Hosted by UC Davis graduate students, our mission is to increase access and transparency of ecology and evolution programs with the purpose of increasing diversity within these fields.

Motivation

Women, people of color, and other minoritized groups have historically been underrepresented in the fields of ecology and evolution as a whole (Beck et al., 2014; Wilga et al., 2017; Graves, 2019). This pattern is also present within the Population Biology Graduate Group at the University of California, Davis. There have been successful attempts to remedy this issue by preemptively exposing students to graduate level opportunities within the College of Biological Sciences. However, the majority of students invited to participate in such events have biomedical, molecular, chemical, or other interests that fall outside of Population Biology’s areas of specialization. While we commend such initiatives, we believe that recruitment efforts specifically focused on students interested in ecology and evolution would be mutually beneficial to both the Population Biology Graduate Group and potential graduate students. Our activities provide students with critical information, advice, and mentorship in order to increase the accessibility of and matriculation of students from all backgrounds into ecology and evolution graduate programs. Our long-term goal is to increase the diversity of people collaborating to push the boundaries of ecology and evolution.

Program Overview

First started in 2020 by students in the Population Biology Diversity committee,  our goal is to increase access and transparency of ecology and evolution programs with the purpose of increasing diversity within these fields. In both 2020 and 2021, this program consisted of five virtual sessions covering topics related to graduate school in ecology and evolution. During each session our facilitators led an information session on a different topic, followed by discussion and Q&A with program participants. 

​In 2023, the program will be slightly different, with a stronger focus on mentorship. Our program will run from August 7th through August 25th, and our **live** events will include group meetings on Mondays to help build community, workshops held on Fridays and a student panel the last week of the program.  All information sessions from 2021 were recorded and posted on this website so anyone can engage with the material and accompanying resources asynchronously. Moving forward, we will return to the full program during even years (2022, 2024, onward) and run the mentorship-focused program in the years between (2021, 2023, onward). This is **free event** and open to anyone interested in pursuing graduate school in ecology and evolution. If you are interested, please check out our "apply" page!