GP-IN: SOARING: Sharing Opportunities, Approaches, and Resources in New Geo-teaching

堪萨斯州立大学的农村教育中心(REC)和堪萨斯大学的冰盖遥感中心(CReSIS)将开展“高空：分享新地理教学中的机会、方法和资源”项目。飞翔计划的主要目标是为中学(初中和高中)的教师和学生提供关于最新地球技术的培训，以提高学生追求地球科学学位和职业的愿望。具体地说，PIS针对的是用于地质应用的航空遥感的地质技术应用。私人投资机构与9个学区建立了合作伙伴关系，这些学区代表了堪萨斯州中西部不同的农村学校群体。其中大多数学校的学生人数严重不足，特别是西班牙裔/拉丁裔学生。KSU REC将作为牵头组织，为大部分赠款提供便利，招募教师和学生参与项目活动，为教师在课堂上提供支持，并将教师与KSU夏季STEM学院(SSI)联系起来。KU的CRESIS将提供有关地球科学的内容、资源和关于地球科学技术的指导。与城市和郊区学校的同学相比，农村社区中代表性不足的群体在地球科学职业生涯中面临着多重障碍。考虑到这些目的，飞翔计划的目标是：1)培训农村教师，让农村中学生参与地球科学活动和地球技术；2)让不同的农村中学生接触到有意义的地球科学学习经验；3)培养学生获得地球科学学位和职业的技能和能力；4)提高学生攻读学位和从事与地球科学有关的职业的愿望。农村教师和他们多样化的农村学生被选为这笔补助金的原因是：1)许多农村学校在所有与STEM相关的领域都面临教师空缺；2)农村学生在STEM评估中的得分通常较低；3)中学特别是农村学校很少教授地球科学课。该提案概述了一系列方法，以招募27名中学教师(每年9名)，并可能雇用4000多名学生掌握地球技术和资源。此外，该项目将寻求招募女性学生、西班牙裔/拉丁裔学生和少数族裔学生参与。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Rural Education Center (REC) at Kansas State University and the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) at the University of Kansas will develop project SOARING: Sharing Opportunities, Approaches, and Resources in New Geo-teaching. The primary goal of Project SOARING is to provide training for secondary (middle and high school) teachers and students on the latest geotechnology for the purpose of increasing students’ desire to pursue geoscience degrees and careers. Specifically, the PIs target geotechnology applications of airborne remote sensing for geological applications. The PIs have partnered with nine school districts in which they have ongoing partnerships and that represent a diverse group of rural schools across central and western Kansas. Most of these schools have significant underrepresented populations, particularly Hispanic/Latinx populations. The KSU REC will be the lead organization, facilitating most of the grant, recruiting the teachers and students to participate in the project activities, providing support to teachers when they are in their classrooms and connecting teachers with the KSU Summer STEM Institute (SSI). The CReSIS at KU will provide content in the geosciences, resources, and instruction regarding the geoscience technology. Underrepresented groups in rural communities face multiple barriers to geoscience careers in comparison to their classmates in urban and suburban schools. With these purposes in mind, the objectives of Project SOARING are to: 1) train rural teachers to engage rural secondary students in geosciences activities and geotechnology; 2) to expose diverse rural secondary students to meaningful geoscience learning experiences; 3) build students’ skills and competency for geoscience degrees and careers; 4) increase the students’ desire to pursue degrees and geoscience-related careers. Rural teachers and their diverse rural students were chosen for this grant because: 1) many rural schools face teacher vacancies in all STEM related fields; 2) rural students typically score lower on STEM assessments; 3) few Earth Science classes are taught in secondary schools, especially in rural schools. The proposal outlines a series of approaches to engage twenty-seven secondary school teachers (9 per year) and potentially over four thousand students with geotechnology and resources. Additionally, the project will seek to recruit participation by female students, Hispanic/Latinx and minority students.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.