THE AGU ETHICS AND EQUITY CENTER: NEW RESOURCES AND ACTIONS TO HELP ADVANCE DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION (DE&I) IN EARTH AND SPACE SCIENCES

Diversity, equity, and inclusion opportunities in the Earth and space sciences, including the issue of harassment and its impact on women scientists, are now well know and documented. Building on its earlier work of establishing an updated AGU Ethics Policy which defines harassment as scientific misconduct, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) has taken additional significant steps over the past 18 months to further advance DE&I practices, including steps to help prevent harassment and provide new resources for supporting a more equitable and inclusive culture. This presentation will highlight the unique role that professional societies can take to help change the culture in science, technology engineering and math (STEM) fields, and recent AGU actions, including the introduction of a new Ethics and Equity Resource Center, and the establishment of a formal coalition of more than one-hundred scientific societies in the U.S. to help address harassment and associated issues in science. Progress to date and remaining challenges to advance diversity, equity and inclusion related practices, and to track the impact of these changes, will be discussed.