Orlando Taylor to Present 2022 Jearld Lecture

July 19, 2022

Calls for a more diverse scientific workforce.

Feature Story |

New England/Mid-Atlantic

Color image of a bald African American man wearing a light colored suit and shirt, with a dark tie. He is standing in front of a window in an office setting, smiling at the camera.

Dr. Orlando Taylor, a university professor and social justice activist, will deliver this year’s Ambrose Jearld, Jr. Lecture, New Scientists for A New America in A New Normal. It will be held via Zoom on July 27 at 1 p.m. Interested participants can register online.

Taylor will discuss:

United States’ global leadership in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics advancement
Increased competition for talent from other countries
Risks presented by underrepresentation of women and people of color in the American workforce

Taylor believes the nation’s STEM enterprise must significantly increase its talent pool to create what he calls a “New normal STEM workforce”—and a higher education faculty to produce it—that is far more diverse and inclusive than it is today.”

Taylor is the executive director and co-principal investigator of the Center for the Advancement of STEM Leadership at the Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California. He is a national leader on issues pertaining to diversity and inclusion in higher education, with implications for social science and STEM fields. Taylor is also the author of several books, including Higher Education in a Changing World.

The Woods Hole Diversity Initiative’s goal is to continue Jearld’s work of challenging Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to become a more diverse and inclusive community. Previous Jearld lecturers have been:

Marisela Martinez-Cola (2021)
Nigel Golden (2020)
Warren M. Washington (2019)
Ashanti Johnson (2018)
David J. Asai (2017)

A color image taken on a sunny, slightly windy day. Portrait of a casually-dressed African American man wearing glasses. He is standing on a pier. The NOAA research vessel Henry B. Bigelow is docked in the water behind him. — Ambrose Jearld, Jr., for whom the Jerald Lecture series is named.

The Woods Hole Diversity Initiative established the Jearld Lecture in 2017 to honor Dr. Ambrose Jearld, Jr., a Falmouth resident who retired in 2016 after a 38-year career in science and administration with NOAA Fisheries. Jearld is a fisheries biologist and the former chief of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Fishery Biology Investigation. He is the founding chair of the Woods Hole Diversity Advisory Committee, the founding director of the Woods Hole Partnership Education Program, and a leader in the effort to address diversity, inclusion, and equity locally, nationally and internationally.