As geoscientists and citizens, it is readily apparent that we are at a historical moment that is fraught with urgency, seemingly insurmountable difficulty, and numerous opportunities to set a fundamentally new course going forward. As geoscience educators we have the responsibility to provide our students with tools to navigate the uncertain waters ahead. Given the nature of the climate issues we are facing, linking our students and the communities we live in with the critical climate work being done on the national level is an important avenue for fulfilling that responsibility. This poster focuses on two such avenues. 1) The development of local virtual bridges that connect our students and others to UN and other international climate events through local "watch parties" virtually connected to these global events.2) Support for and participation in the development of a United State ACE national plan. ACE is short for Action for Climate Empowerment. ACE is a facet of both the original 1992 United National Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) treating and 2015 Paris Climate Agreement aimed at "empowering all members of global society to engage in climate action, through education, training, public awareness, public participation, and public access to information on both the national and international level".This poster is a follow up to an article having the same title that was published in the April 2021 issue of "In the Trenches" magazine.

We have developed an outreach program for grades 5-12 designed to engage students in learning about the diversity and importance of the geosciences. Our outreach team features a panel of geoscience undergraduates actively conducting research in a diversity of geoscience fields. While the idea behind our program was initially a response to lack of student motivation during COVID-19 online learning in grade schools, the virtual platform provides us the opportunity to reach out to schools across the nation to introduce students to the diversity of fields in the geosciences. Exposure to the diverse range of fields within geosciences in our secondary school system is often lacking. We provide students a glimpse into our field in an exciting and motivating manner. These presentations involve a tag-team of four to five undergraduate students who give insights into their unique experiences in the geosciences, followed by intermissions for students to interact directly with the presenters. We discuss a diverse selection of topics throughout the geosciences, including but not limited to environmental sciences, planetary geology, seismology, computational geosciences, and paleontology. During the current pandemic, our main method of outreach is to give interactive presentations to middle school and high school classrooms through platforms such as Zoom and Google Meets. While in the future we may transition to in-person events, online outreach will remain important for schools where travel is impractical due to the distance. To date, we have presented to three Texas schools, including two high schools and one middle school. Students demonstrated significant interest, asking a range of questions both during the online interaction and later through email. We are working to establish relationships with more classrooms, both in and out of the state, to create a program that will transcend past our own graduation, and will continue for years to come.

Overviews and generalized examples of how to apply Universal Design in Instruction (UDI) with embedded strategies to diminish barriers for Persons with Disabilities have been shared during earlier Earth Educator Rendezvous sessions (2017 and 2018) and through a recent NAGT Professional Webinar (28 April 2021) to promote better design for equity and inclusion in various STEM learning spaces. This poster will include a synopsis of strategies for apparent and non apparent disabilities and focus on several introductory geosciences activities modified and mapped to UDI guidelines addressing engagement, representation and action – expression. This is to provide discipline-specific examples designed for: (1) access through recruiting interest and providing options for perception and physical action; (2) building skills to sustain and persist; and (3) internalizing through self-regulation, comprehension and executive function. UDI reaches a wide range of learners and, additionally, is best modeled for pre-service teacher candidates also enrolled in general core introductory courses.

Geosciences Research Collaborations for Student Success (GeoRCSS) is a unique partnership between Austin Community College (ACC) and the Jackson School of Geosciences (JSG) at The University of Texas at Austin to develop collaborative peer learning communities (PLCs) in the Geosciences with mixed cohorts of two-year college (2YC) and four-year college (4YC) students. The Jackson School recognizes the importance of diverse voices in the geosciences, and acknowledges the need to create equitable opportunities. ACC has higher representation of non-traditional, low income, and underrepresented students than UT Austin. By partnering JSG with ACC, we hope to 1) increase transfer rates and success of students moving from 2YC to 4YC, 2) increase the diversity of students within the geosciences, 3) generate knowledge about how high-impact educational activities influence transfer student success, and 4) develop an effective research-based 2YC-4YC partnership and innovation model that can be replicated across the nation. In the PLCs, students and peer mentors will engage in tiered learning phases and scaffolded peer mentoring as students gain experience. These experiences start in the students' first year with authentic research or industry internships, individual faculty advising, curriculum alignment between ACC and JSG, and scholarships to help low-income students from both institutions. Knowledge generation activities will characterize the collaborative work and learning involved in the 2YC-4YC transition and relate it to longer term outcomes, including academic performance, graduation, advanced studies and geoscientific career pathways. Although only a few students have been recruited to date, those from ACC have participated in faculty-led research and transferred successfully into JSG (n=2) and Natural Sciences (n=1) at UT Austin. We are more fully implementing the program this year, including an undergraduate mentor to help recruit ACC and JSG students and assessments of student needs and gains during the program.

