About

ACCESSdiving

'ACCESS diving @ UCSC' is the programmatic host for a suite of initiatives designed to increase students’ understanding of SCUBA diving, specifically scientific diving, and to foster a diverse and inclusive on-campus dive community by providing students with increased access to fun, safe, and formative underwater experiences.

Field experiences are often transformative and can help to recruit and retain students – especially transfer students and those from underrepresented minority (URM) backgrounds – to the Earth and Life Sciences by fostering their intellectual curiosity and feelings of self-efficacy. In this respect, scientific diving represents both an important scientific tool and professional-development opportunity for students pursuing Marine Science for their major or career.

At the same time, the field of SCUBA diving, including scientific diving, is plagued by numerous issues of access and equity. For example, lower-income students tend to face significant barriers in accessing diving that are associated with the high costs of training; URM students can face barriers associated with marginalization and discrimination in academia and/or the water-sports community; and first-generation college students might face issues that are associated with discrepancies in generational knowledge.

In 2024, graduate students and faculty in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCSC ran a highly successful pilot 'SCUBA Experience' program through the BIOE 20F field class (Field Biology in Practice). Twenty-one students who participated in this experience offered their reflections on it at the end of the class, and the majority indicated that the experience had increased their feelings of self-efficacy overall. Some students even shared that the experience had helped them to envision a new career path at UCSC!

The 'ACCelerating Equity & Success in SCUBA Diving' Program at UCSC (ACCESS diving) will expand on the success of the BIOE 20F SCUBA experience by providing over 100 students early access to swim and SCUBA training at no cost. With funds from UCSC's Division of Physical and Biological Sciences 'Degree-Defining Experiences' initiative, the program is designed to help students explore and train for UCSC's unique underwater field courses early-on in their academic careers.