TRACK 1 - Building an Academic Bridge for Success: Increasing Undergraduate Diversity in the Geosciences at UC Davis

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Track 1: An Academic Bridge for Success: Increasing Undergraduate Diversity in the Geosciences at UC DavisThis project actively boosts diversity in the Geosciences at UC Davis. It consists of three major components that form an integrated strategy to recruit, train, and mentor underrepresented students. The goal is to get underrepresented students to enter graduate school and a geoscience career. The first component of the project targets underrepresented incoming freshman and community college transfer students. It is coordinated with existing UC Davis programs designed to enhance the success of underrepresented students, and it recruits minorities into small-enrollment seminars that provide focused geoscience education on a specific topic, introduces students to research, and provides personalized mentoring. The second component consists of an intensive research experience, which immerses beginning undergraduates in the scientific process and conveys the relevance of the geosciences to the individual student. The research program involves interaction of four to seven students and a mentor in an active monitoring program of water quality and sedimentation in Putah Creek, which flows through the UC Davis Arboretum. The Putah Creek experience is designed to teach students the skills necessary to perform individual research projects, provide them with opportunities to pursue research projects more specific to their interests, and define their own scientific questions that can form the basis of a senior thesis. The third component of the project is a three-pronged, course-based mentoring and advising initiative consisting of two professional skill development courses ('Building Your Professional Toolbox', and 'Selling Science'), the aim of which is to increase retention and professional development of underrepresented students.