In Spring 2021, twelve facilitators from the NAGT Traveling Workshop Program (TWP; https://nagt.org/nagt/profdev/twp) organized a discussion pod as part of the Unlearning Racism in Geoscience program (URGE; https://urgeoscience.org). The TWP has ~40 facilitators who conduct workshops for departments or faculty groups on topics such as Building Stronger Geoscience and Environmental Science Programs, Making Your Course More Effective and Societally Relevant, and Supporting the Success of All Students. URGE, sponsored by NSF and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, consisted of a 16-week curriculum of interviews, articles, and deliverables (i.e., anti-racism policies and strategies) for discussion in pods. While TWP facilitators previously had developed resources for teaching inclusively and supporting the whole student, the TWP pod identified a need for improved anti-racism policies, facilitators' content knowledge, and facilitation training. URGE topics were relevant for potential issues facilitators face during workshops, for example helping departments strategize policies and practices for collaborating successfully with minoritized communities. We used URGE discussion sessions and deliverables to revise how TWP facilitators plan and implement workshops at different types of institutions, provide resources on inclusion and equity to workshop participants, and encourage synergies across institutions that benefit marginalized students and faculty. Reviewing URGE deliverables created by other programs will help inform how TWs might support change in those programs. Some existing NAGT policies (i.e., the NAGT Activities Code of Conduct) satisfied the URGE deliverables for the TWP pod, but the pod also identified gaps. Two acute needs are to develop 1) a strategy to equitably and inclusively identify and train new facilitators, and 2) policies to sustainably share TWP leadership across the diverse group of facilitators. The TWP welcomes community input to make the TWP a full agent for helping the geosciences become anti-racist.

Advancing Community College Education and Student Success (ACCESS) is a collaborative partnership between the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) and local community colleges. In typical years, the program features specimen-based lab courses utilizing fossils from the UCMP collections. However, the COVID-19 pandemic created unique obstacles for the program, our partners, and our ability to accommodate a diverse body of students with differing needs. To meet the needs of our partner institutions during the pandemic, we shifted our focus to the development of online paleobiology and geoscience experiences to provide an alternative to the in-person ACCESS labs.The adaptation of the ACCESS labs to a digital format allowed us to utilize a wider range of resources including three-dimensional models of fossils (many of which would not be available in an in-person ACCESS lesson), online databases, and virtual interactives. Incorporating these resources into the online ACCESS labs allowed us to develop a new suite of lessons in collaboration with our partners. The inclusion of databases (e.g., Paleobiology Database) and interactive tools (e.g., UCMP Understanding Global Change) in these online labs allowed us to place a greater emphasis upon scientific inquiry, data collection, and hypothesis testing by focusing on phenomena throughout Earth history.Student and instructor responses to the online labs have been overwhelmingly positive.Online ACCESS labs enable us to provide lessons in synchronous and asynchronous formats; synchronous lessons via partner-hosted video conferencing allow students to interact with UCMP instructors. In addition, the online format removes physical and monetary (i.e., specimens, transport costs) barriers to engagement with our partners. This has enabled us to expand ACCESS labs to community colleges across the country. As we continue to develop the ACCESS program, our goal is to develop a sustainable program model that can be replicated regardless of institutional constraints.

The five-month long virtual Unlearning Racism in Geoscience (URGE) program was developed to empower groups, or pods, of geoscience faculty to implement anti-racist strategies and policies within their departments and institutions. Our 2YC URGE pod included twelve individuals: eleven who are solo geologists on their two-year campus or members of very small two-year college departments, and the project manager for SAGE 2YC (Supporting and Advancing Geoscience Education at Two-Year Colleges). We connected to explore antiracist learning activities, strategies, and policies that improve the environment for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) geoscientists in higher education. As the individuals in our pod came from collective institutions that do not have geoscience departments with the ability to make policies, our pod's focus was different from other pods, as we directed our attention to the introductory-level geoscience classroom, students in the first two years, and faculty. The pod applied the learning and discussion every two weeks and developed a resource document that includes both suggestions for faculty to apply in their own classrooms, and information to share with departmental and institutional administrators. For example, in the document's section focusing on students, topic areas range from impacting admissions to embedding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) concepts in a syllabus, during the first day of class, and throughout the curriculum. The section that focuses on faculty and administration includes examples of: mentoring and advising strategies; institution DEI resolutions and statements; sample complaints and reporting policies; and, mitigating racial biases during the faculty hiring process. Although the URGE program has formally concluded, the 2YC URGE pod will continue to advance anti-racist strategies and policies, creating change within institutional structures and professional organizations, with intention, accountability, and inclusivity. The document will continue to develop and can be accessed at: http://bit.ly/2YCURGE

