Using NSF TUES 1 and TUES 2 to Develop and Disseminate Best Practices.
I am a fulltime 2-year college faculty and a PhD student in geoscience education. As part of my early graduate experience, I participated in a TUES 1 grant that looked at integrating undergraduate research activities into an undergraduate petrology course. This project was my first collaboration between my 2YR college and my PhD university. I then received my own TUES 1 grant implementing my own plan for integrating undergraduate research and inquiry activities into my physical geology and new summer geology field courses. I am now part of a TUES 2 grant looking at extending the best practices developed in the TUES 1 grant that I participated in as a graduate student. The TUES 2 grant involves collaboration between my 2YR college, my PhD institution, and 2 other universities. The NSF model for piloting and extending best practices in education is one model that provides structure and support for across-institutions collaboration. I would like to see a network that can partner interested parties in setting up similar types of collaborations between institutions. SERC provides a number of collaborative initiatives and may be a good choice for housing a GER collaboration network. The NSF tiered model may be useful in terms of providing information on smaller projects that may be scaleable and for providing a means of connecting collaborators. This may also be a way to connect "experts" in different areas of GER.