VIEW to the U - EDI episode - features a photo of a mountain at the top, Professor Scott Jess from Washington State University on the left and Professor Lindsay Schoenbohm from UTM's Department of Chemical & Physical Sciences on the right
Professor Scott Jess, left, from the School of the Environment at Washington State University and Lindsay Schoenbohm from UTM's Department of Chemical & Physical Sciences

VIEW to the U - Professors Lindsay Schoenbohm and Scott Jess

Carla DeMarco
car.demarco@utoronto.ca

Creating more equitable environments in academia

On this episode of VIEW to the U, guests Scott Jess and Lindsay Schoenbohm talk about 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. 

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.

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. 

While he wants to better understand and examine these disparities further, and they plan to conduct this study every three years to monitor the status of representation in geoscience in Canada, Jess says he is less fixated on closing the gap and more intent on carving out more truly inclusive spaces in academia.