Undergraduate students may possess underdeveloped knowledge about water systems, particularly groundwater. The use of models and modeling have been employed in undergraduate classrooms to support students' learning about water. However, effective modeling requires spatial thinking skills, which undergraduate students may need to develop. To address this need, we developed a multi-week intervention involving an array of spatial thinking activities to support undergraduate students' use of a computer-based groundwater modeling tool. This intervention took place in an intro-level undergraduate water course. Students used the model to complete a task involving a groundwater contaminant scenario. Here, we report findings from a comparative study conducted in two consecutive semesters: Year 1 (n=56) and Year 2 (n=46), the latter of which involved the intervention. We explored their understanding of space, representation, and reasoning (NRC, 2006) by conducting quantitative and qualitative analyses on student tasks and interviews. Findings suggest that students in year 2 better articulated concepts of space. However, students in both years did not perform as expected on tools of representation or reasoning. Students exhibited a relatively limited understanding of representation within the model, particularly about contour lines. Students also struggled to reason about groundwater using information from the model. Overall, these results suggest students struggle with certain aspects of spatial thinking in relation to this groundwater modeling tool. These findings have implications for undergraduate teaching and learning about groundwater.

PublicSensors (and its Spanish language counterpart SensoresPublicos) is an educational initiative promoting STEM literacy through hands-on construction and use of environmental sensors, collection of community science-based data, and data interpretation. These active learning experiences provide exposure to engineering principles and skills that may benefit students beyond their educational endeavors and facilitate an understanding of environmental science through local hands-on applications. PublicSensors aims to address underserved K-12 through college students and their families by increasing access to technology-based science for diverse audiences, incorporating Next Generation Science Standards through technology and community outreach.PublicSensors leads sensor-building workshops for both remote and in-person learning with flexible grade-level content. Students and their families are loaned free activity kits, enabling them to construct environmental sensors (e.g. temperature, light, acoustic distance) and use them to study their own local environment. Using a tiered system of engagement, students first learn basic circuit building with beginner kits, then transition to intermediate kits where they build data loggers, and finally build advanced sensors that collect and report data in real-time. Students can also interact with their sensors via computer, gaining proficiency in computer science concepts through Python-based activities that enable further exploration of their sensors. Additional classroom modules are available adapting these basic sensors for underwater sonar and pH sensing. PublicSensors has conducted sensor-building programs for 5th grade through undergraduate students, as well as professional development training for high school teachers. Materials in both English and Spanish are freely available at PublicSensors.org and SensoresPublicos.org, with options to follow structured lessons or modify activities based on available resources, and require no previous technical experience. PublicSensors plans to serve as a community hub where participants can engage across classrooms and communities to share their experiences and environmental data.

The need to transform the undergraduate laboratory experience in order to provide students access to authentic research opportunities has been well documented. At Delta State University, students enrolled in Materials and Methods of Environmental Science investigated whether fruit associated with different areas of the United States could correlate to soils in which they were grown. During the past five spring semesters (2017-2021), 25 noncommercial fruit spreads were studied: cactus marmalade from Tucson, Arizona, grape jelly from Mills, Massachusetts, blackberry jam and muscadine jelly from Cleveland, Mississippi, strawberry preserves from Fredericksburg, Texas, peach jam from Laurel, Virginia and Nampa, Idaho, blue elderberry jam and plum jam from Lincoln Co., Nevada and more. Each sample was cooked on a hot plate for a week and then divided into crucibles and placed in a Muffle Furnace for 24 hours at 1,000 °C to generate an ash. The ash samples were analyzed with an energy dispersive x-ray unit associated with a JEOL scanning electron microscope to determine elemental composition. The National Conservation Resource Service soil website was used to establish the local soil types that were associated with each sample. Altogether, 21 chemical elements were noted and many of the samples were associated with the local soils. For example, a calcium spike occurred in samples from Lincoln County, Nevada, which is probably due to limestone rich soils and samples from the Mississippi Delta yielded the most elements possibly due to periodic flooding by the Mississippi River and its tributaries that covered the area prior to levee construction. Overall, this study links geology, chemistry, soil science, and scientific methodology and the results are of broad relevance to the scientific community. Success of this project is further documented by peer-reviewed posters, an international paper, and presentations that have been given at professional conferences.

Engagement with the natural world is imperative to student learning in the geo- and environmental sciences. Immersion in the environment is particularly useful for complicated subjects like nutrient cycling and biogeochemistry. However, access to the outdoors is not ubiquitous, and often students living in urban centers and/or remote locations are unable to access geo-, bio- and environmental science activities and demonstrations. This inaccessibility was exacerbated by the pandemic. During the summer of 2020, we created a remote learning activity to teach the carbon cycle to high school students enrolled in the University of Michigan's Earth Camp. These high school students from the greater Detroit area were admitted to this week-long summer program to facilitate their access to the natural world, but when Earth Camp was moved online for safety reasons, this access became more limited. Students collected hair from their pets and their pets' foods (or in the case of students without pets, their favorite snack foods) and sent it to the University of Michigan's Earth Systems Laboratory for isotope analyses. Prior to processing, students recorded ingredients in their specimens and hypothesized what isotope values their specimens should have, based on C3/C4 plant distribution. The students' results, which showed strong correlation between pet hair and pet food, allowed them to examine how the Earth's carbon cycle is reflected by common plants and animals living in their own homes as well as the opportunity to collect physical observations and analyze their own data. This activity received positive evaluations from students, and students felt their knowledge of isotopes and the chemistry behind their food increased after this activity. In addition to the Earth Camp audience, we created and shared an activity that can be used in high school and introductory undergraduate Earth and environmental science courses.

