Preparing for an Academic Career

Conveners: Lynsey LeMay, Thomas Nelson Community College; Sue Ebanks, Savannah State University; Catherine Riihimaki, Princeton University; Gary Weissmann, University of New Mexico-Main Campus

Monday, July 17 - Wednesday, July 19 | 8:30am-11:30am | Northrup Hall: 116

This workshop is designed specifically for graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and others who are interested in pursuing academic careers in the geosciences. Workshop leaders will provide guidance and information that will help participants to be stronger candidates for academic positions and to succeed in academic jobs. Session topics focus on becoming both a successful teacher and researcher.

Developing or Modifying an Introductory Geoscience Course Using InTeGrate Modules

Convener: David McConnell, North Carolina State University

Monday, July 17 - Wednesday, July 19 | 8:30am-11:30am | Student Union - Ballroom C

This workshop is intended for instructors who are creating a new introductory course or redesigning an existing course focusing on the relationship between Earth and society. The InTeGrate project has created a series of eleven instructional modules that can be readily customized for incorporation into a range of introductory geoscience and environmental science courses. We will place these materials in the context of typical introductory courses, give participants opportunities to test drive the student activities, discuss lessons learned from initial efforts to use the materials in different types of courses, and explain the pedagogical approach behind the design of the materials and their implications for student learning and attitudes about science.

Geoscience Education Research Grand Challenges and Strategies Workshop

Conveners: Kristen St. John, James Madison University; Heather Macdonald, William and Mary; & Karen McNeal, North Carolina State University; Kim Kastens, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

Sunday, July 16 - Wednesday, July 19 | 1:30-5:30pm on Sunday; 8:30am-11:30am Mon-Wed | Student Union - Santa Ana A & B

The GER workshop will use group discussion and work-time, as well as other structured activities to support productive dialog and the outlining of a white paper. We anticipate that findings from a Spring 2017 survey of the broader geoscience education community will provide data to support workshop group discussion on grand challenges in different thematic areas of GER.

Participation in the workshop will be application-based with priority going to active geoscience education researchers at different career stages and at different types of institutions. In addition, we encourage participation of learning scientists (e.g., education researchers, cognitive scientists) who collaborate, or are interested in collaborating, with geoscience education researchers. We also encourage participation of people who are a position to influence or accelerate the uptake of research into practice in geoscience education (e.g., professional society officers, center for teaching and learning staff, department chairs). The deadline to apply for this workshop is February 22; notifications will go out by February 28.

Using Recreational Drones for STEM Explorations

Conveners: Shelley Olds, UNAVCO; LuAnn Dahlman, NOAA; Margaret Mooney, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Monday, July 17 - Wednesday, July 19 | 8:30am-11:30am | Johnson Center Recreational Services-Gym South

This workshop is designed for educators, after-school club leaders, science-fair mentors, and others who want to facilitate STEM-curious youth using recreational drones as a platform for learning. The first 20 registrants who are educators of students in grades 6-12 will receive a drone, courtesy of the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP). During the three half-day sessions, participants will learn about drone safety and teamwork, and then test their drones' capabilities, decide how to monitor the environment with onboard cameras and/or attached sensors, set up systems to organize data from drones, and develop STEM explorations appropriate for their situations.

Heads & Chairs Workshop: Future of Undergraduate Geoscience Education

Convener: Sharon Moser, The University of Texas at Austin

Monday, July 17 - Wednesday, July 19 | 8:30am-11:30am | Student Union - Fiesta A & B

This workshop is specifically designed for geoscience department heads, chairs, and other administrative leaders. The NSF sponsored initiative on the "Future of Undergraduate Geoscience Education" engaged a diverse spectrum of the geoscience academic and employer community and has developed a wide consensus on the skills, competencies, and conceptual understandings undergraduates need to be successful in graduate school and the future workforce and effective methods of producing these learning outcomes in undergraduate geoscience programs. This workshop is open to both participants and non-participants in the 2016 Heads/Chairs Summit. Those who were participants will have the opportunity to discuss their progress, provide insight and advice on successful and unsuccessful strategies, and further develop on their own action plans. New participants will have the opportunity to discuss results of this national effort, learn strategies for implementing changes in undergraduate programs, and develop an action plan for their own department. Participants can apply for partial or full support as needed.

Connecting Science to Issues of Sustainability and Environmental Justice

Convener: Joshua Villalobos, El Paso Community College

Monday, July 17 - Wednesday, July 19 | 8:30am-11:30am | Student Union - Acoma A & B

As natural resources become more scarce, an increasing percentage of the world's underprivileged population is facing issues of inequality and abuse in the distribution, and use, of these commodities. This workshop will explore the integration of Environmental Justice (EJ), which is the fair treatment and involvement of all individuals with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations policies, in introductory geoscience courses. The goal of this workshop will be discuss best practices and use of the InTeGraTe module Environmental Justice and Freshwater Resources in introductory geoscience classes.

