Track 1: Departments and Underrepresented Students ALIGNED: Addressing Locally-tailored Information Infrastructure & Geoscience Needs for Enhancing Diversity

该奖项是根据2009年《美国复苏和再投资法案》(公法111-5)提供资金的。美国地理学家协会(AAG)正致力于通过满足当地量身定做的信息基础设施和地球科学需求，以增强多样性，从而协调大学院系和代表性不足学生的需求。联合项目将支持制定以知识为导向、以地点为基础和因地制宜的招聘和留用计划，在学生通过其专业进入大学并与大学打交道的部门一级进行招聘和保留。该项目旨在支持任职人数不足的青年了解他们可以在哪里以及如何将他们的个人兴趣转化为职业目标，并动员和调整各部门，以更好的方式学习在哪里寻找以及如何与任职人数不足的群体建立联系，包括如何传达地球科学职业的相关性。这一示范计划将整合关于、来自和关于当地以及居住在其中的社区的现实的知识，并将确定和纳入关于移民模式、通勤模式以及导致地理行为的选择和偏好的研究，并在这样做的过程中展示地理概念和技术应用于扩大参与的科学的重要性。该项目将设计和测试一个创新的工具包，该工具包将空间决策支持系统原型和在线材料交换中心结合在一起，以增加高等教育的多样性。Align将接触27个州的52个混合地理/地球科学部门，并将帮助一个由7个项目组成的试点小组，以整合关于在当地集水区哪里以及如何吸引代表不足的群体的知识和最佳实践。其他成果包括反映新出现的研究主题的地球科学研讨会、多样性大使同行导师交流框架、学术出版物，以及加强AAG、地理/地球科学系、全国学院和雇主协会、美国残疾人协会、美国社区学院协会、白宫历史黑人学院和大学委员会、西班牙裔大学协会和美国印第安人高等教育联盟等之间的合作。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). The Association of American Geographers (AAG) is working to align the needs of university departments and underrepresented students by Addressing Locally-tailored Information Infrastructure & Geoscience Needs for Enhancing Diversity. The ALIGNED Project will support the development of knowledge-driven, place-based, and locationally-tailored plans for recruitment and retention at the department level where students enter and engage with universities through their majors. This project seeks to support underrepresented youth to learn just where and how they might transform their personal interests into career goals, and mobilize and retool departments with better ways to learn where to find and how to connect with underrepresented groups, including how to convey the relevance of geoscience careers. This model program will integrate knowledge of, from, and about places and the realities of communities living in them and will identify and incorporate research about migration patterns, commuting patterns, and choices and preferences that lead to geographic behavior, and in doing so demonstrate the importance of geographic concepts and technologies as applied to the science of broadening participation. The project will design and test an innovative toolkit that combines a spatial decision support system prototype and an online clearinghouse of materials for increasing diversity in higher education. ALIGNED will reach out to 52 hybrid geography/geoscience departments in 27 states, and will help a pilot group of 7 programs to integrate knowledge and best practices about where and how to engage underrepresented groups in their local catchments. Other deliverables are a geoscience symposium reflecting on emerging research themes, a Diversity Ambassadors peer mentor exchange framework, a scholarly publication, and strengthened collaborations among the AAG, geography/geosciences departments, the National Association of Colleges and Employers, American Association of Persons with Disabilities, American Association of Community Colleges, White House Commission on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Association of Colleges & Universities, and American Indian Higher Education Consortium, among others.