The Field Experience as a Potential Barrier to Underrepresented Minority Student Participation in Ecological Sciences

Whereas most field experiences are in remote locations, they can also occur in rural, suburban, and urban places. [...]addressing place in terms of the perceptions of physical, personal, or emotional safety among URM students will be a critical element of an explanatory model (Nelson et al. 2017). The survey instrument reflected three themes including: (1) awareness and recognition of URM student potential and needs for inclusion; (2) identifying facets of privilege along continuums of ineffective, effective, and optimized learning outcomes that could benefit URM students during field experiences; and (3) recognizing cultural competency development for delivering programs and training opportunities that interrupt the influences of place and power during their field experiences. The demographics in this exploratory project appeared to have a moderating effect where interactions occurred with other demographic variables based on whether someone was an educational “leader” or a student “learner” hereafter referred to as student (note: post-docs were considered educational “leaders” in this analysis). Given the location of the conference (Kentucky), most survey respondents indicated their job (and presumably their residence) was located in the southern United States, labeled “Dixie” (McPherson 2003, Bullard 2018). Because of this fact, the analysis plan used Dixie as a regional reference for southern states which were well represented in the same, with dichotomies framed in terms of Dixie vs.