Scott Jess and Lindsay Schoenbohm

VIEW to the U: An eye on UTM academic community

Creating more equitable environments in academia On this episode of VIEW to the U, guests are Profs Scott Jess and Lindsay Schoenbohm – Lindsay is a faculty member in UTM's Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences, where she has served as its Chair since 2019, and Scott, a former postdoc in Lindsay’s lab, is currently a faculty member in the School of the Environment at Washington State University. Over the course of this interview, Scott and Lindsay talk a bit about their field – geosciences and how they got into this particular area of research – but also their motivations for partnering up for a very profound collaboration that they undertook: “A Demographic Survey of Canadian Academic Geosciences.” Their “Demographic Trends in Canadian Academic Geoscience” report was published in 2023. The findings in this report are stark, and, as will be discussed, focus primarily in relation to the state of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion – or what’s commonly referred to as “EDI” or DEI – in geosciences, however, the statistics, which are not widely available in Canada – one of the reasons Scott spearheaded this research with Lindsay and Emily Heer from the University of Calgary in the first place. Resources - A full transcript of this interview is available at https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/dean/view-u-transcribed-scott-jess-washington-state-university-and-lindsay-schoenbohm-chemical-physical - Scott, Lindsay, and Emily's report is at Report https://www.geodemographicscananda.com/ - U.S. National Science Foundation report https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report/introduction#overview - Lindsay Schoenbohm’s website https://www.lindsay-schoenbohm.com/ - Scott Jess’s website https://www.scott-jess.com/ - Dancy and Hodari article “How well-intentioned white male physicists maintain ignorance of inequity and justify inaction” https://stemeducationjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40594-023-00433-8 - Lindsay was also on a previous episode of VIEW to the U in 2018 https://soundcloud.com/user-642323930/lindsay-schoenbohm-earthy-pursuits