Outreach/DEIA statement
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Community outreach, the education of our scientific workforce, mentorship, and diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) efforts should be a priority mission area for the scientific community. All of these efforts are intertwined, and take dedicated effort from those within the community to tackle. I am proud to be a part of these efforts.
Unfortunately, at the time of writing this, the scientific community does not prioritize these areas, and in failing to do so we not only limit opportunities for others, but for ourselves as well. Currently, grants and publications stand alone as, by far, the most important priorities of the academic. Teaching, mentorship and outreach are seen as strictly secondary priorities if they can even be called priorities at all.
As long as I am part of this community, I will fight to change this.
Previous versions of my website have listed deliverables I have produced in the outreach and DEIA space. I have decided to remove these, since frankly speaking, we should all be mentoring students and those who need help, volunteering our time in our schools, and generally making sure we carefully consider DEIA implications in our work.
In summary, outreach, education, mentorship, diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility should be cornerstones of our community. Here’s what I think about each of these:
- Outreach— Including new communities broadens the scientific pipeline. We’ll get more talent, which raises the standard for everyone.
- Education— One day, we will be citing our students’ work. To treat their education as secondary to our own will just end up weakening all of us.
- Mentorship— A fundamental responsibility of the scientist. Science from the outside is a closed community. The only way it continues to be effective is by prioritizing our younger members and making sure that one day they can take up the mantle [1].
- Diversity— We must prioritize including communities that have historically been systematically excluded from ours. Not only is it the right thing to do, a diverse workforce is just good business [2, 3, 4].
- Equity— Everyone deserves an equal opportunity. Everyone deserves efforts and education proportional to their needs.
- Inclusion— We have a responsibility to make everyone feel welcome so they can execute on their tasks to their full potential. Instead of being blind to identity, we must strive to be educated and proactively inclusive of peoples’ differences.
- Accessibility— Everyone should be accommodated: facilities, communication technologies, services, etc. should be easy to use such that all can use them, including those with disabilities.
Disclaimer: Matthew Carbone is a staff scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory at the time of the writing of this post. The views expressed here are those of the individual personnel quoted and are not the views of Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC or the United States Department of Energy.