Re: [MARMAM] Unpaid positions in marine mammal science

[Wallace, Richard]

Hello again Marmam folks,

I’ve been thinking a lot about Eric Archer’s email, below, and how it so 
compassionately opened up the conversation we were having about unpaid 
internships. Having said my piece about internships, I wanted to follow up only 
briefly by saying that I too hope we can continue to openly consider the 
broader issues Eric raises, and which are the objective of making internships 
accessible to all—i.e., increasing access to and diversity in the fields of 
ocean sciences. In the interests of fostering further discussion, or at least 
contemplation, I offer these two suggested readings:

Rachel Bernard and Emily Cooperdock’s 2018 essay in Nature Geoscience, “No 
progress on diversity in 40 
years<https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0116-6?eType=EmailBlastContent=73e374a0-be97-4c00-88d9-7fc9c9543e44>,”
 in which they review four decades of demographic data in geosciences, 
including marine science. For all of us who are data-driven, this is a powerful 
piece.

Marine biologist Stephanie MacDonald’s<https://www.stephaniemacdonald.co.uk/> 
excellent essay published two weeks ago, “Diversity in Ocean Science: The 
Experience of Black 
Women<https://www.womeninoceanscience.com/blog/2020/7/3/diversity-in-ocean-science-the-experience-of-black-women?eType=EmailBlastContent=73e374a0-be97-4c00-88d9-7fc9c9543e44>.”
 This essay appears on the blog of the excellent website Women in Ocean 
Science<https://www.womeninoceanscience.com/homepage> which, if you don’t know 
it, you should.

Most respectfully,

Rich W

--


Richard L. Wallace, Ph.D.
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Professor of Environmental Studies and Marine Science
Chair, Environmental Studies Department
Director, Food Studies Program
Co-Director, Whittaker Environmental Research Station
Ursinus College
Collegeville, PA
https://www.ursinus.edu/live/profiles/103-richard-wallace

and

Educator-in-Residence
Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative
Jackson, WY
http://nrccooperative.org
P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

[A picture containing drawing  Description automatically 
generated]<https://www.ursinus.edu/academics/environmental-studies/>





From: MARMAM  on behalf of Eric Archer - NOAA 
Federal 
Date: Monday, July 20, 2020 at 7:15 AM
To: "marmam@lists.uvic.ca" 
Subject: Re: [MARMAM] Unpaid positions in marine mammal science

Scripps Institution of Oceanography (where Paul Dayton has been based and done 
his groundbreaking work in the field) was established in 1903. It became part 
of the University of California, San Diego in 1912. I, an African American, 
entered the Marine Biology program in 1990 and defended my Ph.D. in 1996. Since 
that time, I have stayed in the San Diego area, working at the NOAA Southwest 
Fisheries Science Center which is located on the SIO campus. About five years 
ago, I became an adjunct professor at SIO.

About a decade ago, I became curious about the history of diversity at SIO and 
started asking around. As best as I can tell, I was the first African American 
Marine Biology PhD at SIO. Since then, I've been trying to pay attention and 
have been aware of only two others since that time, with similar numbers in the 
sister Biological Oceanography program. Let's be generous and say that I've 
missed a couple. That's still only two handfuls at most. For the record, I'm 
also unaware of another Black faculty member in MB at SIO. Ever. 
Here<https://scripps.ucsd.edu/people/faculty#D> is the current list of SIO 
faculty.

How then do we reconcile the magnitude of minority interns and the good for 
diversity in the field in Paul's description with the striking lack of 
diversity at the top of the field? We need to pay attention to outcomes at 
every level. It is clear that the pipeline is broken in several places. This 
issue of unpaid internships is only one of them.

I want to clearly state that I have the utmost respect for all of the points of 
view that have been expressed during this discussion as well as their authors. 
Paul Dayton and Phil Clapham have been role models to me and both have been 
influential in my career. I knew Eiren Jacobsen as a student at SIO and admired 
her skills. I think everybody in this debate is well-intentioned and truly 
wants to help improve the situation. In order to do that, we have to keep 
talking openly and respectfully listening to each other.

