For graduate students, securing prestigious fellowships provides incredible benefits such as increased job opportunities and likelihood of receiving awards. These benefits can be particularly life-changing for a graduate student who may come from a marginalized background. However, the inequity in fellowship distribution hinders the success of graduate students, especially those who are marginalized. The majority of the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is white and attend top-ranked institutions. Within the GRFP, there is a clear disconnect between the grantee’s proposed broader impacts and follow-through. To value and support communities, and graduate students of color in the process, the GRFP must be reimagined. In this article, we provide a brief background on the relationship between STEM and marginalized communities, and how broader impacts currently function as a band-aid to the issues of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) in STEM. We then conclude by providing recommendations to improve the broader impacts section and the awardee selection process.

Speciation in the marine environment is challenged by the wide geographic distribution of many taxa and potential for high rates of gene flow through larval dispersal mechanisms. Depth has recently been proposed as a potential driver of ecological divergence in fishes and yet it is unclear how adaptation along these gradients' shapes genomic divergence. The genus Sebastes contains numerous species pairs that are depth segregated and can provide a better understanding of the mode and tempo of genomic diversification. Here we present exome data on two species pairs of rockfishes that are depth segregated and have different degrees of divergence: S. chlorostictus-S. rosenblatti and S. crocotulus-S. miniatus. We were able to reliably identify 'islands of divergence' in the species pair with more recent divergence (S. chlorostictus-S. rosenblatti) and discovered a number of genes associated with neurosensory function, suggesting a role for this pathway in the early speciation process. We also reconstructed demographic histories of divergence and found the best supported model was isolation followed by asymmetric secondary contact for both species pairs. These results suggest past ecological/geographic isolation followed by asymmetric secondary contact of deep to shallow species. Our results provide another example of using rockfish as a model for studying speciation and support the role of depth as an important mechanism for diversification in the marine environment.

Speciation in the marine environment is challenged by the wide geographic distribution of many taxa and potential for high rates of gene flow through larval dispersal mechanisms. Depth has recently been proposed as a potential driver of ecological divergence in fishes, and yet it is unclear how adaptation along these gradients' shapes genomic divergence. The genus Sebastes contains numerous species pairs that are depth‐segregated and can provide a better understanding of the mode and tempo of genomic diversification. Here, we present exome data on two species pairs of rockfishes that are depth‐segregated and have different degrees of divergence: S. chlorostictus–S. rosenblatti and S. crocotulus–S. miniatus. We were able to reliably identify “islands of divergence” in the species pair with more recent divergence (S. chlorostictus–S. rosenblatti) and discovered a number of genes associated with neurosensory function, suggesting a role for this pathway in the early speciation process. We also reconstructed demographic histories of divergence and found the best supported model was isolation followed by asymmetric secondary contact for both species pairs. These results suggest past ecological/geographic isolation followed by asymmetric secondary contact of deep to shallow species. Our results provide another example of using rockfish as a model for studying speciation and support the role of depth as an important mechanism for diversification in the marine environment.