Associate Professor University of South Florida Tampa, Florida, United States
The Strategies for Ecology Education, Diversity, and Sustainability program (SEEDS) is a flagship program of ESA, which has been running for over 25 years. It seeks to broaden participation in ecology by providing opportunities for students from diverse backgrounds to engage with ecologists and learn more about ecology and ecology careers. The core SEEDS program components offer hands-on, engaging experiences with ecology for undergraduate students. These experiences include a variety of events, like regional and national field trips, annual meetings, and leadership meetings.
This talk shares the evaluation of ESA SEEDS activities by its participants. Participants at all events between 2019 and 2022 responded to pre-and post-meeting surveys, which asked students to report on the following topics: 1) Demographic information, 2) Confidence/efficacy in their ecology content and skills, and 3) Sense of identity as ecologists/scientists and sense of belonging to the science/ecology community. In the post-survey, students were also asked to report on perceptions of the event, including aspects that were impactful or could be improved. Pre- and post-evaluation data were compared using T-tests for normal and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests for non-normally distributed data. Effect sizes using Cohen’s D were calculated to determine the strength of the change after participation in each SEEDS event. Effect size values ranged from small 0.20, medium 0.50, large 0.80, and very large >1. Qualitative coding of open-response items was also conducted to determine themes in students’ perceptions of the meeting and areas for improvement.
The survey results revealed that SEEDS events significantly increase participants’ interest and awareness of ecology as a career (2022 Leadership Meeting 6/9 items, p<0.01). Additionally, items asking about the participant’s awareness of the diverse areas of career options in ecology showed a very large effect size, >1. After their participation, students reported significant positive influences on their perceptions of their scientific identity and sense of belonging. For example, for the 2022 Annual Meeting, the item - “I feel a sense of belonging to the scientific community” had a significant change in the mean, increasing from 3.88 to 4.73, (0.004, 1.13). Qualitative coding revealed emergent topics, such as mentoring, meeting with ecologists of diverse backgrounds, and networking as the highlights of these events. These evaluations show the success of the program in building students’ interest and sense of belonging to the ecological community. Moreover, this study suggests the significance of providing these opportunities for interpersonal, community-building interactions among all ecologists.