Place, Cultural Context, and Geoscience Teaching

Conveners: Steven Semken, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus; Roberto Ibarra, University of New Mexico-Main Campus

Thursday, July 20 - Friday, July 21 | 8:30am-11:30am | Student Union - Fiesta A & B

We teach about the Earth in and by means of places, which are localities given meaning by human experience, and thus are cultural features embedded in the physical landscape. On the first day, participants in this workshop will explore and practice methods of leveraging the multicultural and natural attributes of places—and our own senses of place—to develop, deliver, and evaluate context-rich, place-based, culturally informed, inclusive curriculum and pedagogy. We will draw ideas from the rich cultural landscapes at hand in the Southwest as well as from the places and multicultural experiences that are important to the participants in the workshop. On the second day, we will unpack experiences from day one to understand how social-science theory can explain the effectiveness of this approach and assist geoscience educators with engaging a broad variety of students.

Flipping your Classroom

Convener: Jennifer Roberts, University of Kansas; Gregory Baker, University of Kansas Main Campus

Thursday, July 20 - Friday, July 21 | 8:30am-11:30am | Student Union - Mirage/Thunderbird

Many well-respected groups and associated faculty have tackled the issues of Earth science classroom transformation through decades of research and application. Today, many significant pedagogical advances to the standard lecture-lab classroom formats have been presented, tested, and demonstrated effective. However, even instructors who are favorably inclined to these pedagogies are limited by class time; thus, sufficient in-class time may represent a substantial barrier to sustainable reform. This interactive workshop will address the utility of an instructional model that finds extra time for in-class activities through the adoption of a " flipped" class format. By moving part of the instruction outside the classroom, instructors are provided with time in class to incorporate active learning strategies that have been shown to decrease attrition and improve student performance.

Geoscience Education Research Methods: Qualitative and quantitative

Convener: Julie Sexton, University of Northern Colorado

Thursday, July 20 - Friday, July 21 | 8:30am-11:30am | Student Union - Santa Ana A & B

This session is for those who want to increase their ability to conduct education research. Participants will have a chance to learn about principles of research design, qualitative and quantitative methods, and the standards of evidence and proof, and will have time to work on research plans.

Designing your Course to Maximize Student Learning

Convener: Anne Egger, Central Washington University

Thursday, July 20 - Friday, July 21 | 8:30am-11:30am | Northrup Hall: 116

Our understanding of how people learn and what classroom practices best support that learning has grown and solidified over the past few decades. In this workshop, you will both learn about and be engaged in those best practices as you design (or redesign) your own course. We seek participants from all types of institutions of higher education, and we particularly welcome graduate students who want to learn more about course design.

Over the course of the workshop, we will engage in a series of activities that will help you think about your course from the student learning perspective. You will learn about pedagogical techniques by engaging in them, not just by hearing about them. You will leave the workshop having begun to (re)design your course and with an action plan and resources for continuing the process.

Neutralizing the Politicization of Climate Science and Energy Policy

Convener: Callan Bentley, Northern Virginia Community College

Thursday, July 20 - Friday, July 21 | 8:30am-11:30am | Northrup Hall: 340

Participants in this session will work together to improve their teaching of climate science in a world of unprecedented politicization of that topic. Themes to be emphasized include rhetoric (the recognition and gutting of logical fallacies and "alternative facts"), cultural cognition, the communication dilemma of story-telling vs. data and logic, and the primacy of the carbon cycle in grounding understanding of modern perturbations thereof. We will utilize materials from InTeGrate collections and publicly-available resources on the Internet from several sources. Leave with a new set of tools and perspectives ready for you to deploy in your interactions with students and the general public.

Building Pathways for Success: Supporting Student Transfer from Two-Year Colleges to Four-Year Colleges and Universities

Conveners: Heather Macdonald, College of William and Mary; Norlene Emerson, University of Wisconsin - Richland; Jan Hodder, University of Oregon

Thursday, July 20 - Friday, July 21 | 8:30am-11:30am | Student Union - Acoma A & B

Facilitating transfer of students between institutions is a complex and multi-faceted issue. The workshop will address the following strategies and approaches for bridging the gap between two-year and four-year geoscience programs: Advising/support strategies; development of important student skills through curricular and co-curricular experiences; 2YC-4YCU faculty interactions; articulation agreements; cross-institutional collaborations including recruitment and student research projects, field trips, and bridge programs; and programs that support the transition and integration of students into the 4-year institution. We will also highlight examples that support student transfer from projects funded by NSF grants through the IUSE GeoPaths program.