This discussion broke into three topics: (1) challenges in early career - graduate student and early career faculty transitions; (2) challenges in starting GER - entering GER from disciplinary geoscience research; and (3) evaluation of GeoPaths projects - challenges in collecting and evaluating data for intervention projects.

Notes from the group discussing 'transitions into geoed research' (from other sciences):

Some questions:
How can you serve broader university mission by switching directions?
How can you establish yourself (coming in mid-career)?

Pathways into GER (or reasons for wanting to do GER):
**SoTL - involvement in curriculum development
**Wanting to work with science educators
**Involvement with SERC/NAGT/InTeGrate, etc.
**Wanting to integrate social problems/diversity into science
**Wanting to support diversity and science
**Asking questions about how students learn - begin collecting data through classroom action research
**Share preliminary work at local or campus conferences - get feedback
**Become involved in SoTL groups on your campus
**Outcomes assessment for department/school or program review - could evolve into scholarly research
**Funding not really necessary for classroom research - makes this research attractive
**Wanting to support junior faculty in scholarly classroom endeavors
**Switching gears to adapt to program/university changes
**Joining larger collaborations (participating in research or data collection, but not having to drive it)
**Finding mentors in GER (perhaps this could be organized at EER - better web connections to people's profile pages on SERC site?)

Challenges:
**Learning the language of GER
**Publishing outside of your field
**Finding colleagues (EER helps)
**Earning recognition of colleagues (for ann review or promotions)
**Not having the right tools(?)

What do we want:
**Database to connect people - novices & experts in GER
**Networks (webinars, workshops) connecting people who are new to GER
**Continued support of a range of options for publication (e.g., In The Trenches for interesting ideas...all the way to JGE for rigorous research - need to make all these options more explicit)

This post was edited by Heather Petcovic on Jul, 2017
Evaluation of GeoPaths projects take-home messages:
- Value of qualitative data in small-scale (small number of participants) projects; most of these projects target 10-15 students per year; how can we make the best use of the student experience to show
- Importance of making connections with others in the field - need to meet & greet other PIs, other diversity projects that are geographically close by

Discussion points:
- What can we do at the EER to move forward what these groups talked about? Need for an informal meeting of graduate students and early career faculty to network; need for a listing of postdoc opportunities, people looking for graduate students, etc. distributed prior to the meeting

- What can be done to support DBERs/GERs at research institutions negotiate hiring, tenure, and promotion?

- Need for intentional use of Linked In to build community