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The Aquarium of the Pacific has plenty of educational programs aimed at bringing the community into the wonderful world of science — but during this year’s Long Beach Gives campaign, the institution is hoping to raise money for one specific scholarship program.
Dubbed the CELP (Community, Equity, Learning and Persistence) Scholar Program, the initiative provides $10,000 scholarships to local college students from minority groups in an effort to increase diversity in science.
The CELP program (which is, fittingly, pronounced kelp) was officially established in 2024, according to the aquarium’s vice president of conservation and education, Jennie Dean. But it is essentially the successor to the aquarium’s African American Scholar Program, which ran from 2021 to 2023.
Both programs, Dean said, were inspired by the lack of diversity in science careers — particularly in specialized fields, like marine science. Just 8.8% of ocean science graduates, according to a 2021 National Science Foundation study, come from minority backgrounds, with an even smaller percentage of those graduates going on to professional roles in the field.
There are many factors that contribute to why people from minority groups are so underrepresented in ocean sciences, Dean said in a Friday, Sept. 5, interview. Some people, she said, don’t grow up with ready access to the beach — giving them less opportunity to develop a passion for the ocean and desire to explore it. Other times, students aren’t given rich marine science-related educational opportunities at school.
“It also has to do with those around them. If you are surrounded by people who you don’t feel are as close to your community and your identity, then you may feel isolated — and so then, you might drop out of that particular academic pursuit because you don’t see yourself in it,” Dean said, “because nobody else around you looks like you or comes from the types of context that you’re from.”
The CELP program was developed in an effort to combat those exact challenges, Dean said.
Besides providing students with the $10,000 financial award, each year’s cohort goes through various educational programing with the aquarium’s experts. One aspect, Dean said, is the program’s referral process.
If a student is interested in a specific aspect of marine science — for example, learning more about how to care for invertebrates in a saltwater aquarium — they’ll be referred to an aquarium expert in that subject. From there, the student will shadow and get hands-on experience in that field to help them figure out if it’s something they’d like to pursue professionally.
“We also do technical skill building. Resumes are always impactful in the job search process, so we work with the scholars to tighten their resumes,” Dean said, “to put in the types of elements that employers are looking for, or academics, if they’re applying to graduate school.”
Community work, Dean said, is also a big part of the program. Scholars get many opportunities to work in the field, whether that’s going out tidepooling, doing nature photography to document biodiversity in specific areas, visiting labs and even whale watching.
But perhaps the most key part of the program, Dean said, is helping build out a diverse cohort of scholars who can inspire the next generation of ocean scientists to pursue their passions.
“The scholars participate particularly with our early childhood education programming, producing short films that allow this younger audience to see what it looks like to be a scientist,” Dean said. “And sometimes, the scholars will come on site, so these 6-year-olds are coming up and meeting the movie stars in the film — and that connection is really special.”
Those early childhood educational experiences are key, Dean said, as they help teach younger kids that anyone has the tools to become a scientist — no matter what they look like or where they come from.
“It makes science more broadly accessible,” Dean said. “It demonstrates that anyone has the instruments within themselves to start scientific inquiry, because you can ask questions.”
There have been 61 graduates from the scholarship program so far, Dean said, and applications for the next 15-student 2026 cohort will open on Sept. 29. As part of Long Beach Gives, the aquarium is hoping to raise $40,000 to support scholarships for the next cohort of students.
Students who have completed the CELP program have gone on to continue their education in graduate school, worked for the aquarium itself, secured jobs at the California Coastal Commission and much more, Dean said.
“(The program) provides a network of folks that previously hadn’t seen a lot of each other in those spaces, and says that you belong here and you can be here and you will be successful,” Dean added. ” That network can then break the cycle — and allow folks to want to continue (pursuing) marine science when they might have felt intimidated in the past.”
To support the aquarium’s CELP Scholar Program, go to shorturl.at/5AUnQ.
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