Kind Regards,
Eric Archer

On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 5:01 AM Paul Dayton 
mailto:pday...@ucsd.edu>> wrote:
Dear Lists people!

I would like to join Phil Clapham with a counter argument to the recent posting 
about unpaid positions in marine mammal science, but also all conservation!  I 
am not sure how to write to the Marmam list, but am pasting my letter and 
attaching it.  Please let me know if this is acceptable.  And I suspect most of 
you are unpaid volunteers as well, and I hope you  know that your work is 
appreciated if unsung.

Best regar

[MARMAM] Unpaid positions in marine mammal science: a response to a response

[Alexander M. Costidis]

Dear fellow SMMers,


Watching this discussion unfold, I feel compelled to contribute. While I cannot 
help but support the open and honest exchange of ideas and philosophies, I find 
myself wholeheartedly agreeing with Phil Clapham. As someone who has both 
benefited tremendously from being unpaid labor, and also seen others benefit 
from it, I cannot in good conscience support an outright professional ban on 
such opportunities. I believe that would be a misguided broad brush stroke that 
takes away positive programs rather than creating more of them.



There is no question that the system as a whole needs to be re-examined 
carefully, but as I believe Phil alluded to, it is a structural change that is 
needed. Many (perhaps even most) organizations that are not part of a large 
university or government system simply do not have the resources to pay people 
to receive an education, which is what many internships provide. Internships in 
this business are frequently unlike veterinary or medical internships, in which 
a certain expertise and/or certification has already been acquired by the 
intern. Intern candidates often have little to no relevant experience and are 
not much different from a brand new volunteer. Some have considerable 
experience or education in other areas, but are trying new things. A 
one-size-fits-all strategy for addressing the baked-in inequities seems 
restrictive at best, as the inequities are not all one size or one shape.



Many organizations do everything they can to facilitate people's education. It 
is done as unpaid community outreach, unfunded participation in graduate 
student committees, unsupported participation in student conferences, and 
providing volunteerism and internships. Those internship opportunities are not 
charged for in the way an academic institution would charge for an education, 
despite having many similarities. Those same organizations often have staff 
that are not paid what they deserve based on their work ethic, their 
competencies, their qualifications, or their dedication. Their operations are 
often chronically underfunded on federal, municipal and institutional levels. 
All these things take a toll on staff retention, conservation effectiveness, 
etc. Perhaps because this is personal, it seems reciprocally unfair to 
categorize all organizations with blanket statements of unfairness, when many 
are already stretched thinly, with funds diluted beyond belief, trying their 
best to make a small bit of difference.



Having such organizations stop offering unpaid internships without already 
having a viable alternative to this process will likely have other unintended 
consequences, such as reduced capacity for research or conservation work. This 
will not only affect those interns who have and continue to benefit from robust 
internship programs, but will likely also impact the very animals we are all so 
passionate about helping. I would urge this passionate and vocal community to 
come together to build more opportunities, rather than suggest removal of 
pre-existing ones which have given many people the chance to course correct or 
enrich their lives. To that end, I offer up a few modest suggestions that might 
conceivably help jump start such an effort, if embraced.



1) Create consortium of organizations that offer internships. Each organization 
contributes seed money to an endowment or some other means of growing a fund to 
support financial need-based internships within the consortium. Those 
organizations can use their political and economic clout and their media 
presence to promote additional outside support. Such a consortium may also help 
with promoting successful interns toward employment opportunities within the 
consortium.



2) SMM members join to form virtual classes or thematic video shorts that can 
help address the very insightful point Phil made about reaching young people 
and infecting them with our excitement and passion, on topics so few of them 
are ever exposed to until it's too late. Many of us have been to SMM video 
night and seen the exciting whale tagging videos, gross necropsy videos, 
heartbreaking bycatch videos, etc. Those same visuals that move us, could move 
current students, form future researchers, and reach broader audiences.



