In recognition of Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month this April, we’d like to take a moment to reflect on the importance of working together to address and prevent sexual abuse, assault, and harassment. Everyone in our communities deserves to live in safe and supportive environments where they are treated with respect. As a community, we can work together to promote the well-being of others. We are all empowered to create a better future for ourselves and one another.
Department of Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences
Date
April 15, 2025
DIAC Highlights Resources for Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month
The DEEPS DIAC would like to highlight the following resources:
The Title IX Coordinator is responsible for ensuring compliance with Title IX, overseeing training and education, and gathering and reporting information to the campus community. The Title IX Coordinator is available to answer any questions related to the Policy, Complaint Process, available resources and reporting options, and remedial and safety measures.
The University is committed to making the process for reporting incidents easy to navigate and has developed procedures to provide fair, prompt, and consistent mechanisms for the resolution of complaints. Any Brown community member – whether a student, faculty or staff member, campus visitor or guest – who has experienced or witnessed discrimination, harassment or retaliation is encouraged to report it.
The U.S. National Science Foundation's policy is to foster safe and harassment-free environments wherever science is conducted, and requires each proposal to conduct research off-campus or off-site to include a plan regarding safe and inclusive working environments.
Sarah Batterman describes the personal and professional toll after being targeted at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Its director Josh Tewkesbury describes changes after staff spoke out. This episode is part of a Working Scientist podcast series about freedom and safety in science.
The Workshop to Promote Field Safety in Ocean Sciences developed a checklist for scientific leaders and others support participant safety and to prevent harassment the field. The checklist specifies the timing of, and who is responsible for, specific actions that should be taken to improve safety, and additional resources and suggestions on how to amend the checklist for other fieldwork situations.
This article presents the results of a workshop conducted by experts in field biology and the study of sexual harassment and assault that identified a comprehensive set of best practices. "The best practices that we present are designed to support individuals and organizations in the development of field safety plans."
Rampant gender-based harassment and discrimination are recognized problems that negatively impact efforts to diversify science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. This article explores the particularities of this phenomenon in the geosciences, via focus groups conducted at STEM professional society meetings, with the goal of informing interventions specific to the discipline.
"Our study investigated three key questions: 1) do respondents experience harassment and assault at field sites? If so, 2) who are the targets and perpetrators of harassment and assault? And 3) do field sites have codes of conduct and effective reporting mechanisms available to targets of abuse?"