Inquiry laboratory activities provide opportunities to engage undergraduates in introductory geoscience courses. Often, labs are considered the "hands-on" portion of introductory courses, but activities are a series of instructions and questions in a "cookbook" format that guide students to the right answer, but do not engage their curiosity or pursuit of scientific inquiry. New inquiry activities for introductory geology lab courses were developed in summer 2020 as part of a three-day workshop at EER. We studied the implementation of at least three new labs by teaching assistants (TAs) at three institutions in fall 2020. Previous research has shown that inquiry lab activities enhance undergraduate student learning and can be implemented by TAs with minimal training (1). However, teaching inquiry labs may also serve as professional development for TAs during early teaching experiences and disciplinary enculturation, which play pivotal roles in developing their teaching beliefs and practices (2). Comparison of Teacher Beliefs Interviews (3) from start and end of fall 2020 reveals changes in TA beliefs regarding their roles as instructors and ways they recognize student learning is happening in their class sessions. Interview coding uses five categories from Traditional to Reform-based beliefs (3). Preliminary comparison of interviews from pre- and post- teaching experiences suggests TA beliefs about their role as an instructor shift 1-2 categories towards Reform-based instruction. There appears to be less movement towards Reform-based beliefs in TAs descriptions of how students learn; TA beliefs stay in the same category or less frequently, move one step towards Reform-based instruction. The results from this work will be useful in characterizing the role that teaching experiences play in the evolution of a TA's teaching belief system and can inform the way science TAs are trained. (1) Ryker & McConnell, 2014; (2) Lane et al., 2019 (3) Luft & Roehrig, 2007

This poster summarizes my reflection on two courses I taught during the pandemic. Both courses targeted non-science students, both courses had about 200 students, both courses were taught in an online asynchronous mode, both courses were taken by students across multiple time zones, both courses included weekly quizzes, two multiple choice open-book tests, and a scaffolded assignment, and both courses used a very similar web presence. One course offered recorded lectures, worksheets, and summary concept maps to introduce material, more like a traditional lecture course, and encouraged but did not require students to collaborate. The other course facilitated small-group discussions (all students were expected to collaborate in teams of four throughout the term), and provided links to websites and short summary videos to highlight key concepts. My poster will include quantitative data as well as a synopsis of student comments from the course evaluations, and my own thoughts regarding the preparation of the courses, their delivery, and propose hypothesis regarding why some aspects did not work well and what students expect from me as an online instructor.

The presentation will identify the five key components found in successful and highly engaging online geoscience lab courses. Examples will be taken from online earth science and geology courses offered at a two-year community college. Attendees will see specific examples of how the key components are incorporated into different online science labs and how each component creates an environment that promotes the understanding of science and the students' success.Following the presentation, attendees will be asked to reflect on the geoscience labcourses they design, teach or would like to design and teach and identify concrete waysthey can incorporate the five key components into those online geoscience labs. Attendees will share their plans to utilize the information from the presentation with thegroup and will have time during the Q&A to discuss as a group, pose follow up questionsto the presenter and ultimately leave the session with an action plan to create, update and facilitate engaging online geoscience labs.

Incorporating play in classrooms has been shown to improve student learning (Griggs et al., 2009); however, the advantages may not be equal across all learners. Some studies have suggested that gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic background may correlate with students' likelihood of engaging in educational games (e.g., Andrews, 2008; Martindale and Weiss, 2020). Here, we assess the efficacy of educational board games in geoscience classrooms among different demographic groups. We hypothesize that utilizing high-context games as an educational medium will ameliorate the gap in educational gains between groups with different cultural backgrounds. We also present a new educational game, "Reef Survivor'', designed to help players learn about reef ecology, evolution, extinction, and resilience in the face of environmental change. In the game, players (or teams) are conservation experts in charge of preserving their reef, while they are challenged with changing conditions like evolution (e.g., mutations, migration) and biotic or environmental disturbances (e.g., hurricanes, global warming). Online versions of the games "Reef Survivor" and "Taphonomy: Dead and Fossilized" were developed in Google Jamboard, so they could be played in a web-based geoscience course during the COVID-19 pandemic. The efficacy of these games was evaluated with undergraduate geoscience students in the freshman class "Life Through Time" at the Jackson School of Geosciences (n=58). Four lab sections (11 to 17 students) were observed and learning gains were assessed across the two games over two 2-hour lab sessions. Two sections had competitive gaming conditions with one control group and the other with a positive priming condition (stereotype threat counter). The other two sections played collaboratively and competitively (teams of two), again with one control and one group with positive priming conditions. Evaluation instruments include pre/post surveys completed by students and an observation protocol adapted from Kern et al. (2007).

