The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has teamed up with the Maryland-based nonprofit Black Girls Dive Foundation to create a new internship program in Woods Hole.
The goal of the internship program is to create more opportunities for young women of color to break into ocean sciences, even beyond scientific diving.
WHOI senior engineer Gwyneth Packard is overseeing the internship program, which has brought three Black Girls Dive Foundation scholars to Woods Hole this summer. One of those scholars is Skye Garrett, a marine sciences major at Coastal Carolina University and one of the first Black Girls Dive Foundation scholars to be scuba certified.
"There's sometimes this unspoken assumption that a lot of STEM skills are innate, you either have them or you don't, and that's just not true," says WHOI engineer Gwyneth Packard.
Gilda Geist So, Gwyneth, before we get to talking about the internship, can you tell me first, what is Black Girls Dive Foundation?
Gwyneth Packard Black Girls Dive Foundation was founded in 2017 to address the lack of equal and equitable access to STEM experiences, and it provides young ladies with opportunities in marine science and conservation and scuba.
GG And so the internship program is going on right now. Can you tell me a little bit about what the interns are doing?
GP Our scholars are living on campus. They are embedded in labs. They're doing lab work. They're attending lectures and field trips. They are doing scientific dives off of the pier. And it is a paid, ten-week internship.
GG And also here with us is one of the interns herself, Skye Garrett. Skye is a rising senior at Coastal Carolina University, where she is majoring in marine science. Skye, can you tell me how you first got involved in Black Girls Dive Foundation?
Skye Garrett I got accepted into the program in 2018, and I was a part of their second cohort and the first cohort to get scuba certified.
GG And Skye, what are you working on at WHOI this summer?
SG So currently I am working with Michelle Shero in the biology department, and we're working on seals. So what I do day-to-day is, I'm handling vials of blood samples that they've already collected in the field. I'm distilling them—basically just trying to get the water content of the blood samples. And that ultimately is going to tell us how the water is moving through the bloodstream.
GG And how are you liking Woods Hole?
SG I like it. The people are very welcoming. I could see a little more in the diversity front, as far as people of color.
GG That's a really good point, Skye, and I wonder, how can programs like this one help make Woods Hole science institutions more welcoming and accessible to people of color?
GP Experiences like this are critical for developing STEM identity for anyone, let alone historically excluded groups. There's sometimes this unspoken assumption that a lot of STEM skills are innate, you either have them or you don't, and that's just not true. Having these experiences where you have encouraging mentors engaged in helping students learn how to craft an experiment, learn how to craft a good research question, how to ask probing questions, and how to engage with their curiosity is critical. Good science relies on curiosity.
GG So, Gwyneth, is this internship program going to be an annual thing?
GP This was the inaugural program. We are already seeking funding for future years. The limiting factor on the Cape is housing, and that is our biggest challenge.
GG And Skye, anything else to add about your experience so far?
SG Black Girls Dive has opened up a lot of opportunities for me. People tell me all the time how lucky I am and how cool it is, these trips and experiences I get to go on to find myself and find what I want to do with my career. I had no questions about scuba diving, no interest in it, until hearing about this program and learning more.
