GP-EXTRA: Establishing high-impact curriculum to attract and retain students in a new environmental geology program

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Part 1This IUSE:GEOPATHS pilot project consist of a linked summer field course experience and subsequent fall research-based course to help attract and retain students into a new Environmental Geology B.S. program at Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU). The summer field experiences and research-based course are linked through content and employ high-impact practices. Diversity will be addressed by targeting Hispanic and female students during recruitment. This will help to increase traditionally underrepresented students in geology majors. The field course will help overcome the physiographic limitations of the Florida Coastal Plain, by bringing students to the Bahamas. The field course is intended to strengthening students' interest in geology and their connections to a cohort. This pilot project will help increase knowledge which deals with the benefits of field experiences attracting and retaining students into geology majors. It will also test the knowledge that suggests exposing and engaging undergraduates in research attracts, retains, and sustains students in STEM majors. The evaluation of this grant will be conducted by the FGCU Whitaker Center for STEM Education. The evaluation will help achieve the goals of this proposal through formative and summative assessment.Part 2This IUSE: GEOPATHS pilot project consist of a linked summer field course experience and subsequent fall research-based course. The summer field course experience will consist of lower-level learning that builds towards higher-level learning through field-based research experiences. Learning will continue into the fall research-based course by engaging the students in several, short course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) that build off of the field course content. This project targets female and Hispanic students recruited from general education geology courses. The specific goals of the field course experience and the following research-based upper division courses are to: 1) attract students to the new Environmental Geology B.S. major; 2) create a diverse student population in this new major; 3) retain and graduate students from this Environmental Geology major; 4) increase student self-confidence and learning; and 5) provide much needed assessment to measure the effectiveness of both field courses and course-based undergraduate research experiences. This pilot project has the ability to create a diverse pipeline of geoscience graduates who can fill the geoscience workforce needs in the coming years.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.