Social justice awareness in the undergraduate ecology classroom

Science, like many other fields, must address the legacies of injustice and inequities that have influenced research findings, policy outcomes, and participants of science. In ecology specifically, there have been calls to action to address social justice awareness gaps, dismantle bias, and build greater equity. Most actions resulting from these calls focus on practices in research labs, while little work and research investigates how this call is being addressed in university education settings. Although administration-level changes are underway, college campuses and classrooms are the centers of social change and action in the United States and around the world. The college classroom allows for bottom-up reform, and we therefore sought to describe college students' awareness of institutional, structural, and cultural racism in ecology. We then implemented a classroom intervention where students collect and analyze data on how racism, sexism, and colonialism have impacted the field of ecology. After the intervention, we observed a shift in student perceptions, and students became more aware of how racism and colonialism have shaped the field. Our work demonstrates the importance of actively engaging students in conversations on racism, sexism, and colonialism as a critical part of college ecology curricula to build cultural competency and the value of additional work on curriculum reform to change perceptions about social justice in ecology.