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1. Surveying Hawai‘i’s geoscience employers and alumni to understand evolving workforce needs

   Mendoza, Maria_Daniella; Bruno, Barbara C (August 2025, Geological Society of America)

   MacDonald, JH; Clary, RM; Archer, RS; Broadway, RL (Ed.)

   The skills needed for the geoscience workforce evolve as new technology and scientific knowledge are developed. However, there is a knowledge gap concerning what specific skill sets are necessary for recent graduates and what skills those graduates have acquired. To fill this knowledge gap specifically for the state of Hawai‘i, we surveyed local geoscience employers as well as alumni from the University of Hawai‘i School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). We received survey responses from 30 employers in the public and private sectors and 30 recent SOEST graduates at the bachelor, master, and doctoral levels. Survey results indicated that, overall, Hawai‘i’s geoscience employers and SOEST alumni agree on which skills are important for geoscience employees to have. Top-rated technical skills included fieldwork/sampling, data management, and data analysis. Data visualization and geographic information system (GIS) skills/mapping were also considered important. Additionally, both groups agreed on the importance of many nontechnical skills, including technical report writing, time management, teamwork, problem-solving, interpersonal communication, and working independently. In both technical and nontechnical skills, any differences between employer and alumni responses were not statistically significant. We believe that having this clear understanding of the skill sets that are in high demand can help to broaden participation in geoscience careers in Hawai‘i. 

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2. Exploring the stability of the gender gap in faculty perceptions of gender climate at a rural regional university

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301285  

   Bordieri, Michael J; Waddill, Paula J; Zhang, Qiaofeng; McCarthy, Maeve L; Fuller, Claire; Balthrop, David (April 2024, PLOS ONE)

   Dabija, Dan-Cristian (Ed.)

   Increasing awareness of gender barriers and biases in academic institutions is an essential component of institutional change strategies to promote equity and inclusion. There is an established perception gap in recognizing gender inequities in the workplace, whereby men faculty under acknowledge the stressors, barriers, and biases faced by their women faculty colleagues. This study explored the gender gap in faculty perceptions of institutional diversity climate at a rural comprehensive regional university in the United States. In addition to gender, differences across academic discipline and time were explored using 2 (men and women) x 2 (STEM and other) x 2 (2017 and 2022) between-groups ANOVAs. Results revealed a gender gap that persisted across time and perceptions of stressors, diversity climate, student behavior, leadership, and fairness in promotion/tenure procedures, with marginalized (women) faculty consistently reporting greater barriers/concern for women faculty relative to the perceptions of their men faculty colleagues. These findings are largely consistent with the extant literature and are discussed both with regard to future research directions and recommendations for reducing the perception gap and addressing institutional barriers to gender equity. 

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3. Developing a Measure of Engineering Students’ Makerspace Learning, Perceptions, and Interactions

   Lanci, Sarah; Nadelson, Louis; Villanueva, Idalis; Bouwma-Gearhart, Jana; Youmans, Kate; Lenz, Adam (June 2018, American Society of Engineering Education)

   Makerspaces have become a rather common structure within engineering education programs. The spaces are used in a wide range of configurations but are typically intended to facilitate student collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking, essentially giving students the opportunity to learn 21st century skills and develop deeper understanding of the processes of engineering. Makerspace structure, layout, and use has been fairly well researched, yet the impact of makerspaces on student learning is understudied, somewhat per a lack of tools to measure student learning in these spaces. We developed a survey tool to assess undergraduate engineering students’ perceptions and learning in makerspaces, considering levels of students’ motivation, professional identity, engineering knowledge, and belongingness in the context of makerspaces. Our survey consists of multiple positively-phrased (supporting a condition) and some negatively-phrased (refuting a condition) survey items correlated to each of our four constructs. Our final survey contained 60 selected response items including demographic data. We vetted the instrument with an advisory panel for an additional level of validation and piloted the survey with undergraduate engineering students at two universities collecting completed responses from 196 participants. Our reliability analysis and additional statistical calculations revealed our tool was statistically sound and was effectively gathering the data we designed the instrument to measure. 

