Introduction

Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

Marine and Environmental Biology Section, University of Southern California

Welcome!

Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month is here! The AAPI Heritage Month Planning Committee is excited to announce a month of curated content to highlight the history and contributions of Asian Americans and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders in the Marine & Environmental Biology (MEB) Section and beyond. We hope you’ll follow along and engage with us throughout this month in recognition and celebration of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States.

Each week, we will release new content around a focused theme with “bonus” content sprinkled throughout that will be posted on this website. The themes are broadly:

1. Get to know AAPI in MEB through short bios and/or interviews of faculty, students, and staff in MEB who are AAPI or of Asian and/or Pacific Islander descent. To be featured or to recommend someone, please fill out this form!

2. Learn about AAPI history including the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, navigating through various immigration exclusion acts, military service, labor law activism, and more.

3. Learn about important AAPI figures in STEM and other disciplines through short biographical sketches. If you have a person in mind and/or would like to contribute to writing a biosketch, please fill out this form!

4. How can we be anti-racist? The committee will provide resources to combat stereotypes, myths, and other manifestations of anti-Asian racism. If there is anything you would like to learn more about, please share through this anonymous form.

Outside of MEB, a group of multi-institutional geoscientists recently launched AAPI in Geosciences (AAPIiG) and they have an amazing lineup of events planned in May. For more information, check out their website, swag shop featuring their awesome logo, and MEB’s May DEI Newsletter.

The AAPI Heritage Month Planning Committee,

Heidi Aronson, Anjali Bhatnagar, Chuankai Cheng, Ellie Lee, Francis Pan, Jason Wang, Nina Yang, Yingqi Zhang, Yiming Zhao