Aloha kākou,
E komo mai, welcome to the NREM DEI website. We are a group of NREM students, faculty, staff, and affiliates aimed to take more direct action within our department and the greater community to efforts regarding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity. To see more about our motivations and what we strive for, see our guidance document.
We started this group in the summer of 2020. A few NREM graduate students were working from home at the beginning of the COVID pandemic and were shaken and inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement expanding across the nation. These students reflected on their own situations as grad students, during heightened stressful times, as well as their own education and what NREM means to them. As students of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, social justice and environmental justice are completely relevant to this field. However, our own educational experiences with such courses are fairly lacking. As such, these students felt like there was more we could and should be doing within our own department.
Fall semester of 2020, these students began meeting to discuss their reflections and think on how to take more action. These students discussed if and how to start a DEI group, what this would look like, and how to go about it. They compiled resources and similar efforts and sent out a poll to the NREM listservs. By spring of 2021 they had a plan to host a seminar miniseries within the NREM Seminar class, to talk about the motivations of the group and being researchers within NREM, UH, and Hawaiʻi. (To view these seminars, find them here). During the Spring of 2021, the group also gained more members and created a draft guidance document noting their motivations, objectives, and group structure.
Fall of 2021, this group is now working on action items to address their motivations and fulfill their objectives. Additionally they are working on getting more members involved, including undergrads and NREM affiliates.
Mahalo nui!
If you have any questions or would like to join or be added to our email group, contact us here