In addition to the extensive topical content requirements in a bachelor of science degree in atmospheric science, one of the key skills and competencies that the American Meteorological Society recommends for undergraduate students lies within scientific computing and data analytics. Accordingly, many atmospheric science programs require a computer programming course, taught either "in house" or in a computer science department. Though computer programming may stereotypically be considered a solitary activity, prior work in engineering and computer science have demonstrated the numerous benefits of collaborative programming, otherwise known as pair programming. This approach involves two programmers working together to create a single program; one serves as the driver, writing the code, while another serves as the navigator, leading the driver and reviewing the code as it is written. These roles are switched frequently, and often result in higher quality code completed in less time. To the author's knowledge, the incorporation of pair programming in atmospheric science computer programming courses has yet to be documented. This presentation will outline the logistics involved in delivering and managing pair programming in a meteorological computer applications course fully online during the Spring 2021 semester, along with its benefits and challenges. Student feedback and student performance compared to prior iterations of the course will also be described.

Computation enables students and researchers to access data, visualize it, perform analyses, connect to instruments, and model systems to predict behavior and events. The need for a computationally savvy workforce that can address complex, wicked problems demands equipping students with quantitative literacy and skills for future studies and work.The transition to online teaching due to COVID-19 has been challenging across geoscience education, and learning computational skills in a remote-learning environment may be particularly challenging for students who are new to programming or who are still developing their quantitative skills. The 2020 Teaching Computation Online with MATLAB workshop endeavored to tackle these challenges by bringing together faculty to share and build upon strategies for teaching computation online – both for those who are new to it, as well as experienced educators who are looking for new strategies. The October 2020 three-day virtual workshop brought together a group of 49 participants, leaders, and staff, with the goal of sharing effective classroom activities, online MATLAB tools for teaching and grading, and MATLAB expertise. Through a combination of presentations, discussions, and group and individual work time, the workshop program offered participants space and guidance to create and strengthen curriculum and bring home best practices to apply in their courses. Participants identified and discussed strategies that are engaging and interactive, including those that facilitate learning-by-doing, group discussions, and real-time assessment. They also developed ideas around using MATLAB tools (Live Editor/Live Scripts, MATLAB Grader, MATLAB Online, MATLAB Drive) and LMS-embedded tools. Online assessment strategies included how to best design assessments, addressing equity and accessibility challenges, and mitigating cheating. A synthesis of these strategies, recommendations, tools, and resources is available on the Teaching Online web page. In addition, collections of faculty-authored, peer-reviewed teaching activities, essays, and courses are available for free on the website.

In Climate Data Analysis (ATS 301) at Oregon State University, students develop basic Python programming skills for plotting and statistical analysis of climate data. With the transition to remote instruction in Fall 2020, the instructor and TA were no longer able to provide informal feedback in person. To mitigate this, we used the Jupyter Notebook packages nbgrader, plotchecker, and matplotcheck to set up "autograding" of notebooks. Students ran scripts within their notebooks for instant feedback (for example "Y-axis label missing", "Incorrect number of points plotted; check the year range") while working through their assignments. A human grader still assigned the final grade for the "autograded" questions, as well as the short answer questions. The intentions were for students to gain confidence about their coding when the instructor was not available and to free instructor time for more student interaction. Informal polling indicated that all students found the automated feedback at least somewhat useful. Submitted assignments had fewer of the common plotting errors (e.g., missing legends, incorrect data plotted) seen in previous years. Grading required less time, as the grader could use the autograder output to target flagged answers. The biggest drawback was the large amount of time (and proficiency with Python) needed to write the scripts specific to each assignment. Clear instructions were needed regarding plot details, variable names, etc., and there were many corner cases to address. In future years, these tests will be refined to be easier to use and provide more feedback to students regarding common errors. While this tool was developed partially due to the switch to remote learning necessitated by COVID-19, we will continue to use it upon returning to the classroom.Instructors are welcome to contact the author for examples of testing scripts and nbgrader configuration.

