Critically Assessing Undergraduate Field Experiences: Understanding Conceptualizations and Opportunities for Building Inclusive Programs.

Undergraduate field experiences (UFEs) are key components of many biology, ecology, and geoscience programs and important steps to successful recruitment into careers. Through semistructured interviews of diverse field program leaders, we seek to understand how field program leaders conceptualize both their scientific disciplines and the intentional design factors they implemented within the UFE itself. Additionally, this study explores critical considerations these program leaders use to approach designing inclusive UFEs as well as the institutional and practical challenges of designing and implementing their UFEs. We acknowledge the limitations of the small sample of respondents, and our intent with this article is to explore these responses as a way to share critical design factors for designing and implementing inclusive UFEs with the broader geoscience community. Building an early understanding of these factors will help new field program leaders address multiple, simultaneous challenges that currently foment the underrepresentation of students from marginalized backgrounds in biology, ecology, and the geosciences. Through these explicit conversations, we hope to support the professional development of a scientific community that values the creation of safe, encouraging field experiences in which students can enhance their self-identity in the sciences, build peer and professional networks, and develop memorable field experiences that support their trajectories toward successful careers.

Redefining American conservation for equitable and inclusive social-environmental management.

Efforts to recruit, retain, and include Blacks, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in environmental fields often fall short, in part due to limited conceptualizations of conservation and environment. At the core of this is the North American Model for Wildlife Conservation, an important approach to conservation and wildlife management that has influenced conservation globally. This model, however, is based upon a specific subset of worldviews, driven by Western and Eurocentric constructions of wilderness and nature. This model creates a narrow view of human-environment relationships and erases cultures and communities that explicitly view themselves as part of nature. We review the seven tenets of the North American Model for Wildlife Conservation, highlighting their limitations and exclusion of other models of environmental and natural resource management and alternative relationships with nature. In order to support long-term environmental engagement and culturally responsive research, 21st century environmental practitioners should shift our thinking around conservation to center counter narratives of BIPOC communities, scientists, and professionals as part of and meaningfully connected to nature. We argue that relying solely on the historically dominant language and ideologies at the core of the North American Model perpetuates disparities in environmental engagement and limits retention of BIPOC in environmental fields. We further highlight how shifts in understanding conservation and relationships to nature enables us to re-frame our work to support equitable, inclusive, and just conservation science and practice.

Student Perceptions of Environmental and Conservation (EC) Careers: Exploring Perspectives of Diverse University Students.

We used a modified version of the social cognitive career theory to examine demographic characteristics and personal and contextual career influences relating to career behaviors. A survey of 478 undergraduates revealed neutral to positive perceptions of EC careers across demographic characteristics with some variation in perceptions based on academic level. Minorities were more likely to anticipate discrimination in their future careers and to report financial issues as career barriers. In general, students in EC fields were less likely to anticipate discrimination than those on other career paths. Results also highlighted minority underrepresentation in outdoor recreation activities, a factor associated with EC careers. Juniors and seniors reported higher EC related self-efficacy, but less positive outcome expectations than freshmen and sophomores. Awareness and understanding of factors that influence career behavior can help agencies and organizations better address equity and representation concerns.