Visiting Workshop Program

Participants share their best ideas in a poster session at the 2007 workshop on Preparing Future Geoscience Professionals. Photo by Carol Ormand.

The Visiting Workshop Program brings the knowledge gained from the Building Strong Geoscience Departments project onto your campus to support conversation and planning by your department as a whole. In collaboration with the National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT), we offer a menu of interactive sessions distilling the lessons learned from our previous workshops and fully supported with on-line resources. All sessions feature presentations, discussions, and action planning.

When your department applies for a visiting workshop, you identify the length of the event (from one to two days). We recommend that the workshop be used for a retreat or other departmental planning event. You also identify the topics we offer that are of highest interest to you. Prior to the workshop, your department will provide us with information about the department and its programs. We will choose a team of two leaders who will develop a program (see some example programs) from the topics you've identified and will come to your campus to lead the workshop.

The visiting workshop program offers several unique opportunities:

It focuses on the specific context of your department.
It engages the entire department, rather than one or two individuals, in an in-depth, structured discussion about the topics of choice.
It provides an external framework and support for a department that is committed to making changes.
The two-person team approach provides two outside perspectives.

This program takes advantage of the well-established concept of having distinguished speakers visit a department to disseminate research results. However, in this case the visiting workshop leaders disseminate the composite results of the Building Strong Geoscience Departments workshops.

Visiting Workshop Leaders

Tim Bralower, The Pennsylvania State University
Diane Clemens-Knott, California State University-Fullerton
Diane Doser, University of Texas-El Paso
Geoff Feiss, College of William and Mary
Dallas Rhodes, Georgia Southern University
Randy Richardson, University of Arizona
Mary Savina, Carleton College

This workshop is a part of the Building Strong Geoscience Departments project. For more information on the aims and scope of the project, please see the About this Project page.