Group ethics

Our vision

We believe in building up the team we have now and building an environment which can nurture an even more diverse team in the future. This means celebrating our differences, whether those are regarding race, status, education, background, religion, gender, or sexual orientation, as well as our successes. This means applying a critical lens to the system that we work within and help maintain. We are committed to expanding the diversity of our research group, department and scientific community to reflect the world we live in and to holding ourselves accountable towards achieving these goals.

We have summarized our mutual expectations and a mentorship agreement . Each of us is committed to this agreement, and we ask new group members to commit to it as well. This is a living document, and we adapt it regularly after feedback from each of us. Additionally, every 6 months, Jan asks every group member to fill in a survey inquiring about personal progress and plans, and discusses responses with each member. 

Commitment to our Community

In the past, many have chalked up the lack of diversity in our ranks to the field which we study or the community in which we live. This is insufficient. We must do better. As a starting point, we vow to:

  • actively recruit people of African American/Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and Native American/Alaskan Native identity (abbreviated to AHN) to our department and group, provide research opportunities to AHN students through Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) and Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science (SOARS), and recognize the wealth of contributions that these groups have made to research in ice sheets and climate. 
  • make our science accessible to everyone and reproducible by all, by publishing our results in open-access journals and sharing our code and data on publicly accessible servers. 
  • invite at least one AHN speaker to give science talks to our group per semester.
  • attend bias training on a yearly basis.
  • communicate with other white members of our community about racism.
  • speak up when others are hurting.
  • educate ourselves and to live what we learn in our daily lives, now and in the future.  

For us to truly consider ourselves friends, allies, and coworkers to people of color, we must prove it through our actions. We commit to re-evaluating our actions every semester.

In addition to our joint efforts outlined above, we aim to improve diversity in our community through department committees. These include but are not limited to: mentorship of undergraduates through REU and SOARS, programming of ATOC colloquium, advisement of prospective students through application mentorship program, science education outreach with elementary schools, and service on the Justice, Equity, Diversion, and Inclusion (JEDI) committee. Please see individual pages for more information on lab group members' involvement.