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）将开发一个名为“飞涨：分享新地理教学中的机会、方法和资源”的项目。飞涨项目的主要目标是为中学（初中和高中）教师和学生提供最新的地球科学技术培训，以提高学生攻读地球科学学位和职业的愿望。具体而言，pi的目标是航空遥感地质技术应用于地质应用。pi与9个学区合作，他们在这些学区中有持续的合作关系，代表了堪萨斯州中部和西部农村学校的不同群体。大多数这些学校的学生人数明显不足，尤其是西班牙裔/拉丁裔学生。KSU REC将是牵头组织，促进大部分拨款，招募教师和学生参加项目活动，为教师在课堂上提供支持，并将教师与KSU暑期STEM学院（SSI）联系起来。堪萨斯大学的CReSIS将提供地球科学方面的内容、资源和有关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从事地球科学职业方面面临多重障碍。基于这些目的，“翱翔计划”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岩土技术；2)为不同的农村中学生提供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)增加学生攻读学位和从事地球科学相关职业的愿望。之所以选择农村教师和他们不同的农村学生接受这项资助，是因为：1)许多农村学校在所有STEM相关领域都面临教师空缺；2)农村学生通常在STEM评估中得分较低；中学，尤其是农村学校，很少开设地球科学课程。该提案概述了一系列方法，以吸引27名中学教师（每年9名）和潜在的4,000多名学生参与岩土技术和资源。此外，该项目将设法招募女学生、西班牙裔/拉丁裔和少数民族学生参与。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。

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.