Preparing for an Academic Career

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

Monday, July 15 - Wednesday, July 17 | 8:30am-11:30am | TSU - Humphries: 222

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 from a variety of institution types and career paths will provide guidance and information that will help participants to be stronger candidates for academic positions and to succeed in academic jobs. Each participant will develop or revise a plan for their next career stage and will take home ideas that they can implement immediately. Informal discussions and one-on-one mentoring are available during lunch and afternoons. Participants will re-join the group for peer review of application materials on Monday and Tuesday evenings. Additional professional development is available through the afternoon workshops, panels, and plenary sessions that are part of the Earth Educators' Rendezvous.

Designing Effective Lessons for your First Geoscience Course

Conveners: Karen Kortz, Community College of Rhode Island, Reginald Archer, Tennessee State University, and Brendan Hanger, Oklahoma State University

Monday, July 15 - Wednesday, July 17 | 8:30am-11:30am TSU - Humphries: 221

Participants will begin with the big picture of establishing course goals for introductory science courses and then narrow the focus to determine learning outcomes for select individual lessons aligned with those goals. Participants will learn different active-learning strategies that can be used to help students achieve the learning outcomes and have time to explore the rich set of resources offered through Teach the Earth and similar collections. They will then design lessons using these strategies, giving and receiving feedback from other participants and the leaders. Throughout the workshop, the leaders will model different active learning strategies, such as think-pair-share, conceptest questions, minute papers, gallery walks, and jigsaws. Participants will work closely with each other and leave with several lessons completed and plans to complete other lessons.

Integrated Environmental Systems at TSU Farm

Conveners: William Sutton and Tom Byl, Tennessee State University; Steven Goodbred, Vanderbilt University

Monday, July 15 - Wednesday, July 17 | 8:30am-11:30am TSU - Farm: 31

This workshop presents educators at all levels with activities and lessons to help incorporate nature into their classes. The TSU campus farm and wetlands provide important ecosystem services and avail magnificent resources to explore the natural world. The workshop will be helpful for educators to include active learning opportunities for students to explore how geology interacts with environments (ecological niches) resulting in different biological responses.

Each set of activities will commence with a group discussion of objectives & goals. We will use fieldwork and active learning activities to explore various approaches to teaching and learning about integrated environmental systems while in the field. Each day will close with some questions to explore and curriculum development discussions.

Heads and Chairs: Future of Undergraduate Geoscience Education

Conveners: Sharon Mosher, The University of Texas at Austin and Jeff Ryan, University of South Florida

Monday, July 15 - Wednesday, July 17 | 8:30am-11:30am TSU - Humphries: 13

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.

Teaching Introductory Geoscience with Data and Math in a Societal Context Using GETSI Modules

Conveners: Becca Walker, Mt. San Antonio College, Jessica Smay, San Jose City College, and Rachel Teasdale, California State University-Chico

Monday, July 15 - Wednesday, July 17 | 8:30am-11:30am TSU - Humphries: 327

Integrating cutting edge data and quantitative skills into introductory courses can be challenging. The GEodesy Tools for Societal Issues (GETSI) project has developed a suite of undergraduate teaching modules to make this easier and more engaging. The workshop will feature three of the modules in greater depth, as well as overview additional resources, provide coaching on teaching with data and math more generally, and give participants time to work on implementation planning. Participants who complete the full workshop will receive a $200 stipend. Anticipated featured modules are Measuring the Earth with GPS, Ice Mass and Sea Level Change, and Monitoring Volcanoes & Communicating Risk.

