URGE virtual seminar hosted by GES

Wed, 28 Apr 2021 10:45:58 -0400

Next Wednesday May 5 from 12 noon-1 pm, please join us for the last GES seminar of the year presented by two members of the team that developed the URGE (Unlearning Racism in Geoscience) project. One of the leads on this project is our own alumnus Gabe Duran, a 2020 UMBC graduate with degrees from GES and Biological Sciences.

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Unlearning Racism in Geoscience

Gabriel Duran

Research Assistant, Woodwell Climate Research Centre

Dr. Phoebe Cohen

Associate Professor of Geosciences, Williams College

The death of George Floyd brought a series of protests calling on the use of anti-racist measures to improve accessibility, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (AJEDI) in local communities, workplaces, governments, universities, and professional societies. To aid in these efforts, Unlearning Racism in Geoscience (URGE) was developed to shift the culture in geosciences from one that is, at best, passively not racist to one that is actively anti-racist. URGE is a national journal-reading and anti-racist policy-design program that helps Geoscientists unlearn racism and improve AJEDI in the discipline. URGE's primary objectives are to (1) deepen the community’s knowledge of the effects of racism on the participation and retention of Black, Indigenous and people of color in Geoscience, (2) draw on existing literature, expert opinions, and personal experiences to develop anti-racist policies and strategies, and (3) share, discuss, and modify anti-racist policies and strategies within a dynamic community network and on a national stage. Since its launch date in mid-January, URGE has brought together over 3800 geoscientists across almost 280 pods in the US and abroad to join in the efforts to implement anti-racist strategies and policies in their communities, labs, departments, and institutions.

Gabriel Duran received a BS in Geography and Environmental Systems and a BA in Biology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2020. He is now a Biology MSc student with a focus in biogeochemistry at the Université du Québec à Montréal. He is also a Research Assistant at the Woodwell Climate Research Center where he is supporting the arctic research team in the mapping of gas emission craters and retrogressive thaw slumps across Northern Siberia. He previously supported the soil carbon team in the analysis of thousands of soil samples from across the Midwest United States using diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. He is co-leader of Unlearning Racism in Geoscience (URGE) where he created the URGE curriculum alongside Dr. Vashan Wright and continues to support and facilitate URGE initiatives, including live events, BIPOC Listening sessions, URGE deliverables, conference planning, etc.

Dr. Phoebe Cohen is an Associate Professor in Geosciences at Williams College. Phoebe is a paleontologist who utilizes a wide variety of microscopic and microchemical techniques, combined with data from field-based stratigraphy and sedimentology, to reconstruct ancient organisms and ecosystems, mostly through the lens of microfossils. Much of her work focuses on the evolution of life in the Proterozoic, before the rise of animals. Phoebe received her undergraduate degree in Earth Systems Science at Cornell University and her PhD in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences school at Harvard University in 2010. Phoebe is very involved in justice, equity, diversity and inclusion work in the geosciences and is also actively involved in the Paleontological Society. In 2012, Phoebe was awarded the Geological Society of America Subaru Outstanding Woman in Science Award. Her research is funded by the NASA Astrobiology program, The American Chemical Society, and The National Science Foundation.

Cosponsored by the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology, the Center for Social Science Scholarship, the Provost's Office, UMBC's ICARE (Interdisciplinary Consortium for Applied Research in the Environment), the Department of Chemical, Biochemical and Environmental Engineering, and the Department of Geography & Environmental Systems