Integrate > Goals and Strategies
Hurricane Andrew Composite
This photo is a composite of three days' views (August 23, 24 and 25, 1992) of Hurricane Andrew as it slowly moved across south Florida from east to west. Hurricane damage is a major societal and economic threat for the Atlantic and Gulf states. Photo courtesy of NASA. Click to enlarge.

Project Goals and Strategies

By the time current undergraduates send their children to college, Earth's population will have increased to more than eight billion people. One or more major metropolitan areas in our increasingly crowded world will have experienced a devastating earthquake or volcanic eruption, sea level rise will be inundating low-lying coastal areas, energy resources will be less available and more expensive, and our climate will be warmer and punctuated by more frequent extreme weather events.

The geosciences community has the ability to explain the workings of the Earth system and is poised to provide critical insight into all of these challenges. Consequently, a geoscience perspective must be firmly integrated into educational pathways that lead toward informed personal and public decisions that move civilization toward a sustainable future.


The first goal of the project is to develop curricula that will dramatically increase geoscience literacy of all undergraduate students. This includes the large majority of students that do not major in the geosciences, those who are historically under-represented in the geosciences, and future K-12 teachers, such that they are better positioned to make sustainable decisions in their lives and as part of the broader society.

The second major goal is to increase the number of majors in the geosciences and associated fields and to develop future geoscientists that are able to work with other scientists, social scientists, business people, and policy makers to develop viable solutions to current and future environmental and resource challenges.

Antarctic Seismic System
Scientists work on the installation of seismic system on Mt Erebus, Ross Island, Antarctica. This seismic refraction experiment was designed to create imagery of the volcano's magma chamber. Mt. Erebus is the world's southernmost active volcano and this research seeks to understand the overall impact of the volcano on the Antarctica and global environment. Image from the IRIS Consortium. Click to enlarge. More information about this research
Achieving these goals requires a revolution in how geoscience education is perceived and practiced by geoscientists, as well as the roles that the geosciences play in the broader curriculum in institutions of higher education. Connecting geoscience education to societal challenges has the potential to increase enrollment in geoscience and allied courses, thus strengthening the field while serving society.

To start this revolution, an integrated, community-based approach combines the following elements:

1) Developing teaching materials and evaluation of new teaching resources and instructional strategies,

2) Implementation programs to incorporate geoscience throughout the curriculum,

3) Professional development and dissemination strategies to promote widespread adoption of these new approaches.


Program Assessment and Evaluation
project diagram Diagram of interacting elements of InTeGrate. Click to enlarge.

Two major efforts will be aimed at understanding the impact of the InTeGrate program. An internal assessment team will focus on understanding the impact of new materials and courses on student learning. The most important responsibility of the internal assessment team will be to ensure that the materials InTeGrate disseminates effectively promote the goals of increasing students' geoscience literacy, understanding of the process of science, and improving the ability to solve interdisciplinary problems.

An external evaluation will focus on the measurable impact on programming, the associated impact on student learning, and the ultimate impact on students' ability and willingness to engage in societal roles addressing the sustainability of our civilization and our environment. The external evaluation team comprises a geoscientist who is independent of the development teams and a professional evaluation group. This combination will provide an understanding of the nuances of the program strategies and goals, and of the community that is striving towards those goals.