3) Unified messaging (and lobbying) to government and funding agencies for 
need-based federal/national support of career training programs related to 
marine mammal science. Perhaps this could have some sort of accreditation 
process to weed out those organizations with questionable intern practices and 
questionable intern education.



4) Grant funded academic research programs that depend on free labor to run 
large programs should indeed re-examine if/how intern funding is written into 
grant proposals. It is common practice for grant budgets to have graduate 
student funds built into them, so if those projects will require intern labor, 
perhaps that should be a 

Re: [MARMAM] Unpaid positions in marine mammal science

[Wallace, Richard]

This has been an enormously helpful dialogue, and my thanks to everyone who has 
contributed, and especially to Eiren for initiating.

I am in the camp that believes that unpaid internships are more hurtful than 
helpful, in the ways that Eiren and her colleagues’ letter explains. I have 
spent the past 19 years teaching at a small liberal arts college where I am the 
only “marine mammal person” on the faculty. My marine mammals course and 
research projects attract every interested biology, marine science, and 
environmental studies student who graces our campus, and as a result I have 
taught many first generation and lower-income students over the years (which 
comprise a significant percentage of our student body—we are not a typical 
private college in that respect; most of our students work multiple jobs during 
college in order to afford to be here. They are tired and stressed and working 
their butts off to achieve their academic goals.). These students turn to me to 
help them initiate their careers in marine science and conservation. Though it 
is just my individual experience, I can say unequivocally that most of my 
students are excluded from the career-boosting benefits of unpaid internships, 
and many of them end up in other fields out of college as a result of the 
failure of the marine mammal science and conservation community to provide 
means of support to help these students get started. It’s the same calculus as 
choosing a grad school on the basis of the amount of aid you are awarded. For 
my students, it’s not a decision: you simply have to follow the money. And that 
is much more true now, with the often crippling amounts of student debt that so 
many carry, than it was in my day, or when Paul was teaching most of his 
students at Scripps.

Finally, I’ll note that as I worked my way through grad school, I got my start 
in the marine mammal field thanks to a paid internship at the Marine Mammal 
Commission 30 years ago this summer—the stipend for which my mentor and then 
MMC executive director John Twiss felt was his moral duty to provide. (Remember 
that most federal internships in the U.S. are exempt from the Fair Labor 
Standards Act, as are internships at nonprofit organizations.) For me, had John 
not offered that stipend, I would not have been able to take the internship—a 
summer that led directly to John offering me a job out of grad school, which 
led directly to my doctoral dissertation, which led to a career in which I have 
now taught many hundreds of students the joys of marine mammal science, policy, 
and conservation.

I know this is all just anecdotal personal experience, but I can’t overstate 
the importance that this issue has played in my life as a student and teacher, 
so I wanted to share.

Thanks for listening and I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy.

Rich

--


Richard L. Wallace, Ph.D.
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Professor of Environmental Studies and Marine Science
Director, Food Studies Program
Co-Director, Whittaker Environmental Research Station
Ursinus College
Collegeville, PA
https://www.ursinus.edu/live/profiles/103-richard-wallace

and

Educator-in-Residence
Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative
Jackson, WY
http://nrccooperative.org
P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

[A picture containing drawing  Description automatically 
generated]<https://www.ursinus.edu/academics/environmental-studies/>


From: MARMAM  on behalf of Eric Archer - NOAA 
Federal 
Date: Monday, July 20, 2020 at 7:15 AM
To: "marmam@lists.uvic.ca" 
Subject: Re: [MARMAM] Unpaid positions in marine mammal science

Scripps Institution of Oceanography (where Paul Dayton has been based and done 
his groundbreaking work in the field) was established in 1903. It became part 
of the University of California, San Diego in 1912. I, an African American, 
entered the Marine Biology program in 1990 and defended my Ph.D. in 1996. Since 
that time, I have stayed in the San Diego area, working at the NOAA Southwest 
Fisheries Science Center which is located on the SIO campus. About five years 
ago, I became an adjunct professor at SIO.

