UAPB helps in promoting diversity
Representatives of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff Department of Aquaculture and Fisheries recently helped facilitate the first session on diversity and inclusion at the annual Aquaculture America meeting in San Antonio, said Rebecca Lochmann, the UAPB department chair.
Hosted by the U.S. Aquaculture Society, Aquaculture America is the nation’s only major national aquaculture conference and exposition.
“Demonstrated benefits of diversity, equity and inclusion in an organization include getting a variety of perspectives and increased engagement, creativity and decision making, as well as an enhanced reputation of the organization,” Lochmann said. “USAS is assessing its efforts to be welcoming and inclusive of all people interested in this field.”
Because the UAPB Department of Aquaculture and Fisheries recently developed its own DEI plan, Lochmann volunteered to join the USAS diversity and inclusion committee and help create their first session at the San Antonio meeting.
In planning the session, she enlisted the help of Christopher Kennedy, a UAPB graduate of fisheries biology who currently serves as assistant to the director of inclusion and diversity at the Missouri Department of Conservation.
“Chris has become an experienced speaker and facilitator of sessions on this topic in his current position with the Missouri Department of Conservation,” she said. “Therefore, I invited him to play a major role in providing planning and facilitation for our session at the USAS meeting. He did a wonderful job and helped raise the profile of UAPB as an alumnus of our program.”
FOSTERING CHANGE
Kennedy said his first step in developing the session was to review USAS’ mission and charter.
“This step is important for success, as inclusion and diversity concepts must be incorporated into the society’s mission, charter and strategic planning efforts,” he said. “Any entity embarking on a DEI initiative must have leadership consensus regarding their current status, a realistic vision of what success looks like and how success will be measured.”
He also reviewed a recent USAS survey that assessed its members’ demographics, barriers and perceptions about inclusion and diversity. During initial planning meetings, he held discussions about the organization’s current conditions, desired future conditions and potential barriers to achieving those results. They then started developing an initial strategy.
The session Kennedy developed sought to provide a safe and inclusive environment and forum where questions related to DEI in the professional society could be discussed freely. It included an open discussion of practical issues experienced by USAS members throughout their careers, as well as roundtable discussions on ways USAS can increase DEI both internally and across the aquaculture industry.
“I can’t represent all people’s perspectives, but most of our initial discussions pertained to race,” he said. “Many issues were brought up by the participants including a lack of career awareness at an early age, a lack of mentorship and career exposure, experiencing passive aggression or harassment from co-workers or the community they are visiting and historical policies that have excluded Black Americans from the field of aquaculture.”
In facilitating discussions on sensitive topics among a large group of people with different backgrounds, Kennedy said it is important to create a “safe space.” This technique is an essential tool for organizations to share high stakes information and discuss triggering situations, dysfunctional dynamics and behaviors that plague the organization’s ability to reach its goals.
“To overcome the initial conversational barriers, our group began by establishing ground rules for a healthy conversation,” Kennedy said. “We all agreed to create room for one another by ignoring our own perspective to learn about the perspective of others, creating a judgmentor penalty-free zone, remaining respectful, being non-confrontational and staying committed to emotional control and being empathetic toward one another.”
By following these rules, the group was able to have difficult conversations and form consensus, Kennedy said. Once this type of atmosphere is created with decent facilitation, productive discussions are more likely.
“With the current polarization within our society, we all must work hard within our own spheres to resolve our differences through heartfelt and safe conversations,” he said. “This is most difficult today, especially regarding the conversation of race. Many families don’t talk about race in America, while others talk about it frequently. This has yielded a barrier-rich conversational environment where, for example, we fear using the wrong words to describe someone or we quickly become emotional because of our close ties to the topic.”
Kennedy said ultimately the DEI session at the Aquaculture America event is the first step for USAS. The organization is now more prepared to continue the DEI conversation, assess barriers, develop strategies and identify current and future measures for success.
“I would like to thank the U.S. Aquaculture Society for having the courage and collective desire to improve inclusion and diversity within the organization,” he said. “I considered it a great privilege to be asked to assist USAS and hope to have more opportunities to help them in the future. Hopefully, these efforts will ultimately provide students with more opportunities for career exploration, internships, professional development and work opportunities.”
Addressing the communication breakdown on issues relating to race, diversity, equity and inclusion can help organizations and society as a whole.
“Our American experience is dramatically influenced by our gender, race and status,” he said. “We live in such a segregated society that it makes it very difficult to have fruitful discussions that would yield the needed understanding to resolve our societal issues. Sharing diverse experiences is one strategy that can be utilized to help build empathy for one another. This also improves our ability to develop strategies for resolving disparities across our population demographics.”
“To overcome the initial conversational barriers, our group began by establishing ground rules for a healthy conversation. We all agreed to create room for one another by ignoring our own perspective to learn about the perspective of others, creating a judgment- or penalty-free zone, remaining respectful, being non-confrontational, and staying committed to emotional control and being empathetic toward one another.”
— Christopher Kennedy, Assistant to the director of inclusion and diversity at the Missouri Department of Conservation