Rosemond was participating in a workshop on diversity, equity and inclusion at the Ecological Society of America meeting. The presenters decided at the spur of the moment to throw away their prepared PowerPoint presentation, and instead turned to the audience to invite them to share their experiences with each other and to brainstorm about ways to facilitate diversity.

The experience, which Rosemond called “life changing,” immediately made her reflect on SFS’ initiatives.  

“I thought about the Instars program,” Rosemond said, “and the fact that we need to do more of that sort of thing.” 

Unveiled at the SFS’s annual meeting in 2011, the Instars program aimed to engage underrepresented minority groups in the scientific discourse they had historically been excluded from. Through Instars, first-time undergraduate attendees to the annual meeting were paired up with graduate student mentors, who helped them navigate the conference and network with prominent freshwater scientists. 

“If you’re coming in as an undergraduate or a new graduate student, and you don’t have a bunch of lab mates, a scientific meeting can be very intimidating,” said Rosemond, who is also an affiliate of the River Basin Center.

Rosemond proposed to build upon the success of Instars to create a comprehensive experience that supported members throughout the academic year and beyond, offering workshops, mentoring and community building. 

In aquatic ecology, an instar is a juvenile life stage of an insect, before it molts into its adult form and emerges from the water. 

“As I was talking to other people and bringing these ideas together it became clear,” Rosemond said. “We need to ‘emerge!’ We need leaders, we need to be there through people’s career stages.” 

The Emerge program is now in its fourth year, with Rosemond as principal investigator of the five-year grant funded by the National Science Foundation. Although the grant is based at UGA, Emerge pulls participants from across the country. 

Throughout the year, Emerge Fellows participate in five separate aspects of the program that work together to maximize scientific integration, helping students to feel a sense of belonging in the scientific community. 

The year begins with the new cohort embarking on a multi-day river float just before the SFS annual meeting. Before this year’s meeting in Philadelphia, the Fellows paddled down the Delaware River, which runs between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. 

“That first float trip has taken on various forms,” Rosemond said, “but it’s always been something pretty amazing, where it’s kind of a bonding experience.”

Since 2020, Emerge has taken its cohorts of Fellows to destinations as far-flung as Brisbane, Australia, and ventured on trips down the Flint and Pere Marquette rivers in the United States.

“The river trip is a great opportunity to talk to everyone in a non-science setting,” said Emerge Fellow Irene Sánchez González, also a FFIRE postdoc at the Odum School and RBC affiliate. “There are young scientists who are a minority of some sort, so they understand some of the struggles you might have, but they also have different struggles, and it’s important to learn about those.” 

The Fellows then attend the meeting itself, where they have opportunities to network with freshwater scientists, hear about the latest advances in freshwater science, attend professional development workshops and even give their first technical presentations at a national conference. 

Later in the year, there are two workshops led by co-PI Dan McGarvey, associate professor of Environmental Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. The fall data workshop covers skills like proficiency in R, a widely used statistical programming language. The Fellows learn how to mine and analyze data using the National Ecological Observatory Network, an open source network of long-term ecological data collection funded by NSF. 

In the spring, the Fellows participate in a visual communication/graphic design workshop. Using the open source program Inkscape, they learn skills like digital illustration and color theory, in order to add an element of visual storytelling to future projects. 

The cohort also meets monthly in online community meetings led by Tina Mendez, a co-PI and lecturer at UC Berkeley. At these meetings, Fellows propose research projects that they collaborate on throughout the year, forming connections and experience working with each other. 

“Collaboration isn’t really a skill a lot of people get taught in undergrad or grad school,” Ondich said, “so we teach them how to work across different time zones, how to come up with an idea and follow through.”

Ondich said that the Fellows are able to take the project as far as they find interesting, with some groups even working on scientific manuscripts written from ideas formed during the sessions.

The impact of Emerge doesn’t end once a Fellow graduates, however. Alumni of the program independently began their own organization, Scholar Team for Research, Engagement and Advancing Minority Voices (STREAM), that offers support for Fellows into their early career. STREAM leads workshops on topics ranging from science policy to practical application of diversity, equity and inclusion in field scenarios, and distributes a newsletter called The Deposit. 

With only a year remaining in the five-year grant cycle, and a renewal proposal to fund a “cultural change effort in scientific societies” being reviewed by the NSF, Rosemond and others are confident that the program will continue to provide a sense of community for underrepresented students.

“We’ve been incredibly successful from the beginning,” Rosemond said, “because we’ve really done it with a lot of heart and a lot of humility, and we’re providing something that is actually useful to people.”