Decolonizing Conservation: The Impacts of DEI Education on Graduate Career Aspirations

Voiceover

Presenter(s)(s)

Calvin Szulc

Abstract or Description

The issues we are facing today due to climate change and increasing pressures on the environment call for a drastic shift in the way humans are interacting with the environment. This puts a greater pressure on the conservation field and environmental sector, which shifts our focus onto these sectors and emphasizes the importance of taking historical context, political motives, and longstanding effects of colonialism into the dominant framework of global conservation. As these narratives become more commonplace within conservation, it is important to understand how it affects people’s career outlooks. Through qualitative analysis of graduate student reflections on a course related to these topics, codes were used to identify themes that pertained to the student’s change in career outlook over the period of the course. Students were found to struggle with their perceptions of conservation and grew to understand their positionality within conservation as the course progressed. These realizations allowed students to feel more confident in how they would like to engage with conservation within their careers.

Mentor

Erin Weingarten