RAPID – Impacts of COVID-19 on the Geoscience Enterprise: How Permanent Will Academic Program and Workforce Changes Be?

COVID-19大流行的迅速爆发以及社会为保护公共卫生而突然采取的重大行动，导致了持续时间不确定的重大经济和社会破坏。美国地质研究所的这个为期一年的项目旨在捕捉2019冠状病毒病应对对地球科学工作人员和地球科学学术项目影响的性质和程度。它还将在企业、教育机构和公民恢复面对面互动的期间跟踪这些变化。这项纵向研究旨在了解地学雇主和教育机构如何改变他们的工作场所和教学环境。它还将寻求发现，一旦机构和企业恢复covid -19前的运营，哪些已实施的正常运营变化将继续存在。这项工作的广泛影响将有助于地球科学相关领域的学术机构、雇主和决策者在可能发生变化的后疫情环境中有效前进。它还将有助于改进对未来危机的反应和恢复计划。虽然该项目侧重于单一的科学和经济部门，但其更广泛的影响将是加深对危机对劳动力、教育和私营部门的短期和长期影响的理解，以及对供应链和劳动力/教育机构弹性的经济影响。由美国地球物理研究所（AGI）进行的这项研究将建立新冠疫情前后工作场所环境的基线，并了解地球科学学术项目和部门、雇主和劳动力变化的类型、幅度和持久性。该项目的成果将有助于为未来的研究领域以及与人机界面和数字环境下学习和教学的新方法相关的研究领域提供信息。为了开展该项目，调查人员将在52周的时间内收集和跟踪公开的劳动力和经济数据。这些信息将与五个队列的调查结果相结合：(1)地球科学雇主，(2)地球科学工作者（截至危机开始），(3)学术教师，(4)地球科学学院和大学生，以及(5)2014年至2019年毕业的近期地球科学毕业生。这些团队将通过向800多个美国学位授予和社区学院地球科学项目、AGI会员协会会员网络以及AGI超过12.4万名地球科学专业人士的联系网络发送邀请来建立。AGI将至少每隔一周对每位参与者进行调查，以评估员工的就业状况、工作环境、工作活动和面临的挑战。此外，AGI将利用公开的经济和劳动力数据，为调查结果的宏观经济动态提供更广泛的背景。每周数据简报将在AGI网站上发布，以报告地球科学的持续状态以及来自联邦和/或调查数据的新见解。它还将出版一份综合报告，详细说明所审议的每一个队列所经历的变化，包括工作环境和队列工作状况变化的持续时间和持久性。报告将根据联邦机构报告的地学就业和经济指标来检查调查结果，并评估联邦数据与调查反应之间的任何滞后。该报告将以硬拷贝形式提供，并在AGI网站上免费提供数字格式。电子版将发送给所有地球科学大学和学院。最终报告的总结结果也将在网上发布，用于会议演示，并在适当的情况下在同行评议的期刊上发表。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 rapid onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the sudden dramatic actions taken by society to protect public health have led to significant economic and social disruption of indeterminant duration. This one-year project by the American Geological Institute seeks to capture the nature and extent of the impact of COVID-19 responses on the geoscience workforce and geoscience academic programs. It will also track those changes through the period when businesses, educational institutions, and citizens resume in-person interactions. This longitudinal study aims to understand how geoscience employers and educational institutions are changing their workplace and instructional environments. It will also seek to discover which of the implemented changes to normal operations will be remain in place once institutions and companies resume pre-COVID-19 operations. Broader impacts of the work will help academic institutions, employers, and decision makers in geoscience-related fields move forward effectively in the potentially changed post-COVID environment. It will also help improve response- and recovery-planning for future crises. Although focusing on a single scientific and economic sector, additional broader impacts of the project will be an increased understanding of the short and long-term impacts of crises to the workforce and on education and the private sector, as well as economic impacts for supply chains and workforce/educational institution resilience. This study conducted by the American Geophysical Institute (AGI) will establish a baseline of pre- and post- COVID-19 workplace environments and an understanding of the types, magnitude and permanency of changes to geoscience academic programs and departments, employers, and the workforce. The project’s results will be useful for informing future areas of research as well as those related to human-technology interfaces and new approaches in learning and teaching within digital environments. To conduct the project, the investigators will collect and follow, over a 52-week period, both publicly available workforce and economic data. This information will be combined with survey results for five cohorts: (1) geoscience employers, (2) geoscience workers (as of start of the crisis), (3) academic faculty, (4) geoscience college and university students, and (5) recent geoscience graduates who graduated between 2014 and 2019. These cohorts will be established by sending invitations to over 800 U.S. degree-granting and community-college geoscience programs, to AGI's member societies membership networks, and to AGI’s contact network of over 124,000 geoscience professionals. AGI will survey each participant at least every other week to assess employment status and/or status of employees, work environment, work activities, and challenges faced. In addition, AGI will utilize the publicly available economic and workforce data to provide a broader context to the macroeconomic dynamics of the survey results. Weekly data briefs will be published on the AGI website to report on the ongoing state of the geosciences and new insights from the federal and/or survey data. It will also publish a synthesis report that details the changes each of the considered cohorts experienced, including the duration and permanency of changes to the work environment and cohort work status. Reports will examine survey results in the light of reported geoscience employment and economic indicators from federal agencies and assess any lags between federal data and survey responses. The report will be available in hard copy and freely available in digital format on AGI’s website. Digital copies will be sent to all geoscience university and college programs. Summary results of the final report will also be published online, used in conference presentations, and if appropriate, published in peer-reviewed journals.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.