GP-IN: Graduate soft skills development through mentoring pre-university students through diverse geoscience experiences

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The Geosciences are particularly suited for nurturing and diversifying a STEM workforce and promoting STEM literacy on account of the diverse applications to real-world problems related to humanity’s only home: the Earth. This interdisciplinary field prepares geoscience students for successful STEM careers within and beyond geoscience. Yet, the geosciences are faced with a talent gap and suffer from a serious underrepresentation of minoritized groups. Recruiting more and more diverse students into undergraduate geoscience programs of study is a necessity for future prosperity. By exposing rising high school seniors to the importance of a particular science before they enter college could have long-term benefits in favor of STEM career choices. Recruiting and training diverse students into the field will help to ensure that sustainable and inclusive future geoscience workers will be representative of America’s multicultural society.PIs propose a two-pronged approach that targets students at distinct critical junctures in the geoscience talent pipeline: 1) high-school students deciding on colleges and majors, and 2) graduate students working towards academic and non-academic careers in geoscience. The two main goals of this program are 1) to increase the number and diversity of college-bound high-school students who intentionally choose geoscience as a major, and 2) to solidify graduate students’ attitudes, skills, and identities as geoscience leaders and lifelong mentors. High-school students are preferentially recruited from three partner high schools with large populations of students from traditionally minoritized groups. Each high-school summer intern completes an individual project under supervision and mentorship from a graduate student in conjunction with organized and cohort-based exposure to and mini-training in computing and data science, field work and instrumentation, and communication. The graduate student mentors are formally trained and advised in the practice of mentoring via a series of workshops and individual feedback sessions. They also help design and deliver authentic exposure to and mini-training in geoscience to the interns. The interns’ projects are guided by project proposals written by the graduate students and revised with coaching from the PI.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.