Professor Jose Fuentes is a tireless champion and aspirational role model for students and early-career scientists interested in geophysics and atmospheric sciences who come from underrepresented backgrounds. For decades, Fuentes has worked to diversify the national and global science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce. He has done so by chairing and serving on national committees as a faculty member who catalyzed change at his institutions (University of Virginia and Penn State), by working with faculty and students at historically Black colleges and universities, by lecturing at workshops across Latin America and by personally leading and mentoring students from underrepresented backgrounds in field studies.

His influences and impacts are concrete and actionable. For example, he chairs the Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering (CEOSE), which is charged by the U.S. Congress. Its mandate is to advise the National Science Foundation on policies and programs that encourage full participation by women, underrepresented racial and ethnic groups and persons with disabilities within STEM enterprise. Professor Fuentes has also been instrumental in helping Howard University significantly increase the number of early-career African American and Hispanic atmospheric scientists in the United States.

Overall, he is viewed to be a visionary leader with a great heart for seeking out and providing wide-ranging opportunities to students at all levels and mentoring them toward success in their academics and postgraduate careers. His enthusiasm and efforts in developing and implementing impactful research and involving and mentoring junior scholars and students through such processes are palpable and exhilarating.

And he accomplishes this high degree of outreach while maintaining a highly productive and innovative research program that studies cutting-edge problems in micrometeorology, boundary layer meteorology and atmospheric chemistry from the Arctic to the Amazon. He even finds time to study how ozone may interfere with biogenic emissions from plants that serve as cues to attract insect pollinators.
Through the efforts of leaders like Fuentes, American geophysics will achieve its goal to be an intellectually richer, more diverse and inclusive community.

— Dennis Baldocchi
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California

I am honored and grateful to receive the AGU Ambassador Award. I owe special thanks to University of California, Berkeley professor Dennis Baldocchi for leading the nomination and colleagues who wrote supporting letters. I thank AGU for the recognition of my work on equity, access and inclusion in the geosciences. Broadening the participation of underrepresented groups in the geosciences has always been an integral and intentional goal of my professional activities. It has ordinarily involved collaborations with different groups and support by federal government funding agencies. Throughout the years I have worked closely with a number of students, many of whom come from underrepresented groups, and I have enjoyed effective collaborations to devise and implement strategies to recruit early-career scientists to explore educational, research and professional opportunities in the geosciences. Cooperating with colleagues at minority-serving institutions and elsewhere, it has been possible to garner broader perspectives and expertise to envision and implement approaches that address equity and inclusion issues in the academic community. Serving together on advisory committees for federal government funding agencies, we have helped develop national programs to remove barriers to participation in the geosciences, thus fostering more diverse and inclusive scientific teams to conduct education and research leading to revolutionary discoveries to solve the problems (e.g., climate change) facing the nation. Recognizing the importance of leadership in the sciences, working with partners throughout the country, over the years I have organized workshops and promoted activities to cultivate the development of individuals from diverse backgrounds as leaders in the geosciences who can guide, influence and marshal scientific learning, research and innovation. Involvement with professional societies such as AGU and the American Meteorological Society has facilitated the development of plans to have diverse governing bodies that best represent the gender and ethnic composition of the professional community. In closing, I share this award with students, early-career scientists and colleagues throughout the Americas with whom I have worked over my career for their tireless dedication to enriching the diversity of the geosciences workforce. I also call upon the new generation of geoscientists to learn the lessons from my generation and to continue to press for inclusion and equity in science in the United States and around the world, for despite recent advances, much work remains to be done so that all voices may be represented in the sciences. — Jose D. Fuentes, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 

For seminal contributions to advancing the understanding of the processes controlling gas exchange between vegetation and the atmosphere

The teams who created the “Call for a Robust Anti-Racism Plan for the Geosciences,” led by Dr. Hendratta Ali and “No Time for Silence,” led by Dr. Vernon Morris. These two teams created an important dialogue and a framework for being anti-racist in geosciences that is being used by organizations around the world to make our community more diverse and inclusive. Their work served as the foundation to AGU’s eight deliberate steps that we committed to taking to support our Black and Brown family, friends, colleagues and students.