The Executive Committee (EC) of the Division of Analytical Chemistry would like to share the following notice received (anonymously) from the Selection Committee for the ACS Award in Analytical Chemistry. The EC encourages the community to consider nominations from a diverse pool of scientists, and hopes all will consider the information below.
We, the Selection Committee for the ACS Award in Analytical Chemistry, write to express our dismay about the lack of diversity in the nominees for this award over the past several cycles. Not only were there zero women nominees for this award this year, there have not been any women nominated for this award in either of the two previous cycles. Similarly, the number of underrepresented minorities does not reflect the growing diversity of the chemical community.
We note that over the past decade, this award has averaged 17 active nominations each year. A lack of diversity is clearly a historical problem: only two nominations of women for this award have been received in the past decade, only two women have ever received this award, and the last award to a woman was made over 16 years ago. Likewise, we are aware of only two nominations of underrepresented minorities over the past decade, one of whom received the award.
Furthermore, for five ACS Awards, 2020 marked their first year to have a woman recipient. In fact, some ACS Awards have never been awarded to a woman (https://cen.acs.org/acs-news/comment/Breaking-glass-ceiling-home/98/i19), demonstrating that this problem extends well beyond the ACS Award in Analytical Chemistry.
We appreciate that a significant pool of meritorious nominations of men exists for this award. However, as a committee, we are also aware of a number of women and underrepresented minorities in our field who have similarly compelling credentials, but have not ever been recognized for their contributions to the field with a nomination.
We are aware of efforts by ACS to address this serious underrepresentation problem through awards canvassing, but given the persistence of the results we’re seeing, those efforts are insufficient. How can we justly choose an awardee when such a significant fraction of the potential pool has been excluded?
Continuing to do the same thing while expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity. Thus, we strongly recommend that all ACS Awards expand their criteria to include the service contributions of nominees to the development of an innovative, diverse workforce by requiring all future nominations for ACS Awards to include a statement directly describing how the nominee has addressed this important issue.
Since Award Selection Committee members are not permitted to nominate or support nominations for the award for which they serve on the jury, we cannot correct this deficiency ourselves. We call upon our fellow ACS members to increase their awareness of the contributions of all of their colleagues, and then act to recognize excellence across our community.
If you are considering nominating a man for an award, we request that you ask yourself if there are women or other underrepresented minorities whom you could recruit a colleague to nominate (remember that nominations for most ACS awards remain active for three years). We say to all those of you who have previously nominated a woman or someone from an underrepresented group, “Thank you! Please keep on trying!”
We call on the previous winners of this award, department chairs, group leaders, and all our ACS member colleagues to prepare nominations for these missing and qualified women and underrepresented minorities.
Selection Committee, ACS Award in Analytical Chemistry