Initial Publication Date: March 6, 2019

Programming on Diversity and Broadening Access

Customize your Program

Join us for the fifth annual Earth Educators' Rendezvous in Nashville, TN! Drawing across the fields of geoscience, environmental science, sustainability education, and more, meeting attendees will have the opportunity to customize their program to learn broadly, focus on a particular issue or challenge, or something in between. Events include interactive workshops, oral and poster sessions, plenary talks and teaching demonstrations (see the Rendezvous program), or this browse of events related to Recruiting, Retention, and Diversity.

Morning workshops and working groups will meet for two or three days. Workshops are interactive, with participants learning from experts and from one another. The extended lunch hour provides a break and an opportunity to network with colleagues. Poster sessions will begin during the lunch hour on two days and the posters will remain available through the close of the day's program, with authors present after afternoon sessions. During the afternoon you can pick from a mix of mini-workshops, round-table discussions and/or contributed talks or teaching demonstrations. Check out the sessions below that focus on increasing diversity and broadening access at the Rendezvous this summer!

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Featured Events

Monday

Monday-Wednesday (three-day; day 1 of 3) Morning Workshop for department heads, chairs, and program directors, with the intention of helping to address challenges in their curricula and/or degree programs to better prepare students for future geoscience careers and/or graduate school: Heads and Chairs: Future of Undergraduate Geoscience Education, 8:30-11:30am.
Show Description

This workshop is intended to help department heads, chairs, and undergraduate program directors with addressing challenges in their curricula and/or degree programs aimed at better preparing their students for future geoscience careers and/or graduate school. The NSF sponsored initiative on the Future of Undergraduate Geoscience Education engaged a diverse spectrum of the geoscience academic and employer community and 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. We will focus specifically on best practices for implementing such changes in departments.Read more...
Using Community Science to Advance Earth Science Learning afternoon mini-workshop. 1:30-4:00pm.
Show Description

This workshop is for anyone interested in leveraging their Earth science teaching to produce meaningful local impact. We will introduce the practice of community science, in which projects are designed in partnership with community leaders and use Earth science to advance community priorities â and explore how community science can serve curricular goals from students from middle-school through college. Using case-studies and organizational partnerships, participants will learn strategies for connecting with local community groups. Through role-playing, participants will have an opportunity to practice scoping community science projects. Finally, we will deconstruct past community science projects so we know what kinds of student learning these projects are most likely to advance and what kind of additional learning supports might be needed to maximize that learning. Read more...
Monday Oral Sessions
Earth Education Forum, 4:30-5:45pm.

Tuesday

Monday-Wednesday (three-day; day 2 of 3) Morning Workshop: Heads and Chairs: Future of Undergraduate Geoscience Education, 8:30-11:30am.
Roundtable discussions, 3:00-4:15pm:

Plenary Presentation, 4:30-5:45pm: Raj Pandya, Director, Thriving Earth Exchange.
Share-a-thon and Teaching Demonstrations (1:30-4:10pm)

Wednesday

Monday-Wednesday (three-day; day 3 of 3) Morning Workshop: Heads and Chairs: Future of Undergraduate Geoscience Education, 8:30-11:30am.
Broaden and Diversify Your Reach Through Expanding Your Definition of 'Community of Practice' afternoon mini-workshop. 1:30-4:00pm.
Show Description

Community of Practice (COP) is a term for the collective learning that develops when people who desire to reach a common goal build a support network that fosters open communication and includes shared resources, exchanging lessons learned and engaging different perspectives and understandings. The Earth Educator Rendezvous can provide the foundation for Geoscience educators to build and solidify an instructional COP, but in order to broaden our community to include diverse voices and career experiences we need to develop an expanded definition. The Geosciences need to reflect the voices and needs of both our local and global community, engaging people of diverse backgrounds and perspectives to work with us in tackling issues and challenges that reflect their concerns. This workshop intends to provide guidance and opportunity for working on developing an expanded community of practice. We will specifically address the importance of identifying key members of your community and how to establish bi-directional learning between you, students and members of the community as you develop a diversity of voices through a regularity of interaction. The COP model can be applied to many different situations to encourage new knowledge in individuals or the group, to stimulate innovation and ideas or for distribution of knowledge within a group. The workshop will include discussion and shared experiences as well as demonstration of some communities of practice within the earth sciences. We will provide specific tools for growing your own community of practice as we focus on expanding and connecting more deeply in your own communities. Read more...
Make it Better: Assessing and addressing departmental and workplace culture issues afternoon mini-workshop. 1:30-4:00pm.
Show Description

With every upsetting instance of scandalous or simply uncivil behavior in our workplaces, every conversation with a student or employee who struggles to feel they belong, and every new external review that finds we aren't doing enough for diversity and inclusion in our business as usual, it's easy to wonder-how to begin? How can we understand and quantify the problems and successes in our departments and units? What are some strategies for assessing the existing culture in your unit and moving forward with solutions that work?

In this workshop we'll examine ways to assess the workplace culture as it exists today, including best practices to encourage participation and candor and to ensure respondent anonymity and safety. We'll look at example strategies for addressing problems that are uncovered and for replicating areas of strength. Participants will work in small groups to develop an action plan that they can take back to their home department or other geosciences workplace. Read more...
Poster Session - 4:30-5:45pm.

Thursday Events

Thursday-Friday (two-day; day 1 of 2) Morning Workshop: Broadening Participation of Underrepresented Minorities in Geoscience, 8:30-11:30am.
Show Description

Broadening participation of underrepresented minorities remains a persistent difficulty in geosciences. A great deal of work is currently being done to address this issue, and EER 2019, hosted for the first time at an HBU, provides an excellent opportunity to delve into this work. This workshop aims to bring together people who are involved or interested in in efforts to improve participation of URM in geosciences, including through NSF's Geopaths program, efforts by the HBCU working group, and other formal and informal efforts. Participants will share the work in which they are involved, to share models and ideas across the community. The group will discuss what is working well in their programs and efforts, including a description of the evidence of this success where possible, followed by a discussion of persistent challenges they face. We will end the workshop looking forward to outline what are the important next steps we as a community need to take to address the challenges and move forward with greater success. Read more...
Addressing Bias in Teaching afternoon mini-workshop, 1:30-4pm.
Show Description

Unconscious biases can impact the way we teach â from our interactions in the classroom to how we grade assignments or exams. And it isn't just our own personal biases that affect our teaching â each of our students brings in their own biases that can present challenges in our courses. Participants in this workshop will be introduced to unconscious biases and their impacts, strategies to overcome them, identify their own personal biases that they may hold, and develop a plan to minimize and avoid incorporating negative biases into their teaching for future courses. Read more...
Thursday Oral Sessions
Panel Discussion, 4:30-5:45pm: Grand Challenges in Earth Learning: Perspectives from Historically Black Colleges and Universities