USA

Workshop Committee: Brittany Hupp (George Mason University), Lucien Nana Yobo (Texas A&M University), John Ajayi (University of Connecticut), Raquel Bryant (Wesleyan University), Shamar Chin (University of Iowa), Mohammed Hashim (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), and Christopher Kinsley (Berkeley Geochronology Center)

Workshop Resources and Reports:

For over five decades, through scientific ocean drilling (SciOD), scientists have sought to explore Earth’s past climate, improve climatic models, assess future ocean health, discover the deep biosphere, and advance our understanding of natural hazards. While this multifaceted and interdisciplinary approach is an advantage, participation in SciOD and related opportunities has historically been limited to a narrow community who already understand how to navigate the program. To address this issue, we propose a workshop designed to provide mentorship, skill-sharing, and community- building for students and early career researchers in order to establish resilient, diverse, and inclusive SciOD learning communities for the future. To expand knowledge of and access to SciOD opportunities, this workshop encourages broad participation, specifically soliciting applications from those who are new to SciOD, including participants from across all demographics, experience levels, geographic locations, and career areas.

With the recent announcement from the National Science Foundation on non-renewal of the drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution, as a community, we are invited to reimagine the traditional pathways to participating in SciOD research and related activities. Training the next generation of SciOD leaders necessitates broad participation. This workshop posits that establishing SciOD learning communities is critical for the vitality of SciOD now and into the future. How might we move from the current system towards one that incorporates near-peer-mentoring, community-building, and a focus on archival material, with a participation model that includes leadership roles for students and early-career scientists?

In order to establish these communities, the objectives of the Establishing Early-Career Scientific Ocean Drilling Learning Communities workshop are to:

(1) Encourage expansive participation by specifically targeting individuals and audiences from institutions that have not been involved in SciOD;

(2) Provide hands-on activities and training to leverage existing core repository archives;

(3) Create, share, and archive key workshop materials and products especially as they pertain to professional development and SciOD-related opportunities;

(4) Model and steward radical earth-learning environments by creating space to discuss the entangled histories, realities, and futures of SciOD.

This workshop was conceived of by early-career researchers who participated in the June 2022 Scientific Ocean Drilling IMPACT workshop which strove to chart the future course of science communication and outreach for scientific ocean drilling.

The overarching goal of the proposed workshop is to develop early-career SciOD learning communities. We will establish these communities with four shared goals, achievable through the workshop, as detailed below:

(1)  Broaden participation in SciOD activities by specifically targeting an audience from institutions that have not been involved in SciOD and by offering the workshop in a hybrid format in order to reach a wider audience;

(2)  Co-create accessible training resources of all workshop materials related to training for competitive applications within SciOD, as well as training for applicable skills such as creating a sample request for legacy ocean drilling materials;

(3)  Prepare participants to better leverage legacy samples and data, by providing practical experience to participants that they can leverage to become more involved in SciOD;

(4)  Model and steward radical earth-learning environments, through the facilitation of inclusive community building that engages each participant’s full self. The culture of the workshop will be one of collaboration, support, and creativity as we explore previously untapped ways of envisioning the past and future of the program. With help from perspectives in the humanities, we will unearth the hidden context and realities of our program with the hopes of building a SciOD community that can actively work towards creating a more just and equitable future on our planet.

Participants will travel to College Station, Texas for the 2.5 day workshop, which is being held August 8-10, 2023 at the IODP Gulf Coast Repository (GCR), at Texas A&M University in College Station.

We plan to invite ~30 US scientists to participate in the workshop. The target audiences are early career scientists and students who aspire to more fully participate in IODP research and educational activities. Participants will span career stages, ranging from undergraduates to assistant professors. We will also solicit a limited number of applications from mid-career scientists whose research is IODP adjacent and who are interested in becoming more involved in IODP. In order to provide tailored experiences for participants with different goals, we will provide parallel co-working groups to provide professional development opportunities appropriate to the career stages (undergraduate students, graduate students, post-docs, assistant professors, etc.).

This workshop is funded by the U.S. Science Support Program (USSSP), associated with the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). Travel support for U.S.-based participants is provided by USSSP.

Although we encourage in-person participation, in line with our stated goals to recruit communities traditionally excluded from SciOD, we have established a partial hybrid participation plan for folks that might not be willing, able, or interested in traveling to College Station, TX.

To Apply

Applicants will be asked to provide some demographic information, synergic and research experience, and synergic activities, as well as provide a short statement (<500 words) explaining why they are interested in attending the workshop. 

The deadline for applications is Thursday, June 29th. Please click on this link to apply: https://forms.gle/aBNaL6uQWfaEjMJCA