About a decade ago, I became curious about the history of diversity at SIO and 
started asking around. As best as I can tell, I was the first African American 
Marine Biology PhD at SIO. Since then, I've been trying to pay attention and 
have been aware of only two others since that time, with similar numbers in the 
sister Biological Oceanography program. Let's be generous and say that I've 
missed a couple. That's still only two handfuls at most. For the record, I'm 
also unaware of another Black faculty member in MB at SIO. Ever. 
Here<https://scripps.ucsd.edu/people/faculty#D> is the current list of SIO 
faculty.

How then do we reconcile the magnitude of minority interns and the good for 
diversity in the field in Paul's description with the striking lack of 
diversity at the top of the field? We need to pay

Re: [MARMAM] Unpaid positions in marine mammal science

[Eric Archer - NOAA Federal]

Scripps Institution of Oceanography (where Paul Dayton has been based and
done his groundbreaking work in the field) was established in 1903. It
became part of the University of California, San Diego in 1912. I, an
African American, entered the Marine Biology program in 1990 and defended
my Ph.D. in 1996. Since that time, I have stayed in the San Diego area,
working at the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center which is located on
the SIO campus. About five years ago, I became an adjunct professor at SIO.

About a decade ago, I became curious about the history of diversity at SIO
and started asking around. As best as I can tell, I was the first African
American Marine Biology PhD at SIO. Since then, I've been trying to pay
attention and have been aware of only two others since that time, with
similar numbers in the sister Biological Oceanography program. Let's be
generous and say that I've missed a couple. That's still only two handfuls
at most. For the record, I'm also unaware of another Black faculty member
in MB at SIO. Ever. Here  is the
current list of SIO faculty.

How then do we reconcile the magnitude of minority interns and the good for
diversity in the field in Paul's description with the striking lack of
diversity at the top of the field? We need to pay attention to outcomes at
every level. It is clear that the pipeline is broken in several places.
This issue of unpaid internships is only one of them.

I want to clearly state that I have the utmost respect for all of the
points of view that have been expressed during this discussion as well as
their authors. Paul Dayton and Phil Clapham have been role models to me and
both have been influential in my career. I knew Eiren Jacobsen as a student
at SIO and admired her skills. I think everybody in this debate is
well-intentioned and truly wants to help improve the situation. In order to
do that, we have to keep talking openly and respectfully listening to each
other.

Kind Regards,
Eric Archer

On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 5:01 AM Paul Dayton  wrote:

> Dear Lists people!
>
> I would like to join Phil Clapham with a counter argument to the recent
> posting about unpaid positions in marine mammal science, but also all
> conservation!  I am not sure how to write to the Marmam list, but am
> pasting my letter and attaching it.  Please let me know if this is
> acceptable.  And I suspect most of you are unpaid volunteers as well, and I
> hope you  know that your work is appreciated if unsung.
>
> Best regards and I wish you success avoiding this damned virus!  I have
> been stuck in this ancient house for 4 months going on 12 months I fear.
>
> Paul Dayton
>
> Unpaid positions in marine mammal science
>
>
>
> Dear Friends,
>
>
>
> I saw Phil Clapham’s note and learned that Eiren Jacobson was still
> pushing this issue. I write to offer another objection to this position and
> to urge the co-signers to reevaluate their support.  Phil offered the fact
> that much marine mammal work is done by relatively impoverished but highly
> idealistic organizations that would be severely impacted by the loss of
> volunteers. He also addressed the need to get people involved with marine
> mammals.  Here I hope to broaden his message about the use of volunteers to
> actually increase diversity in the field, and I hope to persuade you to
> consider this in the broader context of helping lower income and non-white
> people move into the field, rather than being excluded as Eiren erroneously
> argues. I urge those of you who signed the letter to reconsider your
> signatures to what I feel strongly is a misguided appeal to your sense of
> fair treatment of other people.
>
>  In my case I am sure that over my 40+ year career I was responsible for
> well over 100 volunteers and I strongly reject the argument that they were
> exploited or that impoverished or minority people were unfairly excluded.
> Very much to the contrary, in fact.  I believe that I received well over
> 15 requests a year over my 40 years of professorship and there were always
> volunteers in our lab, usually very well mentored by graduate students but
> always with me in the background supervising the situation. And as Phil
> mentioned, we started early as many of them started working for us when
> they were in high school.  They were never exploited, rather they were
> mentored and brought into marine ecology. Most of the interns in my lab
> were involved in general ecological research rather than marine mammals,
> but I was co-advisor or committee member to many marine mammal graduate
> students and most of them either came into the field via internships or
> used interns that came to me that I directed to the students. Many of these
> students have had successful careers in the marine mammal community, and
> they were damned good mentors. Some may see this letter and offer their own
> thoughts.
>
>  Let me address the issue of diversity and class barriers.  

