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First-year graduate courses foster inclusion

Nature Geoscience volume 14, pages 539–540 (2021)Cite this article

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To the Editor — Recent studies have highlighted the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in geoscience1 and the failure to increase diversity of students earning geoscience PhDs in the United States for more than 40 years2. In response to this crisis, programmes are working to expand diversity through graduate recruitment efforts3. However, our discipline will not become more diverse without making our graduate programmes more inclusive and sustainable for those who enter them. As part of our inclusive practices, we, as US professors and mentors of graduate students, have built courses for first-year graduate students that seek to make transparent the tacit knowledge needed to succeed in our discipline4, sometimes called the hidden curriculum of graduate school.

The responsibility to guide new students through the adjustment to graduate school defaults to their advisors. In reality, advisor guidance varies widely and advisors are vulnerable to survivorship bias5; the assumption that everyone will learn, grow and succeed in the same way they did may limit advisors' ability to provide needed support for students unlike themselves. Leaving students to work things out on their own promotes further inequity. Many advisors might not have open discussions with their advisees on topics such as the impact of imposter syndrome, authorship expectations, time management, funding plans, conflict management, the norms of the department or institution, mentoring needs and implicit bias. These are among the many topics that we discuss within our first-year graduate courses in order to better equip students to successfully navigate graduate school. By providing the same information to all students, these courses promote equity and inclusion.

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Fig. 1: Navigating graduate school.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geosciences Department, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA

    Michele Cooke

  2. College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL, USA

    Mya Breitbart

  3. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Emily Cooperdock

  4. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Naomi Levin & Nathan Niemi

  5. Department of Geological Sciences, Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Christopher Bell

  6. Department of Geology, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, TX, USA

    Liane Stevens

  7. Department of Geosciences, Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA

    Karen Viskupic

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  1. Michele Cooke
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  2. Mya Breitbart
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  3. Emily Cooperdock
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  8. Karen Viskupic
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Correspondence to Michele Cooke.

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Cooke, M., Breitbart, M., Cooperdock, E. et al. First-year graduate courses foster inclusion. Nat. Geosci. 14, 539–540 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00800-6

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