Graduate Climate Conference Diversity Statement

The GCC is committed to cultivating an equitable and inclusive environment for all members of our community. The GCC believes diversity and inclusion are essential to creating a thriving community that can achieve excellence in research, and thus we strive to ensure people of all backgrounds feel welcome at our conference. The organizers will work to foster an environment wherein diversity, equity, and inclusion are recognized and celebrated. The GCC is committed to ensuring that this conference is a space where students have the opportunity to share traditional knowledge as well as highlight and/or address inequities in climate science.

Specific actions that the GCC will take in order to ensure an equitable and inclusive environment from the application process to the conference itself are:

  • Reaching out to geoscience departments at Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The GCC intends to send an overview of the conference description, agenda, logistics, and application information, and members of the organizing committee will be available to answer any questions and help with the application process.
  • Providing participants with a number of papers on diversity, equity and inclusion, that all are expected to read. These papers will be relevant to a keynote session during the GCC that will focus on topics covered by the readings.
  • Including a keynote on diversity, equity, and inclusion and a dedicated discussion period following the keynote. During the discussion period, participants will also be asked to discuss and share best practices and lessons learned from URGE (Unlearning Racism in the Geosciences) pods at their home institutions.
  • Blind evaluation of all applications conducted by at least two committee members.
  • Establishing clear expectations for appropriate and inclusive behavior during the conference, as laid out in the GCC Code of Conduct.
    • All participants will be expected to read and agree to the GCC Code of Conduct in advance of the conference. Adherence to this Code of Conduct will help advance the GCC’s goal of enabling and encouraging all meeting attendees to participate fully in the conference.
  • Hosting participatory workshops, of which 50% will be relevant to the topics of diversity, equity and inclusion.
  • Committing to record and evaluate the conference in the following ways:
    • Participants will be asked for their gender and racial identities. Since the review process will be conducted blind to identity and institution affiliation, we expect the participants to reflect the population of applicants, but upon completion, if the accepted population is unbalanced in some way, we will re-evaluate the review criteria to aim for equal representation.
    • Participants will be prompted to identify their pronouns upon registering, and during the Q&A sessions, moderators will strive to maintain a balance between individuals of different identities when soliciting questions.
  • GCC organizers will conduct a survey at the end of the conference to collect feedback on conference diversity, equity, and inclusivity and what future GCCs might do better.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice at the GCC

We will have two keynote speakers at the GCC: a speaker to discuss diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ), and an early career scientist with a unique perspective on career paths in research, academia, science communication, and beyond.

Read about the speakers on the Schedule & Abstracts page.