Rock and mineral laboratory activities are an integral component of introductory geoscience courses, providing critical opportunities for students to apply what they learn in lecture. Despite the evidence that inquiry-based instruction increases science literacy skills, course engagement, and self-efficacy, introductory geoscience laboratory activities are commonly taught in a confirmation-based style, in which the students are expected to memorize facts rather than produce findings. Prior works indicated that of all STEM fields, geology laboratories, particularly rock and mineral activities, tend to be the least inquiry-based. However, these analyses rely on activities published in printed laboratory manuals. To test whether the same is true of instructor-generated activities, we measured the levels of inquiry and utility within introductory rock and mineral laboratory activities published in the Science Education Resource Center teaching collection. A detailed analysis of how these activities are structured in the context of inquiry (n = 36) and utility (n = 20) are provided. Inquiry analyses employed an adaptation of the modified Buck et al. (2008) rubric presented in Ryker and McConnell (2017). Utility analyses were performed using a newly developed nine-item rubric loosely modeled from McConnell et al. (2017). None of the examined assessments attained open or authentic inquiry. Laboratory activity inquiry ranged from confirmation (22%) to guided (17%), with the majority identified as structured (61%). The utility scores ranged from 12 - 24 on a scale ranging from 9 - 27 (i.e., most difficult to easiest implementation). The results provide no significant relationship between high levels of inquiry and low levels of utility (p-value > 0.1), contradictory to prevailing notions that increasing inquiry levels comes at the expense of utility. The rubrics utilized in and developed for this study could provide researchers with beneficial tools for further exploration of laboratory activities on other topics, or in different disciplines.

Geoscience's field based culture can provide a barrier for students, especially students with disabilities. Field coursework is required in many geoscience programs and is met by completing a four to eight week field camp. Many students have little to no alternative option as accessible field trips and courses are very limited. Increasing inclusion of disability in the university is only one part of the solution. Recent science bachelor's degree recipients in the United States (without disabilities) have an unemployment rate of approximately 6% while the rate for graduates with disabilities is 15%. In this study, we survey geoscience professionals who are associated with hiring at their place of employment. Survey participants were from a variety of employment sectors, but most participants work in consulting or industry. Our online survey first examined the skills and field experience that employers desire in new graduates. Then, participants answered questions related to their perceptions on disability.Preliminary data indicate that jobs are more likely to be accessible to people with moderate physical disabilities and hearing impairment/deafness, while few employers felt that there were accessible positions for individuals with visual impairment/blindness and intellectual disabilities. Most employers were open to hiring geologists who had not taken a field course; however, most desired students to have at four to six credit hours of field coursework. In addition, only 5% of respondents did not require manual labor or field work of their geologists. Work is needed to increase accessibility in university geoscience departments; however, accessible employment is also essential in order to increase inclusion within our discipline.

This poster illustrates the results of the implementation of a personalized gamified dashboard integrated into the Learning Management System (LMS) of a large-enrollment introductory physical geology course. While there is literature on the impact of geoscience-themed games on student learning, gamification is still a new concept in geosciences, particularly technology-based. The dashboard, called Delphinium, includes the most widely used gamification components, e.g., progress trackers, badges, rewards, and a leaderboard, to offer individual students accomplishment and instrumental goals to motivate them to engage with the course content organized in modules in the LMS. We measured the impact of this single gamification component on the performance of students enrolled in one section of the course (N=137) and compared it to the performance of students enrolled in a second section (N=86) taught in person by the same instructor in fall 2019. We compared the number of times users accessed the dashboard and the number of page views from the LMS, exam scores, and final grades. Students in both sections completed the Science Literacy Concept Inventory (SLCI) at the beginning and end of the semester. Using their SLCI score as control, students with access to Delphinium performed on average 13% better than students in the control section. Analysis of LMS data showed that students in the gamified section accessed the LMS more frequently and that the dashboard provided them with an early and significant advantage in the course.

Teaching beliefs represent a set of understandings that influence what instruction looks like in practice. They are difficult to elicit and individuals may have limited vocabulary to explain why they teach the way they do. Few instruments have been developed to capture teaching beliefs. Luft and Roehrig (2007) developed the Teacher Beliefs Interview (TBI) in order to elicit the teaching beliefs of secondary science teachers. The TBI includes seven open-ended questions with coding rubrics that position responses into one of five categories: traditional, instructive, transitional, responsive, and reform-based. Traditional and instructive categories are considered teacher-centered, while responsive and reform-based categories are student-centered. Student-centered responses indicate a view of science instruction as teaching "a dynamic field that is subject to revision" (Luft & Roehrig, 2007; p. 42).We collected and coded more than 160 TBI interviews with post-secondary instructors. While coding these interviews, we noticed that this population frequently differs in how they respond to the seven TBI questions. This results in difficulties reliably coding responses, even among experienced TBI users. To address this, we re-analyzed 95 interviews conducted with post-secondary instructors using the original TBI rubrics. Initial Cronbach's alpha per question ranged from .609 to .905. Disagreements between reviewers were discussed to evaluate whether the source of disagreement was in the response, the coder, or the rubric. Exemplar quotes from agreed upon responses were collected. These discussions and exemplar responses using language from post-secondary instructors were incorporated into revised coding rubrics for each question. The authors then coded four randomly drawn interviews with the original and revised rubrics. The revised rubric improved reliability for experienced raters as measured using an intraclass correlation coefficient (.555 to .724). The revised TBI rubric can more reliably evaluate the teaching beliefs of post-secondary instructors, while maintaining the intent of the original rubric.

