K-12 Students, Teachers, Parents, Administrators and Higher Education Faculty: Partners Helping Rural Disadvantaged Students Stay on the Pathway to a Geoscience Career.

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The Wright State University project "K-12 Students, Teachers, Parents, Administrators and Higher Education Faculty: Partners Helping Rural Disadvantaged Students Stay on the Pathway to a Geoscience Career" is a research-based proof of concept track 1 pilot project that tests the effectiveness of an innovative model for simultaneous K-12 teacher professional development, student learning, and workforce development. The project is building a network of science experiences designed to engage eighth and ninth grade students from the Ripley, Union, Lewis, Huntington (RULH) school district, located in rural Appalachian Ohio, and keep them on the path to a geoscience career. During each summer of the two-year project, teams of RULH students, parents, teachers, administrators and college faculty travel to the facilities of the New Jersey Sea Grant Consortium at Sandy Hook, New Jersey to study science from an Earth system perspective. Teachers have the opportunity to engage in professional development alongside their students. During each of the two academic years of the project, additional professional development enrichment is provided to RULH teachers of various disciplines by a team of university scientists and geoscience educators from the Earth System Science Education Alliance (ESSEA), a NSF funded project. RULH students engage in problem-based science learning in the eighth grade and have the opportunity to take a course in Earth system science in the ninth grade that will earn them both high school and college science credits. Students also engage in community outreach by hosting community science events.