SAGE 2YC

Supporting and Advancing Geoscience Education in Two-Year Colleges

Strong undergraduate geoscience education is dependent on effective programs at two-year colleges (2YCs). These colleges play an increasingly important role in producing earth-science literate citizens, developing a competent and creative geoscience workforce, teaching science to pre-service K-12 teachers, and providing a foundation for broadening participation in the geosciences. Two-year college faculty face substantial challenges – limited resources for travel, isolation, and few opportunities for geoscience professional development specific for their setting. This website provides access to resources on topics covered by workshops held around the country at a variety of scales (from local to national). The resources on the site will grow as more topics are covered.

Workshop Schedule

Learn about what workshops the project is running in the near future.

Host a Local Workshop

Find out how your organization can apply to host one of the local workshops following from the work of this project.

About this Project

Workforce Development

Geoscience education at two-year colleges (2YCs) is strongly affected by issues surrounding preparing students to go directly into the workforce or to transfer to a four-year school to complete a bachelors degree. Many of these issues have local factors which have to be addressed differently at different institutions. The resources provided here give 2YC faculty who teach geoscience tools they need to help their students clear important hurdles to their future:

Information on possible geoscience careers
Examples of programs that help prepare the future geotechnical workforce
Specific skills and knowledge needed for careers and/or continued study
and more.

Supporting Student Success

Improving student success is an important priority at most U.S. two-year colleges (2YCs), whether as an institutional goal, for accreditation, or as part of the Achieving the Dream initiative. Work on this priority is especially challenging because of the variety of students who enroll at a 2YC. By working together, 2YC geoscience educators can address the challenges and share their successes in teaching students with a wide range of abilities, preparation, and goals.

The SAGE 2YC project will be developing materials to assist 2YC geoscience educators in supporting their students' success in association with the upcoming summer 2013 workshop:

Supporting Student Success in Geoscience at Two-year Colleges
College of William & Mary
July 17 - 20, 2013

Before, during, and after this workshop participants and community members will be engaged in the process of generating best practices and sharing their expertise in ensuring that students have the support they need to be successful in 2YCs, 4YCs, careers, and beyond.

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation Division of Undergraduate Education through grants DUE 1122592, 1122640, 1122660, and 1122737.

Disclaimer: Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.