Sharing geoscience's distinct legacy of broadening participation at the Second National Conference

In the summer of 1972, Dr. Randolph Bromery convened the First National Conference on Minority Participation in Earth Science and Mineral Engineering. This landmark event brought together academics, educators, government officials, and civil rights leaders to assess the state of the geoscience workforce, and identify strategies to broaden participation. Despite wide media attention and remarkable attendance, the Conference has fallen out of the collective memory of the geoscience community. Fifty years later, in the summer of 2022, we organized a Second National Conference (SNC) to convene an interdisciplinary, visionary gathering that would engage with the same fundamental questions in new ways. The goals of the SNC: Justice in Geoscience (held August 2022 in Washington, D.C.) are to (1) create a community-driven report documenting strategies and accountability measures for transforming the geoscience workforce over the next 50 years; (2) foster communities, coalitions, and networks across a spectra of identities and positionalities that can sustainably drive transformation; (3) celebrate the unique and visionary legacy of broadening participation in geosciences; and (4) construct and steward radical Earth-learning environments during and after the conference.

Here we share the strategies we used to engage new audiences in the call for broadening participation in geoscience across conference programming, communications, partnerships, and fundraising. We highlight the methods we used to center BA-JEDI principles in conference structure and outcomes. We describe how our approach provided opportunities for practitioners from diverse spheres to advance conference objectives, with a focus on engaging scientists of historically oppressed and ignored communities. We discuss how distinct programming strategies piloted at the SNC, for example daily writing groups tailored to participant preferences for community- or coalition-building, helped participants cultivate their own personal connections with the legacies of broadening participation in geoscience, enabling them to be better stewards and champions of that legacy into the future. Finally, we articulate how we integrated BA-JEDI principles into our professional development strategy for the PIs in this early-career-driven initiative.