GEOPAths UP: Geoscience on-ramps for HBCU STEM majors

地球科学在多样性方面落后于几乎所有其他科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）学科；例如，从2001年到2010年，美国有539名非裔地球科学家毕业，仅占地球科学学位的1.6%。传统黑人学院和大学（HBCU）是代表性不足的少数族裔STEM专业的绝佳来源，尽管它们只占美国学院和大学的3%，但却培养了27%的非裔美国人STEM学士学位。然而，地球科学是一门“发现科学”，学生们通常在本科阶段才意识到这是一种职业选择，而且在大学里发现地球科学的机会非常渺茫，因为hbcu的地球科学项目很少。该项目将通过持续的新的多学年和学年的研究，以及培养学生对地质知识的探索的体验式学习活动，增强本科生的体验，并为学生提供新的指导和进入地球科学专业网络和职业道路的途径。总体而言，该项目旨在将教育研究和教育实践与机构能力相结合，通过与学生的直接接触以及与其他组织和高等教育机构分享成功的策略，培养具有未来雇主所需技能的专业劳动力。项目活动的目的是增加毕业后打算通过申请研究生院或直接进入劳动力市场从事地球科学相关职业的非裔美国学生的数量。整个项目也被设计成一个模型，可供其他hbcu或少数族裔服务机构的单独地球科学家与其他STEM教职员工和外部组织合作采用。在这种模式下，一些地球科学知识被引入到其他科学课程中，在这些课程中，学生们磨练了在地球科学领域取得成功所需的定量和分析技能。为了应对地球科学缺乏多样性的挑战，pi将开发一系列相互关联的地球科学机会，这些机会将建立在Fort Valley州立大学（FVSU）现有的、非常成功的多样性项目的基础上。Fort Valley州立大学（FVSU）是乔治亚州中部的一个农村HBCU，它与其合作组织一起，为47名在过去25年中获得地球科学学士学位的非裔美国学生提供了一个支持性的地球科学学习生态系统（GLE）。这个新项目将提供资源和支持，以吸引和留住更大的学生群体，从进入大学到毕业，为研究生院或职业生涯做准备，并可以成为其他目前不提供地球科学学位的hbcu的典范。该项目将创建一个GLE，吸引已经在FVSU其他STEM领域注册了普通四年制学位课程的学生。这个项目将为他们提供学习经验，探索跨学科的现实世界的社会问题，这些问题可以通过地球科学的方法来解决，其目标是鼓励更多的HBCU学生从事地球科学的职业或读研。该项目有六个相互关联的目标：1)增加接触地球科学的一年级非裔美国本科生的数量。2)通过与地震学联合研究机构（IRIS）和其他组织的合作，为获奖机构的本科生建立新的多年、学年和暑期地球科学机会。3)丰富学生在STEM学科的学术准备，重点开发3个一小时的课程，作为FVSU地质学新辅修课程的一部分。4)拓宽和加强教师在计算科学方面的专业发展机会，并将技术融入教学，以提高学生的计算技能。5)加强与学术机构和工业实验室的合作，为学生提供高质量的研究体验。6)利用FVSU iHelp社区志愿服务项目，为GLE开发一个增强的服务学习组件。这个项目的一个独特的方面是,它提供了一个模型,一个孤独的地球科学家在一个HBCU non-geoscience干部门处理一个NSF设施,既能帮助加强茎部通过保留更多的毕业生以及地球科学介绍给超过500主要是非洲裔美国人和其他未被充分代表的少数民族(阶层)干专业的长度格兰特本来不知道在地球科学的机会。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。

Geoscience lags behind almost all other Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) disciplines with respect to diversity; for example from 2001 to 2010 the nation graduated 539 African American geoscientists, which was a mere 1.6% of the geoscience degrees. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) are an excellent source of underrepresented minority STEM majors, although they account for only 3% of US colleges and universities but have produced 27% of the African-American bachelor degrees in STEM. However geoscience is a “discovery science”, where students often don’t realize it is a career option until too late in their undergraduate years, and chances of discovering geosciences in college is extremely slim as there are only few geoscience programs at HBCUs. This project will enhance the undergraduate experience through sustained new multi- and academic-year research, and experiential learning activities that nurture students’ quest for geologic knowledge, and provide new mentorship and access to professional networking and career pathways in the geosciences. Overall, this project seeks to couple education research and education practice with institutional capacity for preparing a professional workforce with skills that tomorrow’s employers need, both through direct engagement with students and sharing of successful strategies with other organizations and institutions of higher learning. The project activities are designed to increase the number of African-American students who graduate with the intention of pursuing a geoscience-related career either by applying to graduate school or directly entering the workforce. The overall program is also designed to be a model which could be adopted by lone geoscientists at other HBCUs or Minority Serving Institutions, in collaboration with other STEM faculty members and outside organizations. In this model, some of the geoscience is introduced in other science courses where the students hone on the quantitative and analytical skills needed to be successful in the geosciences. To confront the challenge of a lack of diversity in geoscience, the PIs will develop a sequence of interconnected geoscience opportunities that will build on an existing, highly successful diversity program at Fort Valley State University (FVSU), a rural HBCU in middle Georgia that along with its partner organizations, has provided a supportive geoscience learning ecosystem (GLE) for 47 African-American students who have received geoscience bachelor degrees in the past two and half decades. This new program will provide resources and support to engage and retain an even larger community of students from entry to college through to graduation and preparation for graduate school or a career, and can be a model for other HBCUs that do not currently offer a geoscience degree. The program will create a GLE that engages students already enrolled in a normal 4-year degree program in other STEM fields at FVSU. This program will provide them with learning experiences that explore interdisciplinary real-world societal issues that can be addressed via geoscience approaches, with a goal of encouraging more HBCU students to pursue geoscience careers or graduate school. The project has six interrelated objectives: 1) Increase the number of first year undergraduate African-American students who are introduced to geoscience. 2) Establish new multi-year, academic-year and summer geoscience opportunities for undergraduate students at the awardee institution and through partnership with the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) and other organizations. 3) Enrich the academic preparation of students in STEM disciplines by focusing on developing 3 one-hour courses as a part of a new Minor in Geology at FVSU. 4) Broaden and strengthen faculty professional development opportunities in computational science and infuse technology into teaching to enhance students’ computational skills. 5) Strengthen partnerships with academic institutions and industrial labs to enhance quality research experiences for students. 6) Develop an enhanced service-learning component for the GLE, leveraging the FVSU iHelp community volunteering program. A unique aspect of this project is that it provides a model where a lone geoscientist in an HBCU non-geoscience STEM department working with an NSF facility, can both help strengthen the STEM department by retaining and graduating a larger number of students as well as introduce geoscience to over 500 mostly African-American and other underrepresented minority (URM) STEM majors over the length of the grant who would otherwise be unaware of the opportunities in geoscience.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.