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4. Small disturbances and subsequent competition for light can maintain a diversity of demographic strategies in a neotropical forest: Results from model–data integration

   https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.70118  

   Cinoğlu, Damla; Rüger, Nadja; Decker, Robin_R; Farrior, Caroline_E (July 2025, Journal of Ecology)

   Abstract Niche differentiation with respect to light availability as it varies across succession has often been thought to explain tree species coexistence. Demographic light‐related niches represented by growth‐survival and stature‐recruitment trade‐offs and captured by demographic groups (slow, fast, long‐lived pioneers, short‐lived breeders and intermediate) have been shown to accurately represent the biomass dynamics of secondary and old‐growth forests in central Panama in a model. However, whether the simple mechanisms of that well‐parameterized and accurate model are enough to support the long‐term coexistence of demographic groups across these trade‐offs has yet to be tested.Here, we develop a model to test whether stochastic, small‐scale gap disturbances and subsequent competition for light can support the long‐term coexistence of the observed demographic groups in the Barro Colorado Island forest dynamics plot. Specifically, to test whether the demographic differences among species promote coexistence, we compare niche simulation models, parameterized by the different demographic groups, to a variety of neutral models, where the species have the same demographic parameters.Upon exploring the estimated range of possible parameterizations of recruitment (a difficult‐to‐measure parameter), we identify several parameterizations where differences among groups along the growth‐survival and stature‐recruitment trade‐off axes facilitate long‐term coexistence. We find that gap disturbances are essential for these results, indicating that it is the differences in the subsequent competition for light through time that provide the opportunity for stabilizing niche differentiation. Additionally, the parameterizations that generate stable coexistence display successional negative density dependence and realistic within‐patch post‐disturbance forest dynamics.Synthesis. This model‐data integration exercise indicates that small‐scale disturbances and subsequent competition for light may be significant forces for stable diversity maintenance of demographic groups along the growth–survival and stature–recruitment trade‐off axes in a neotropical forest. This result, however, holds only for a subset of the empirically reasonable recruitment parameters, indicating the importance of improving the understanding of recruitment and its demographic trade‐offs for understanding demographic strategy coexistence. 

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5. Exclusionary Behaviors Reinforce Historical Biases and Contribute to Loss of Talent in the Earth Sciences

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EF002912  

   Marin‐Spiotta, Erika; Diaz‐Vallejo, Emily J.; Barnes, Rebecca T.; Mattheis, Allison; Schneider, Blair; Berhe, Asmeret Asefaw; Hastings, Meredith G.; Williams, Billy M.; Magley, Vicki (February 2023, Earth's Future)

   Abstract Geosciences remain one of the least diverse fields. Efforts to diversify the discipline need to address the role of hostile and exclusionary work and learning environments. A workplace climate survey distributed to five professional organizations illustrates varied experiences of earth and space scientists over a 12‐month period (pre‐COVID). A majority experienced positive interactions in the workplace. However, scientists of color, women and non‐binary individuals, scientists with disabilities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, pansexual, and asexual (LGBQPA+) scientists more frequently experienced negative interactions, including interpersonal mistreatment, discriminatory language, and sexual harassment. Geoscientists of color were more likely to experience devaluation of their work than white scientists. More than half of women and non‐binary respondents, as well as those who identify as LGBQPA+ experienced identity‐based discriminatory remarks. Disabled geoscientists were more likely to hear negative identity‐based language than those who did not disclose a disability. Overall, 14% of all respondents experienced sexual harassment in the previous year. Rates were greatest for historically excluded groups: non‐binary (51%), LGBQPA+ (33%), disabled (26%), women (20%), and geoscientists of color (17%). A majority of geoscientists reported avoiding their colleagues and almost a third considered leaving their institution or a career change. Historically excluded groups were more likely to report opting out of professional activities with potential career consequences. To address continued exclusion and low retention in the earth and space sciences, recruitment is not enough. We need to create environments that ensure opportunities for all to thrive. 

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