[MARMAM] Unpaid positions in marine mammal science: a response

[WIMMS]

Dear MARMAM community -

We are glad that a long overdue discussion has been initiated about the
prevalence and effect of unpaid positions in marine mammal science.
Clearly, this is a complex and challenging issue that will require input
from people from a variety of backgrounds and career stages to adequately
address the broader impacts of our field’s reliance on unpaid positions.

We support the letter

to the Society for Marine Mammalogy (SMM), drafted by Dr. Eiren Jacobson,
Chloe Malinka, and Dr. Margaret Siple and now signed by almost 700
individuals, that seeks to end unpaid positions as the status quo in our
field. By supporting this letter, we recognize that unpaid positions are
only one factor of many that need consideration in order to improve
diversity, equity, and inclusion in our field. We also recognize that many
of us have been able to advance our careers in marine mammal science as a
result of unpaid positions.

We conducted a survey on gender-specific experiences in marine mammal
science and are actively working to analyze and publish the survey results.
Of the 670 respondents (n=586 female), 549 (82%) indicated participating in
at least one unpaid work experience opportunity (e.g., an internship or
temporary position with a university, non-profit, government agency, or
independent scientist). We will explore in our publication some important
nuances of this participation and specific ways in which respondents
highlighted unpaid work as a barrier to success in marine mammal science,
but this percentage speaks to the high prevalence of unpaid work in our
field.

The aim of changing this as the status quo point of entry into our field is
not to disparage or discount individuals who have benefitted from these
opportunities, but rather to acknowledge, as Dr. Eric Archer eloquently
stated in his response on this thread
, “The voices
that we won't hear in this debate are those that didn't have those
opportunities.” We cannot deny that expecting most people to work for free
limits access to our field to those of a certain economic status, which in
the U.S. and many other countries is inextricably tied to race. Even if we
increase much-needed efforts to engage diverse young potential scientists,
we cannot expect to retain them if the only path forward relies on unpaid
work.

We also fully acknowledge that change from the status quo will not happen
instantaneously, and that the role of funding is not trivial. How change
occurs will be very different at a large institution in the U.S. compared
to a small non-profit in a low-income nation. Thus, we will need to come
together as a community to find creative and innovative ways in which we
can collectively increase the accessibility of internships and other work
experience positions and thereby increase diversity, equity, and inclusion
in marine mammal science.

Jacobsen et al. have taken an important step in giving our community an
opportunity to engage more broadly with each other, at a pivotal time, on
the impact of unpaid positions and, in turn, on other barriers to diversity
in our field. If not for this letter to the SMM, it is unlikely that these
conversations would be ongoing at this scale at this time. The women who
drafted this conversation starter are notably early-career researchers,
which makes their willingness to lead this effort especially courageous. We
would like to thank them, the letter cosignatories, and all those willing
to contribute constructively to this most important discussion.

