GP-IN: Introducing Community College and Pre-College Students to Geoscience through Groundwater Quality Monitoring

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Geoscience training is interdisciplinary and includes all of the core sciences because the value of diverse perspectives is well recognized when designing geoscience curricula. However, geoscience departments have fallen short in attempts to extend that quality to the people who make geoscience happen. The geosciences are the least ethnically and racially diverse of all science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. This lack of diversity holds back geoscience innovation and threatens the supply of geoscientists available to meet workforce demands in the coming years. Moreover, geoscientists will play critical roles in helping solve some of society’s biggest challenges including challenges related to climate, water, and energy, and diverse perspectives are needed to develop equitable solutions to these challenges. This award asks the main question: can geoscience student diversity be increased in agricultural landscapes through participation in a co-curricular program of groundwater quality monitoring? This award will provide training in groundwater and geospatial sciences to 54 undergraduate students from diverse rural communities in Kansas. It will help the students see the value of geoscience to their lives and help ensure that a diverse geoscience workforce will be available to meet the needs of a region that depends heavily on the availability of quality groundwater.To address the overarching question (i.e., can geoscience student diversity be increased in agricultural landscapes through participation in a co-curricular program of groundwater quality monitoring), this award will create a geoscience recruiting network between a university and two community colleges and use it to introduce students from diverse backgrounds to geoscience through co-curricular research on groundwater, a critical resource for the students’ home communities. Student participants will form three-person teams, consisting of one student from each partnering institution and will participate in a variety of technical and professional development activities. The project's primary goals are to increase the interest in geoscience disciplines as well as the experiences of students from historically excluded communities in the geosciences. The program will connect geoscience research to careers, while simultaneously addressing lack of exposure, sense of belonging, and financial stress for students who are nearing a critical transition to a four-year university. By testing and refining this program, this project will create a roadmap for recruiting diverse students from rural communities across the midcontinent.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.