EFI Book Club Suggestions & Actions Items

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November 27, 2023

The following document was created by the DEI Working Group in October 2023 in response to the final discussion of the group that participated in the book club which read “97 Things About Ethics Everyone in Data Science Should Know”.  

Goals of this document:

  1. Provide a summary of action items suggested during book clubs. The summary is a living document kept on the EFI Book Club webpage and action items will be added from future book clubs. This document is to be used as a reference to support and inspire activities for EFI that can be developed/led as individuals have time, availability, and interest in doing so
  2. Provide an opportunity to collate and celebrate activities that have taken place and those activities that will take place in the future that have been inspired by or align with suggestions from the book clubs.

Books Read

Note: There was a group within EFI that read Spatio-Temporal Statistics with R. That book group was not led by the DEI working group and was not included in this assessment.

Have we done any of the stuff we planned to do?

  1. From 97 Things About Ethics
    1. Summarize ideas we’ve had in previous book clubs and do self-assessment
      1. This document!
  2. From Braiding Sweetgrass
    1. Gratitude statement regarding data as a gift from the community, posted in:
      1. Newsletter
      2. Book club page
    2. The book club included student participants from the Sustainable Land and Water Resources (SLAWR) REU which provided opportunities for discussions across career stages and sectors
  3. From Weapons of Math Destruction
    1. JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, inclusion) database assessing who is in EFI is a good place to start to contribute to the self-assessment
      1. Dave Klinges (University of Florida) has worked with EFI Community Manager, Jody Peters (University of Notre Dame) to develop a workflow to assess the demographics of EFI members and how that changes through time
  4. From The Years That Matter Most and from Caste
    1. DEI Workshop ideas – webinar series leading up to workshops. Whose voices do we want to hear ahead of time
    2. Culturally competent training
      1. In late 2020/early 2021 the EFI DEI working group hosted 4 panels for the “Conversations on Diversity and Data Seminar Series.” See the links below for the recordings for each panel and the resources shared.
      2. What do diverse students need to thrive in data- and computer-heavy settings? November 19, 2020
      3. What does culturally competent data science training look like? January 20, 2021
      4. How can 4-year data-driven institutions and programs support students transferring from community colleges? February 19, 2021 
      5. What kind of online tools are useful and work well for remote learning and teaching? March 25, 2021 
  5. From Caste:
    1. Mentorship networks and having a series of mentors
      1. EFISA co-working session
      2. Developing a mentoring network for minority students is one of the goals of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Equitable Pathways funding from the project “A Generation of Native American Earth and Environmental Data Scientists” that EFI is involved with
        1. Still working on developing this, but the idea is for BIPOC students in research to have mentors from their own institution as well as mentors from the institutions they are doing research with and that the mentors will continue to support the students beyond the original activity
  6. From the Years That Matter Most
    1. Train the trainers
      1. This is something that continues to be included in EFI-led proposals.  Freya Olsson is also thinking about updating her NEON Forecasting Challenge workshop material which is currently geared towards participants wanting to learn how to submit forecasts to the Challenge to be applicable for people want to teach others how to submit to the Forecasting Challenge
      2. On the October 2023 Education working group call, the group discussed the following two papers. The first is about the needs for instructor training for people teaching data science at the collegiate level. The second provides papers, discussion prompts, and R code materials that can be used or modified for teaching ecological forecasting at the upper undergrad/early grad student level
        1. Emery et al 2021: Instructor Training Needs for Data Science
        2. Ernest et al 2023: Ecological Forecasting & Dynamics Course
    2. Highlight the #jobs and #funding Slack channels in the newsletter and in the welcome letter for new EFI members.

Do any of the ideas overlap between books? 

  1. The Years That Matter Most, Caste, and 97 Things: mentorship, supporting involvement, inclusive trainings
    1. Ongoing EFI efforts with potential overlap:
      1. EFISA efforts to share grant applications
  2. Braiding Sweetgrass, Weapons of Math Destruction, and 97 Things: addressing unintended consequences of forecasts and taking time for self reflection
    1. Ongoing EFI efforts with potential overlap:
      1. Examining EFI efforts from the lens of Design Justice Principles
      2. Social scientist-ecologist matchmaking

A full list of the notes and recommendations compiled from the book clubs can be found in the living document on the EFI Book Club webpage.