COS 167-3 - Takeaways from assessing abilities and experiences of Ecology and Environmental Science Mentoring Programs in mentoring Deaf and hard of hearing students

Background/Question/Methods

Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) individuals are disproportionately underrepresented in STEM careers and likely more so within ecology related fields than other science fields. Many ecology and environmental science organizations have mentoring programs for underrepresented students. These programs serve all underrepresented groups and may lack the experience in serving DHH individuals to ensure a rewarding experience for in-person and virtual meeting environments. Scientific conferences are a challenge for DHH individuals as language barriers occur during formal and informal meeting activities. We conducted a survey of ecology and environmental science organizations both with mentoring programs and without formal mentoring programs to address four research questions: 1) what experience do these organizations have in serving DHH individuals? 2) what abilities do the organizations have in pairing DHH participants with DHH role models? 3) what are the challenges the organizations faced in serving DHH individuals? and 4) do organizations with a formal mentoring program exhibit a greater number of positive responses with respect to providing support for DHH participants than organizations without a formal mentoring program? The survey was comprised of multiple-choice and open-ended questions and was distributed online to 50 organizations during autumn 2021.

Results/Conclusions

Survey completion rate was 48% with 14 organizations having a formal mentoring program and ten organizations without a formal mentoring program. Many organizations responded that they were unaware of DHH participants in their programs and events, which suggested that organizational experience in serving DHH participants is low. Additionally, 63% of organizations indicated they did not provide hearing mentors with resources to prepare them to mentor DHH students. A greater percent of organizations with mentoring programs provided mentor/mentee activities during the annual meetings (59%) than those without formal mentoring programs (36%). We also found a greater percent of organizations with mentoring programs provided captioning at in-person and virtual meetings (52%) than those without formal mentoring programs (22%). Notably, the percentage of organizations with and without formal mentoring programs that provided other communication services (e.g., ASL interpreting) at both in-person and virtual meetings was similar (13% with; 8% without). Our preliminary results suggest that ecology and environmental science organizations rely on DHH individuals to self-identify, which could overlook DHH participants who would benefit from communications support and networking opportunities. Moreover, creating an inclusive and welcoming environment for DHH individuals will strengthen ecology and environmental sciences by bringing unique perspectives and experiences.