Despite scientific consensus that anthropogenic global climate change poses severe risks to human and natural systems, many young Canadian adults do not view it as a major issue. Climate literacy is generally accepted to be competence or knowledge in the area of climate change, its impacts, and solutions. Research indicates that in order to improve climate literacy, the social sciences must be more fully integrated with the biophysical basis of climate change. An interdisciplinary science/social science first year undergraduate course in climate change was developed in 2017, with the main educational goals focused on improving climate literacy. This course attracts students with a wide range of climate change knowledge from across the university.This research investigates the effectiveness of the course in improving students' climate literacy. To measure learning gains, a validated climate change concept inventory was administered pre- and post the course, for 3 offerings in 2020 (n=103 students). The final assignment in the course, a learning portfolio, was used as evidence of which assignments students felt most impacted their learning in the course: Students' choices of which assignments to include and a written reflection were analyzed with regard to climate literacy indicators. The survey analysis identified six common misconceptions that students hold when entering the course, and showed improvement in student understanding of those concepts after taking the course. Students reported that the most valuable course components for improving their understanding were lectures and brief, weekly engagement activities that challenged them to apply their knowledge to solve a problem or address a question. Thematic analysis of the learning portfolios indicated that students' climate literacy was improved through both physical and social science-based assignments.These results suggest that an interdisciplinary approach to teaching climate change is effective in terms of correcting climate change misconceptions and improving overall climate literacy.

Gaps between undergraduate and graduate degrees attained by minoritized student populations exist across the physical sciences, including the geosciences. The AGU Bridge Program, as a member of the larger Inclusive Graduate Education Network (IGEN), seeks to close this gap in degree attainment with intentional, equity-focused programming for both students and institutions. The AGU Bridge Program currently partners with thirty-one geoscience departments throughout the United States to create an inclusive network of graduate departments with a focus on holistic admissions practices, graduate student retention and success, and inclusive mentoring. Through IGEN, interested student applicants can apply to be considered for admission into AGU Bridge Partner departments graduate programs. Once admitted, the success of Bridge Fellows is fostered through a network of peers, resources, and support from AGU and Fellows' respective departments. Interested graduate geoscience departments can apply from June-October each year and student applications open each fall. This presentation will share updates on the impact and status of the AGU Bridge Program.

Science gateways allow users to access shared data, software and services. GeoGateway (http://geo-gateway.org) is a solid earth geoscience gateway that provides tools for scientific discovery, field use, and disaster response using Interferometric SAR (InSAR) and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) integrated with earthquake faults, seismicity, and model data. GeoGateway was initially developed for researchers to analyze and model crustal deformation related to fault slip and earthquakes. Two highlights of GeoGateway are interactive map displays of global GNSS-based land deformation and thousands of radar images from the NASA airborne platform (UAVSAR). Applications have been expanded to include earthquake nowcasting, and analysis of wildfire burn areas and debris flows for disaster response. We are expanding GeoGateway to include educational applications. To make GeoGateway accessible to a broad audience, we developed a GeoGateway User Guide and example applications. Preliminary exercises and tutorials were tested in the classroom at CalPoly Pomona in 2018, and in workshops at the Seismological Society of America 2019 Meeting, and Geological Society of America 2020 Meeting. We are now developing additional example exercises for use as undergraduate class exercises or problem sets in a variety of geoscience and disaster response classes.

Student engagement is easy to encourage in introductory lab courses. We have developed an open access lab book for Historical Geology. Here we focus on three different lab exercises to show how we can use simple exercises to get students engaged in research beyond simple observations. We went beyond place based learning as we have found that students are curious to learn more about places that they have not been. So, the new exercises are a global tour of geology including the Andes Mountains, Alaska, Great Britain, Brazil, Morocco, Himalayas, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, and Canada in addition to the traditional US centric locations like the Grand Canyon, Appalachians, Texas, and Rocky Mountains as well as Mars and Jurassic Park! For example, instead of just identifying the textures and names of metamorphic rocks, there is an exercise interpreting metamorphic rocks as a result of ridge subduction in southern Alaska. Instead of just learning the sequence of phyllite, schist and gneiss, the student will put these into the context of an unusual geothermal gradient. For fossil preservation, the students compare fossils exposed around the edge of the Delaware Basin. These include delicately preserved fossils in the Glass Mountains to impressions in the Guadalupe Mountains. They need to speculate why these two exposures of the same reef have such different modes of preservation. The final exercise is to use maps and cross-sections of New Jersey to identify the geologic provinces that relate to four different tectonic events. Students in the Fall 2020 semester first used a digital, pre-release version of the labbook; a difficult semester due to the transition to online learning during the pandemic. Our focus on student engagement results in observing and thinking rather than read and repeat. This works to promote active and engaged learning with students.

