My activism is an important part of my work, and I undertake projects that I believe will result in structural changes to entrenched systems in academia and society.
Towards Inclusion and Diversity in EAPS (TIDE)
Rohini Shivamoggi and I established [TIDE] during the 2019-2020 academic year to serve as an umbrella organization for grassroots diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work in our department, EAPS at MIT. TIDE runs a yearly Application Mentorship Program for prospective students to EAPS -- if you are or know a prospective geoscience PhD student, check it out! In 2020, we wrote a DEI Action Plan for our department (based on conversations at the #ShutdownSTEM day of reckoning we organized); we host a [scorecard] detailing the department's progress on our actions. The Action Plan and scorecard have been cited by Acosta et al. 2022 ("Past as prologue: Lessons from the Lamont- Doherty Earth Observatory Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force", Journal of Geoscience Education).
Support for The Reconciliation in Place Names Act (H.R. 8455)
After encountering the n-word on maps I was using to plan a field season, three friends and I started an [awareness campaign] to draw attention to U.S. House Resolution 8455: The Reconciliation in Place Names Act. We penned an [op-ed] about the Act and were interviewed for an article in Eos (["Racist Slurs in Place-Names Have to Go, Say Geoscientists,"] 19 March 2021).