Adapting Active Learning Strategies in Your Courses

Conveners: Rachel Teasdale, California State University-Chico and David McConnell, North Carolina State University

Thursday, July 18 - Friday, July 19 | 8:30am-11:30am TSU - Humphries: 327

Research in STEM disciplines has revealed that empirically validated instructional practices that can contribute to improvements in student learning and a reduction in attrition. We will provide examples of several "active learning" instructional methods and assessments and work with participants to strategize how they can readily be adapted into a variety of post secondary science courses. We will outline a series of consistent steps for (re)designing lessons to incorporate different degrees of active learning suitable for instructors' situational factors (e.g., class size, instructional experience, course content). The target audience for this workshop is any instructor seeking to design or redesign lessons for a science course, applicable to introductory or more advanced courses. Participants will leave with new strategies incorporated into an existing lesson and knowledge of which active learning practices best match with their student learning goals. The workshop is designed to accommodate instructors with a mix of experiences; from those with no history with active learning to instructors seeking to incorporate new strategies to their courses.

Creating and Integrating Meaningful Virtual & Augmented Reality Content for Geoscience Classes

Conveners: Ryan Hollister, Turlock High School

Thursday, July 18 - Friday, July 19 | 8:30am-11:30am TSU - Humphries: 222

Learn the tips and tricks needed to create an engaging, story-driven Immersive Virtual Field Experience (IVFE) that can be utilized by all students on nearly any device. Participants will briefly explore the characteristics of an engaging IVFE before spending the majority of the workshop collaboratively planning and creating an IVFE scene using local phenomenon and a variety of free or free-to-try software. Participants should be comfortable using a computer.

Connect with Students by Leveraging Phenomena and Incorporating Modeling into the K-12 Earth Science Classroom

Convener: Kim Kotowski, Wilson County Schools

Thursday, July 18 - Friday, July 19 | 8:30am-11:30am TSU - Humphries: 320

For ALL Earth Science teachers! Participants will learn to leverage scientific phenomena and align them to appropriate standards (NGSS with connections to TN science standards and others) They will use these "anchoring events" to frame a unit or a lesson segment that requires students to generate models or explanations. We will loosely follow the Ambitious Science Teaching framework; AST helps guide teachers in planning for engagement to elicit students' ideas.

Marine Geology Using GEODE

Convener: Kristen St. John, James Madison University and Callan Bentley, Northern Virginia Community College

Thursday, July 18 - Friday, July 19 | 8:30am-11:30am | TSU - Farrell-Westbrook (Barn): 114

Marine sediments and the geology of the ocean basins are important content topics in all oceanography courses. However these can be "dry" topics to teach, and may be difficult for students to appreciate. This workshop will introduce three resources that use Google Earth and can be used to help instructors and students explore these topics in highly visual and constructive ways. These resources were developed as part of the NSF-funded GEODE project and include a curriculum unit (with instructor guide) on marine sediments, a virtual marine sediment core kit, and a virtual guided tour of the ocean basins. Participants will be introduced to the resources and will also have the opportunity during the workshop to co-develop short exercises to accompany these resources for in-class or lab use. The workshop will be held in a computer lab.

This workshop is by application only, with a limit of 30 participants. To apply to attend this workshop, please complete this application form by March 15, 2019.

Broadening Participation of Underrepresented Minorities in Geoscience

Conveners: Jessica Oster, Vanderbilt University, De'Etra Young, Tennessee State University, and Lily Claiborne, Vanderbilt University

Thursday, July 18 - Friday, July 19 | 8:30am-11:30am TSU - Humphries: 221

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.

Measuring and Increasing the Level of Inquiry in Science Laboratory Activities

Conveners: Katherine Ryker, University of South Carolina-Columbia and Jason Jones, North Carolina State University

Thursday, July 18 - Friday, July 19 | 8:30am-11:30am TSU - Humphries: 13

Commercially available lab manuals for introductory geology courses are often devoid of authentic inquiry opportunities for learners. Inquiry-based activities have been empirically-shown to improve student learning and affect in lab settings (e.g., Chaterjee et al., 2009; Ryker & McConnell, 2014, 2017), but many instructors may either not know about the benefits of bringing inquiry into the lab or not know where to begin the process of adopting it into their lab design/teaching. This workshop will a) inform participants about the methods for measuring the level of inquiry in lab activities; b) have participants share/measure their own examples of existing lab activities, and; c) help participants collaborate to design new inquiry-based lab activities for future use by demonstrating effective "before and after" models of redesigned activities.