Inclusion

We welcome all people and we work to make sure that no one feels alone. Come with your identity, emotions, and thoughts because all parts of yourself deserve to be seen and heard. Bring your beliefs, religion, and faith; we know that our scientific study of the ocean cannot be separated from its spirit. We invite in your gender, race, ethnicity, and abilities to our community because they are not invisible. We respect and cherish the many ways you express your love within our community; thank you for sharing a small part of your heart, soul, and story with us as we explore the oceans. Making sure that each of us feels included and welcome takes continual work. This will be an ever-evolving page. Here are some ways we are participating right now in making this space feel more inclusive to all people.

How to get informed and make your space more inclusive.

Make your online classrooms as accessible as possible. Some suggestions are:

• Closed captioning available on videos and live presentation closed captioning
• Have alternative text documents available that are easily read by text-to-speech software
• For more information, visit https://www.washington.edu/accessibility/
• https://www.washington.edu/compliance/ada

Pronouns

We do not assume a person's pronouns without asking them first. When we introduce ourselves, we include our personal pronouns so that people know how we would like to be referred to in the third person. A person's pronouns are not “preferred”, they are intrinsic, as they are a statement of fact. Feel free to ask people their pronouns. Some people use multiple pronouns like He/They.

MyPronouns.org Resources on Personal Pronouns
 

Actions:

• Add your pronouns to your email signatures and Zoom name for example She/Her, They/Them, He/Him, Ze/Zir (rhymes with he/her), etc.
• Share your own pronouns when you introduce yourself “Hi my name is Gumbis and I use She/Her pronouns”
• Ask a person's pronouns rather than making assumptions.
• If you haven’t seen someone in a while, check-in to see if their pronouns have changed

Race Talk

Join the Race Talk Book Club! Race Talk Book Club is a grad student run book club focusing on dismantling systemic racism, and promoting racial justice within our department by educating ourselves and dissolving our own internal racism. Everyone in our community is welcome to participate in this book club. Each quarter we focus on different topics (Autumn: Racism within Academia, Winter: Indigenous justice and decolonization, Spring: Intersectionality)

Email Hannah Glover hglover@uw.edu or Rosiland Echols rechols@uw.edu to join

Books we have read:

• So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
• Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence, Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogue on Race by Derald Wing Sue
• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

All of these books are available at the UW library however we encourage you to purchase these books to support the authors.

Afloat Challenges

Folks across the Oceanography community are participating in weekly or biweekly challenges to compete for prizes! We started the Afloat challenges during Spring of 2020 to build community across the internet. Find out more and join us at:

https://www.ocean.washington.edu/story/Afloat