Developing Culturally Responsive Pathways to local Geoscience Jobs and Careers

Monday 3:00pm Ritchie Hall: 368
Oral Session Part of Monday B: Earth Connections

Author

Darryl Haddock, West Atlanta Watershed Alliance (WAWA)
The Atlanta Alliance is building strong and impactful strategies and leveraging relationships with education and environmental organizations to;
*expand "pathways to geoscience" careers
*remedy prominent and lingering community issues

Alliance resources will be directed toward resolving long standing and prevalent community issues such as health inequities, soil and water contamination, air pollution, and lack of interaction with nature.
Geoscience addresses critical issues like. energy, meteorology, water resources, stewardship and reducing natural hazards. We plan to highlight the Outdoor Activity Center as a epicenter of environmental and geoscience and expand its capacity as a field laboratory on public land. We'll implement restoration and maintenance activities via service learning programming and develop urban watershed management plans through culturally responsive based learning. WAWA will facilitate school field trips and weekend learning opportunities for thousands of youth, community and institutional partners co-lead knowledge exchanges.

Since geoscience combines geology with oceanography, meteorology and astronomy and others to understand interactive planetary forces; it is often considered well paying! According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2016 median annual pay for geoscientists was $89,780. Median household income in westside Atlanta Communities was $19,447 to $25,447 same time period. Creating more geoscientist in our community increases household incomes.

Earth science majors traditionally overlook the usefulness of their problem-solving skills; compared to other sciences in which the answers are in the book, geoscience deals with real world issues. Student experience opportunities to work with imperfect data sets, mixes of descriptive and numerical data, open-ended problems with several possible solutions, and the necessity of picking the best explanation given limited data. Having youth move through both college bound and non college bound activities and have the ability to make livable wages in: corporate businesses, entrepreneurs, government agencies, not for profit will make for real community sustainability.