Heads and Chairs Workshop on Future of Undergraduate Geoscience Education

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The University of Texas at Austin has been granted an award to organize a workshop titled "Heads and Chairs Workshop on Future of Undergraduate Geoscience Education" in July 2017. The objective of this workshop is to build on the previous progress and design successful strategies and best practices for changing undergraduate programs in different types of institutions. At this workshop, participants will 1) discuss the concepts, skills and competencies identified by the wider geoscience academic and employer community during the previous grant and how these relate to their individual department undergraduate curricula and program, 2) work on implementation strategies together with each other and with some heads and chairs that attended the 2016 Summit who have already spent a year working to implement changes in their programs, and 3) develop individual action plans for their own departments. Prior to the workshop, participants from the 2016 heads and chairs meeting will be asked to provide updates on their individual department action plans, including what has been accomplished, what was or was not successful, and future plans. The updates on action plans will be synthesized, analyzing them by institution type, similarity and determine which strategies work best, what obstacles occur and how to overcome them. This synthesis will inform discussions and development of actions plans at the 2017 workshop. The education of undergraduate students in departments that successfully change their programs will be greatly enhanced, and those students will be better prepared for graduate school and future employment. The experiential learning recommended by the wider geoscience academic and employment community is also most conducive to learning by underrepresented groups and to their future success.The results of this workshop, combined with compiled and synthesized results of the 2016 Heads and Chairs Summit on the Future of Undergraduate Geoscience Education, will provide critical data on effective strategies for changing undergraduate curricula and programs and in identifying common obstacles or roadblocks and how they can be overcome. Creating change in departments, particularly with respect to undergraduate curricula, is very difficult and being able to design successful strategies for changing undergraduate programs in different types of institutions will be a significant advance.