Implementation Programs: Incorporating Geoscience throughout the Curriculum

These implementation programs will strive to:

• Develop a new vision for how geoscience is positioned in higher education,
• Infuse geoscience throughout the curriculum,
• Leverage existing geoscience, environmental science and engineering programs to address solutions for societal problems, and
• Engage younger students in the geosciences as a mechanism for increasing geoscience enrollment.

The implementation programs will result in the development of at least 26 models of ways to bring geoscience to a diverse range of disciplines, institutions, and networks, as well as the documentation and resources necessary to help other groups implement similar programs.

Pilot Implementation Programs

The initial set of 4 implementation programs will be developed by the InTeGrate project team.

A University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP) cluster will foster collaboration among a dual-enrollment high school, a two-year college, and a comprehensive university to interest, prepare, and support students to complete four year degrees in geoscience, environmental science, or Earth science education. An integral piece of this collaboration is use of InTeGrate materials across the programs. UTEP is an urban, minority-serving institution with over 60% of first-generation college students. Over 80% of the students at UTEP are from the El Paso region and nearly all graduates in primary or secondary education go on to teach in the local school districts. Thus this program provides an excellent opportunity for implementing strategies for engaging students underrepresented in the sciences and for studying the impact of the program in a relatively closed system.

A Pennsylvania State University cluster will demonstrate ways in which distance-learning courses can be used to enhance programming among a collaborating set of institutions. Courses in support of new online Certificate of Excellence in Earth Science program aimed specifically at non-traditional and foreign students will be offered through the Penn State World Campus. Building on collaborations established by the Africa Array program (an NSF OEDG project) these courses will enhance the Earth Science offerings at a network of historically black colleges and universities and minority-serving partner schools including the University of New Orleans, Fort Valley State, NCA&T, Jackson State, CSU-Northridge and CSU-Bakersfield. These programs will serve as national geosciences-education distance learning models intended to increase student interest in the geosciences and, more broadly, geoscience literacy.

Stanford University will demonstrate the ways in which geoscience can be integrated into the general education curriculum. New guidelines for the general education requirements for all Stanford undergraduates are currently under development and will be reviewed and implemented in 2012. The Stanford implementation project will provide a broadly applicable justification and a model for other institutions seeking to integrate geoscience into core general education offerings.

A coalition of state schools across the state of Washington led by Central Washington University will demonstrate how institutions can collaborate within a state to improve teacher preparation. Working through groups such as Teachers of Teachers of Science and the northwest section of the NAGT, this network will integrate geoscience methods and pedagogy modules developed through this proposal into science content courses.

One additional implementation program will arise from initial planning meetings and will enhance the involvement of minority-serving institutions and two-year colleges in the InTeGrate project.

20 Grant-Funded Implementation Programs

Beginning in 2014, institutions or clusters of institutions will be able to apply for $50,000 grants to develop 20 new implementation programs. These programs will:

• make use of project materials,
  
• model innovative ways to increase the number of students developing geoscience literacy, and
  
• contribute to the preparation of a workforce equipped to bring geosciences to bear in solving societal issues.

We anticipate that each project will involve at least five faculty members and be led by a coordinator or administrator. A steering committee of qualified community members established in association with NAGT will review proposals and select those to be funded based on the likely success of the program, its potential to model a new and transferable approach, and its ability to support a diversity of institutional settings and a diversity of students.

Workshops will be offered that will help to support teams as they develop proposals for implementation programs. These program-level workshops began in 2012 with a workshop on Programs that Bring Together Geoscience and Sustainability.

Application guidelines for developing new implementation programs will be released in 2013.