Increasing Diversity in Geosciences

There’s a good chance you would recognize Jackson School of Geosciences alumnus Tim Shin even if you’ve never met him. That’s because Shin’s face is on the cover of an undergraduate brochure that the school used for years to recruit students. On the brochure, Shin is smiling as he looks up from a stack of papers. His undergraduate adviser, Department of Geological Sciences Associate Professor Elizabeth Catlos, is pictured beside him, leaning over his shoulder. With his face front and center on that brochure, Shin represents the school. But the truth is that he is far from representative of the school. That’s because Shin is Black, and, put simply, most people in the Jackson School — and in the geosciences as a whole — are white.