VDS Resource Dashboard
Welcome to your Virtual Discussion Series Dashboard!
Here you’ll find the link to join the VDS webinars, as well as pages for each webinar with readings and resources. Sign up for email updates from ASPIRE to be the first to know when registration opens for VDS in 2027.
Meet the Community Voices
Session Agendas and Resources
Participants can find the agenda for each session of the Virtual Discussion Series here, along with resources to support each topic.
VDS Session 1
Community-Engaged Science–What is it?
This first session takes a ten thousand-foot view of how community-engaged research can be a mechanism for broadening participation and to accelerate solutions-oriented geoscience.
VDS Session 2
Cultural and Scientific Humility
The objective of this webinar is to enhance your ability to notice common scientific practices, assumptions and mindsets, past and present, that have caused harm and use that awareness to design and do collaborative research that seeks to avoid, or at least not perpetuate, harm.
VDS Session 3
Centering Community
This session will encourage reflection on what it means to center community. Participants will explore the idea that freedom depends on the knowledge that is co-created from a complex web of relationships in community.
VDS Session 4
Beginning Relationships
What are the obstacles to beginning relationships? What are the mutual benefits? Participants will consider examples of positive experiences as well challenges in this Q&A.
VDS Session 5
Building Relationships
How are authentic relationships built in community-engaged science partnerships? Participants will hear practical lessons for building respectful partnerships between researchers and communities.
VDS Session 6
Evolving Relationships
We end our ASPIRE VDS series with a focus on Evolving Relationships. For this conversation, we are looking to faith-based communities to learn about the ebbs and flows, and continuity of care and relationship that they manage and steward.
Community Voices Poster Presentation at AGU
ASPIRE Community Voices presented their poster at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) annual meeting in 2025, demonstrating how scientists can learn and grow in their partnerships with communities to produce an exchange of mutual benefit. The poster is titled, “The ASPIRE Virtual Discussion Series: A platform for exploring successful community-engaged research,” authored by: L. Harris, V. Byrd, M. Lopez Fretts, P. Iwasaki, R. Nur, M. Stefanak, R. Pandya, B. Black. By Drawnversation. Contact for use and attribution.
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Marilu Lopez Fretts -
Vivienne Byrd -
Pictured (left to right): Lora Harris, Vivienne Byrd, Grandmother Rabiah Nur, Marilu Lopez Fretts -
"The ASPIRE Virtual Discussion Series: A platform for exploring successful community-engaged research," authored by: L. Harris, V. Byrd, M. Lopez Fretts, P. Iwasaki, R. Nur, M. Stefanak, R. Pandya, B. Black. By Drawnversation.