Sincerely,

The WIMMS Initiative Organizers

Dr. Erin Ashe

Dr. Amanda Bradford

Dr. María Constanza Marchesi

Cara Gallagher

Natalie Mastick

Dr. Frances Robertson

Dr. Mridula Srinivasan

Dr. Karen Stockin

-- 
Women in Marine Mammal Science (WIMMS)
Email: womeninmm...@gmail.com
Website: https://wimms.weebly.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/womeninmmsci/
Twitter: @womeninmmsci
Hashtag: #womeninmmsci
___
MARMAM mailing list
MARMAM@lists.uvic.ca
https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/marmam

[MARMAM] Unpaid positions in marine mammal science

[Paul Dayton]

Dear Lists people!I would like to join Phil Clapham with a counter argument to the recent posting about unpaid positions in marine mammal science, but also all conservation!  I am not sure how to write to the Marmam list, but am pasting my letter and attaching it.  Please let me know if this is acceptable.  And I suspect most of you are unpaid volunteers as well, and I hope you  know that your work is appreciated if unsung.Best regards and I wish you success avoiding this damned virus!  I have been stuck in this ancient house for 4 months going on 12 months I fear.Paul Dayton













Unpaid positions in
marine mammal science Dear Friends, I saw Phil Clapham’s note and
learned that Eiren Jacobson was still pushing this issue. I write to offer
another objection to this position and to urge the co-signers to reevaluate
their support.  Phil offered the fact
that much marine mammal work is done by relatively impoverished but highly
idealistic organizations that would be severely impacted by the loss of
volunteers. He also addressed the need to get people involved with marine
mammals.  Here I hope to broaden his
message about the use of volunteers to actually increase diversity in the
field, and I hope to persuade you to consider this in the broader context of
helping lower income and non-white people move into the field, rather than
being excluded as Eiren erroneously argues. I urge those of you who signed the
letter to reconsider your signatures to what I feel strongly is a misguided
appeal to your sense of fair treatment of other people. In my case I am sure that over my
40+ year career I was responsible for well over 100 volunteers and I strongly
reject the argument that they were exploited or that impoverished or minority
people were unfairly excluded.  Very much
to the contrary, in fact.  I believe that
I received well over 15 requests a year over my 40 years of professorship and
there were always volunteers in our lab, usually very well mentored by graduate
students but always with me in the background supervising the situation. And as
Phil mentioned, we started early as many of them started working for us when
they were in high school.  They were
never exploited, rather they were mentored and brought into marine ecology. Most
of the interns in my lab were involved in general ecological research rather
than marine mammals, but I was co-advisor or committee member to many marine
mammal graduate students and most of them either came into the field via
internships or used interns that came to me that I directed to the students.
Many of these students have had successful careers in the marine mammal
community, and they were damned good mentors. Some may see this letter and
offer their own thoughts. Let me address the issue of
diversity and class barriers.  Eiren’s
assertion that this plays to the wealth and excludes those who cannot afford to
be a volunteer.  Like Phil, I refer back
to my own very impoverished undergraduate career working up to 35 hours a week
to go to school.  I had no ecological
direction and actually found low-paying jobs to be able to volunteer with ecology
students in Chuck Lowe’s lab at Arizona. The only reason I have had this great
career is thanks to the mentoring I received as an unpaid volunteer.  I subsequently took this experience to heart
and accepted as many of the applicants as I could and made sure that they were
well mentored. In many cases it was obvious from our interactions that they had
no or very little family financial support, and as I got to know them I can
attest that the vast majority were, like I had been, struggling to get through
school and find a satisfying career.  I
can say that in the last several decades most of the students were themselves
minorities: African-Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, Asians, and first
generation Americans or foreign students. But where Eiren really misses the
boat is that most of these interns were so stimulated and well mentored that
they switched majors and went into ecology. 
Over my career I must have written hundreds of letters supporting these
student’s graduate school or job applications, and dozens of them went on to
advanced degrees and are now working in ecologically related fields. I suspect
that almost all of these people now active in our general conservation field
were not wealthy and many are minorities. Almost all of these have significant
jobs in conservation efforts. And again, referring back to Phil’s letter, many
of these interns were encouraged to interact with grade school kids and many
are educating young people in their current jobs.  I have no words to describe my pride in the
success of these unpaid volunteers. 
Indeed, in the last 2 years, five of them have retired and have made an
effort to track me down and thank me for taking them on in the 1970s!  Imagine your own pride if you too could receive
such messages in your old age. Had Eiren’s position been in place, none of this
would have 

