Advancing DEI for the Office of Science Mission
SC’s effective stewardship and promotion of diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplaces that value and celebrate a diversity of people, ideas, cultures, and educational backgrounds is foundational to delivering on the SC mission. Harnessing a diverse range of views, expertise, and experiences drives scientific and technological innovation and enables the SC community to push the frontiers of scientific knowledge for the betterment of America's prosperity and security.
A core mission of the Office of Scientific Workforce Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (SW-DEI) is advancing organizational best practices for promoting DEI in SC business practices and at the SC National Laboratories. Below are a few of the initiatives that SC has launched in recent years focused on evaluating existing practices, and developing new plans and procedures focused on advancing DEI in SC-sponsored extramural research programs and facilities.
Advancing DEI in SC Business Practices describes the systematic review that SC conducted to evaluate its processes for awards management and research related activities and describes the recommended actions SC is now implementing to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion through its core business practices.
SC has worked closely with its ten DOE National Laboratories to support and encourage their efforts to advance DEI within their organizations. In recent years, SC has instituted new processes to strengthen SC's oversight, provide expert feedback and guidance to improve their DEI related programs, processes, and activities, and increase laboratory accountability. Advancing DEI at the National Laboratories describes SC’s collaborative oversight strategies, including the compendium of promising practices for DOE laboratory DEI efforts, and provides links to learn more about current DEI efforts at the DOE national labs.
More recently, SC has established an initiative focused on increasing SC engagement with and participation by faculty and students from Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) and individuals from groups historically underrepresented in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields that SC supports. Through coordination by an SC-wide working group led by SW-DEI, the SC research program offices have engaged in listening sessions with the research community, MSIs, scientific professional societies, and other members of the community to better understand the barriers to participation in SC-sponsored research programs and STEM training opportunities and to identify evidence-based practices to help overcome those barriers. In FY 2022, SC is launching the Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW) effort to provide undergraduate and graduate training opportunities for students and academic institutions not currently well represented in the U.S. S&T ecosystem to expand the pipeline for SC research and facilities workforce needs.
