OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
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Oregon Sea Grant’s Vision...
is one of thriving coastal communities and ecosystems in Oregon. This vision cannot truly be realized in a world where systems of oppression, injustice and inequity persist.
Between 2016 and 2019, Oregon Sea Grant convened two “Empowering Workplace Committees” to focus on improving the culture at Oregon Sea Grant. These committees conducted surveys internal to Sea Grant and interviews with all staff. The outcome of this work was diversity, equity, and inclusion offerings for internal and external audiences, including training, resources and recommendations.
In response to the high-profile murders of black Americans in 2020, Oregon Sea Grant shifted the focus of our work to combating systems of oppression to stand in solidarity with the black community. A volunteer group of Oregon Sea Grant employees formed the diversity, equity, inclusion, justice and access (DEIJA) group and worked together to articulate Oregon Sea Grant’s Guiding Principles. In 2022, the DEIJA group decided to hire paid DEIJA co-leads to carry forward the work of the group.
2022 Activities:
2023 Activities:
Oregon Sea Grant’s DEIJA group has decided to focus on accessibility this year. More information will be posted here as it becomes available.
As an organization, we are committed to abiding by the following Guiding Principles that will be reassessed annually and will evolve as needed.
Oregon Sea Grant is Committed to:
Listen to and learn from communities historically underserved by Oregon Sea Grant and others to more effectively amplify diverse perspectives and ensure culturally responsive and inclusive practices in our organization.
Recognize the ways in which we as individuals and as an organization benefit from privilege and systems of oppression that perpetuate injustice, and take action to address bias and injustice within our organization.
Advance greater equity and address all systems of oppression (e.g. sexism, racism, ageism, ableism, and others) through our programs.
Do the work, hold ourselves accountable for change, and make progress toward the goals articulated in these guiding principles.
Oregon Sea Grant stands in solidarity with Black, Indigenous and People of Color communities and commits to creating safe and inclusive spaces throughout our work.
Today, Oregon Sea Grant is an active partner in programs that work to undo the harms of systemic racism, including:
Oregon Sea Grant is committed to inclusive and equitable recruitment of students, researchers and staff. We include links below to programs that we have created or supported that focus on equitable recruitment:
Since 2019, Oregon Sea Grant has implemented a double-blind review in some of our competitive research calls, where we ask a subset of reviewers to focus solely on the merits of the proposed research. In a traditional review, reviewers consider the research team’s qualifications in their review, evaluating the researchers’ capacity to conduct the research and manage the project. In the double-blind review, all personally identifiable information (PII) is redacted from all proposal materials before it is reviewed, allowing the double-blind reviewer to evaluate just the research.
The research team receives blinded comments from both our traditional and double-blind reviewers, and they can provide a rebuttal to the review before final decisions are made. As with the traditional peer-review process, the identities of all of our reviewers are withheld from the researchers at all stages of the review.
Oregon Sea Grant seeks reviews from traditional and double-blind reviewers to build equity in our review process.
Oregon Sea Grant is committed to transparency in our power structures. As part of this commitment, we maintain an updated organizational chart to illustrate the connections between Oregon Sea Grant team members and our counterparts at Oregon State University. This transparency allows people to understand lines of reporting and communication within our organization, so that everyone knows who they can go to for support and accountability. We expect this to be helpful for both current Sea Grant and other Oregon State University employees, as well as people considering applying for jobs with Oregon Sea Grant.
See the most recent program org chart (pdf) (accessible pdf).