Re: [MARMAM] Unpaid positions in marine mammal science: a response

[Eric Archer - NOAA Federal]

I appreciate Phil Clapham's well-written opinion on unpaid positions, but
in general disagree with his conclusion that they do not represent a
significant barrier to entry to the field. I can offer my own experience as
a similar, yet counter example to Phil's. I am one of those few African
Americans that Phil can count on one hand as being involved in marine
mammal science I have been in the field for about 30 years, and I do not
know another African American in the field. That is, at least two of Phil's
fingers don't know each other.

Like Phil, I also owe my entrance to the field to a volunteer position. If
it wasn't for the generosity of Jim Mead, Charley Potter, and others at the
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, who allowed me to
volunteer there for two summers during my last two undergraduate years, I
don't know where I'd be. There were many unpaid positions that I wanted to
participate in, but there was no way I could afford the travel, lodging,
and loss of income to take them. The only reason that I could volunteer at
the Smithsonian was that my parents lived in the Washington, DC area and I
was living with them during the summer. I also took on part time summer
work, but if I had to work full time, I would never have been able to
volunteer. I knew people who did have to work more hours to help pay for
school or help their families, and they thought I was extremely lucky. I
felt extremely guilty that friends and relatives did not have the same
opportunity that I did, but vowed to not waste the opportunity I'd been
given. In short, I was only a few socio-economic rungs away from not being
able to pursue my dream. Today, Phil would need fewer fingers.

My point is this: We are all a product of the current system. We all have
benefited from somebody taking a chance on us and most of us have made
sacrifices or taken advantage of opportunities to participate in work where
we had to fund ourselves. Few of us have been paid at the start to get
those critical first few experiences or make those important first
connections. We all have been lucky. The voices that we won't hear in this
debate are those that didn't have those opportunities. How many people are
we missing from this field because they had to make a choice of doing
something to pay for school, family, or just existence rather than being
able to put it into their future?

Phil makes an excellent point about the need to expose more
underrepresented people to the field. The SMM Diversity and Inclusion
Committee is pursuing several avenues to make a closer connection between
the society and minority serving institutions and make our science more
available to a wider group of young students. However, I'm absolutely
convinced that although this is an important filter to be addressed, it
doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention other obvious barriers like the
issue of unpaid internships.

While I don't agree with all of the demands of the Jacobsen et al letter, I
signed it because I strongly support the spirit of the initiative and want
to encourage the very discussion that we're having now. I think we can all
agree that we need to do everything we can to get as many voices to the
table as possible. Changing the way we think about unpaid internships is
one of them. Phil has outlined the harm that these changes would have to
research projects. I just wanted to add some words to voice the silent harm
experienced by people that we will never hear from.

Kind Regards,
Eric Archer

On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 8:05 AM Phil Clapham 
wrote:

> At the risk of becoming unpopular with some good folks, I have to offer a
> different perspective on unpaid positions to that given in the letter
> posted by Eiren Jacobson on 2nd July, addressed to the leadership of the
> Society for Marine Mammalogy.  The authors of the letter are of course
> correct in that unpaid positions favor those who can afford to work for
> free, and as such they exclude numerous people, including minorities.
> Maybe a few institutions do intentionally exploit younger people in this
> way.  However, for many, this situation is a simple reflection of the state
> of funding in marine mammal science.
>Many institutions - notably smaller non-profits - have a hard time
> raising enough money to pay their own staff, support basic field work, and
> keep the lights on.  If you ban advertisements of unpaid positions, you are
> depriving countless people of the only opportunity they may ever get to
> participate in marine mammal science.  I'm a good example.  When I arrived
> on Cape Cod in the fall of 1980, I volunteered at the Center for Coastal
> Studies in Provincetown.  They weren't about to pay me, a young guy with
> zero experience; no one at the institution was receiving much or any
> salary, and our research budget for the entire year was a few thousand
> dollars.  Yes, I was able to support myself (barely) for a few months.  And
> yes, that was forty years ago; but for many small 

