GP-EXTRA: Place-Based Participatory Path to Geoscience

北新墨西哥学院的学生中72%是西班牙裔，18%是美洲原住民。他们分别在埃斯帕诺拉山谷居住了400多年和1000多年。这是一个美丽的地方，历史和贫穷。这里贫瘠的矿藏早在100多年前就被开采殆尽，高原沙漠气候只支持小规模的、基本维持生计的农场——由数百年来一直持续使用的公共水渠系统灌溉。参与管理一个如此不情愿地提供果实的地方，显然是一种自豪。该项目打算通过让我们的本科生参与环境的许多层的详细地图，这些层的同化，以及在这些层内和跨层的自然和人为事件（火灾，洪水，虫害，迁移）的触觉模拟来扩展这种自豪感。这些事件的复杂性及其对生命和生计造成的损失促使许多社区投资于相关技术。鉴于美国农村地区的科学和计算知识水平较低，这种对技术的依赖迫使当地环境利益相关者放弃对外部技术专家的代理。该项目的目的是让本科生做好准备，在他们的社区中承担这一关键角色。该项目的一个预期结果是，这种基于地点的参与增加了自豪感，这将坚定地为本科生通往地球科学的道路奠定基础。该项目的目标是为学生创建一个强调建模、学习和协作规划的平台。该项目旨在为本科生提供系统思维技能，使他们在深入学习地球科学的过程中成为环境规划的重要参与者和新技术的灵活大使。该项目的协作规划经验的目标是：(1)帮助非专家更好地理解复杂的人与自然的相互作用，并利用这些知识(2)参与更真正的协作和创造性的规划活动。前者将为学生提供从事地球科学研究的技能，而后者将向他们保证，这些来之不易的技能对地球和他们的社区至关重要。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Part 1 - Northern New Mexico College serves a population that is 72% Hispanic and 18% Native American. They have resided, uninterrupted, in the Espanola Valley for over 400 and 1000 years respectively. It is a place of great beauty, history and poverty. Its meager mineral beds were tapped out over 100 years ago and its high desert climate supports only small, largely subsistence, farms - irrigated by a communal acequia system that has been in continuous use for hundreds of years. There is evident pride in participating in the stewardship of a place that offers its fruits so grudgingly. The project intends to expand on this pride by engaging our undergraduates in the detailed mapping of the many layers of their environment, in the assimilation of these layers, and in the tactile simulation of natural and human-caused events (fire, flood, infestation, migration) within and across these layers. The complexity of these events and their cost in lives and livelihoods have lead many communities to invest in relevant technology. Given the low level of scientific and computational literacy in rural America this reliance on technology forces local environmental stakeholders to forfeit their agency to an outside technical expert. The intent of the project is to prepare undergraduates to assume this crucial role in their community. An expected outcome of the project is the resulting increase in pride, stemming from such place-based participation, will firmly set undergraduates on a pathway into the Geosciences.The project's goals are focused on creating a platform for students that emphasizes modeling, learning and collaborative planning. The project seeks to equip undergraduates with systems thinking skills and have them serve as valued participants in environmental planning and flexible ambassadors of new technology en route to deeper learning in the Geosciences. The aims of the project's collaborative planning experience would (1) help non experts better understand complex human-natural interactions and to use that knowledge to (2) engage in more truly collaborative and creative planning activities. The former will give students the skills to pursue Geoscience while the latter will assure them that these hard won skills matter to the Earth and their community.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.