[MARMAM] Unpaid positions in marine mammal science: a response

[Phil Clapham]

At the risk of becoming unpopular with some good folks, I have to offer a
different perspective on unpaid positions to that given in the letter
posted by Eiren Jacobson on 2nd July, addressed to the leadership of the
Society for Marine Mammalogy.  The authors of the letter are of course
correct in that unpaid positions favor those who can afford to work for
free, and as such they exclude numerous people, including minorities.
Maybe a few institutions do intentionally exploit younger people in this
way.  However, for many, this situation is a simple reflection of the state
of funding in marine mammal science.
   Many institutions - notably smaller non-profits - have a hard time
raising enough money to pay their own staff, support basic field work, and
keep the lights on.  If you ban advertisements of unpaid positions, you are
depriving countless people of the only opportunity they may ever get to
participate in marine mammal science.  I'm a good example.  When I arrived
on Cape Cod in the fall of 1980, I volunteered at the Center for Coastal
Studies in Provincetown.  They weren't about to pay me, a young guy with
zero experience; no one at the institution was receiving much or any
salary, and our research budget for the entire year was a few thousand
dollars.  Yes, I was able to support myself (barely) for a few months.  And
yes, that was forty years ago; but for many small institutions, life today
isn't radically different in terms of funding.  Indeed, these days there is
more competition for money than there was when I entered the field.
   If I had insisted on being paid, or if the student internships we later
offered were subject to a ban on advertizing, I and many other individuals
who are today well known in the field would never have had that chance to
work with a research program, and try out for themselves the idea of a
career involving study of these fascinating animals.  My wife, Dr Yulia
Ivashchenko, has a similar story: had she not volunteered for an
underfunded whale research project in Russia, she almost certainly would
not be involved in the field today.
   By accusing underfunded institutions of unethical or illegal behavior,
and depriving everyone of such opportunities just because some are
disadvantaged, you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  We'd all
like to see everyone who wants to be involved, paid and given health
insurance.  But the harsh reality of funding is that this is often not
possible.
   Funding is hard enough to come by in the US, and far more difficult in
many other countries.  Do people really want to hobble projects in the
developing world from recruiting assistance with poorly funded studies
which sometimes involve critical conservation issues?
   There is a much broader issue here which the letter does not address,
and that is the failure of society in general, and the education system in
particular, to encourage minority and other under-represented school kids
to enter science.  During the ten years or so that I directed the
internship program at the Center for Coastal Studies, we were able to offer
internship positions that included accommodation and a small stipend; it
wasn't much, but was at least sufficient to keep our interns fed during the
two or three months they spent with us.  Every year, we had anywhere from
fifty to a couple of hundred applicants for the five or six internship
slots we offered.  They were almost all undergraduates - and, tellingly,
close to 100% were white.  I suspect that many institutions offering paid
internships see a similar disparity in applicants today.
   Given that our internships were actually paid at a basic level, what
this says is that the lack of minority applicants had little to do with
financial inequities.  Rather, the problem begins much earlier than the
undergraduate level.  As the infamous Sheldon Cooper once said in an
episode of The Big Bang Theory in which they're trying to recruit more
women into science, you have to start at least in middle school.  As is
well known, girls are still often actively discouraged from pursuing STEM
careers early on, and by the time you're dealing with the university level,
as Sheldon noted, it's too late.  The same applies even more markedly to
minorities.  I've been involved in this field for forty years, and I can
probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of African-Americans
I've known who've been significantly involved in US whale or seal research.
   So yes, try harder to fund internships and other entry-level positions.
But there also needs to be a concerted effort by the Society, and by the
field in general, to reach out to schoolchildren, notably girls and
minorities, and to aggressively promote programs that encourage kids from
all backgrounds to see careers in science as achievable (and cool).  Put
bluntly, you can offer paid internships all you want, but you probably
won't see people from under-represented populations flocking to apply when
an interest