Rock thin-sections are the essential tools for studying geology at K12 or college-level classrooms. They can change boring lectures about rocks to fascinating practices. However, due to the difficulties of preparation, there are a few attempts to use rock thin sections as teaching tools in K12 classrooms. In this regard, we try to improve such conditions using cheap, mass-produced tools, which can be purchased from DIY stores or online net shops(Okamoto, 2020b). For example, a bench grinder and a kitchen knife sharpener are used for a rock saw, and a grinder with costs less than 100USD each. Also, low-cost diamond blades and wet stones less than 30USD are employed as consumables. Our project has simplified and sophisticated the section fabrication technic to a level where even high school students can do it. At the same time, for easy watching thin sections in a classroom, we developed an alternative way instead of using high expensive polarized microscopes. Our handmade polarized units can let an ordinary microscope as a polarized one. Low-cost binocular microscopes and USB microscopes are used for this thin section watching(Okamoto, 2020a). These low-cost polarized microscopes can be used for the petrological study to identify pleochroism, interference colors, extinction angles, textures, etc. In recent days, we are uploading many thin section images with captions as an online thin section library for school use on our website (http://www.yossi-okamoto.net/index_e.html). Also, 3D printed parts and some freeware are now improving our kit-making process and thin section photography. An overview of our methods and recent developments will be presented in the meeting.

The dynamic volcanic landscape of the Pacific Northwest provides an ideal framework for teaching undergraduate students about fundamental volcanology concepts, as well as core geoscience and professional skills. This poster describes a teaching activity, consisting of a series of linked exercises that employ field observations, data collection, and granulometric analyses to interpret pyroclastic deposits in central Oregon. Given the modular nature of this activity, different exercises can be conducted depending on the resources available to individual instructors. For the field component, students work in teams to construct a stratigraphic column, describe the characteristics of their interval, obtain samples, and collect pumice and lithic size data. In the laboratory, student groups sieve their sample and determine weights for each size fraction. As a follow-up exercise, students graph the grain-size data for all of the class samples, determine select phi values, calculate parameters using published formulas to characterize sorting, and make interpretations about the pyroclastic deposits. The culminating exercise is a writing assignment in which students, from the perspective of a USGS volcanologist, prepare a report for the Bend City Council to address regional volcanic hazards.This activity engages students in the scientific process, through observation, data analysis, and interpretation. Students gain experience communicating results in written form to a diverse audience. Team work and collaboration are built into the activity through group field and laboratory work. Student skill development can be assessed using a set of post-activity questions, which require students to graph and analyze data from unknown pyroclastic deposits and interpret their origin. Student performance on the culminating paper can also be assessed in the context of program outcomes. This activity can be used for program assessment, as it dovetails with geoscience education initiatives, emphasizing broader scale objectives of preparing future geoscientists to solve challenging problems in the 21st century.

This poster tells the story of two assignments I included in a course for preservice K-8 teachers during the 2020-2021 academic year. Both assignments had this similar broad goal: to provide an opportunity for the students to focus on their identity as future teachers. Both assignments had this structure: 1) students made a choice about the content they would read or watch; 2) students then shared their observations and reflections with a small group of classmates; and 3) the small groups then presented a synthesis of their discussion to the whole class. In the first assignment, each student selected and read a profile of a scientist featured in the "Cool Jobs" section of the "Science News for Students" website. Notably, these profiles include a diversity of individuals as well as a diversity of careers. In the second assignment, students chose at least one online, recorded, publicly-available panel discussion related to science teaching. The panel options included: 1) "The Challenge of Creating Equity in Science Education" (STEM Teacher Leadership Network); 2) "Differing Abilities in STEM" (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education); and 3) "Inspiring STEM Interest" (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education). Small group and class discussions occurred via Zoom and made use of the Jamboard application within Google. The rubrics for these assignments prompted specific details in students' reflections. In actuality, students' reflections revealed the potential for such resources to add new insights into their future role as teachers. This poster shares details of the assignments as completed by students in this initial iteration and invites viewers to discuss plans for future implementations.

New York's glacial history and landforms were used as an anchoring phenomenon to engage a diverse, urban population of undergraduate and high school students through place-based learning activities. Leveraging the advantages of place-based education, we sought to make content accessible to students from a variety of cultural and educational backgrounds. Place-based learning focuses on local and regional environments and has been shown to boost student engagement, be more relevant to students, and has the potential to attract underrepresented groups to science. To fully engage our students, high-needs public high school students from the Bronx and Brooklyn, and undergraduates at community college in Queens, we used strategies that provided equitable ways of learning and demonstrating knowledge. Our students in these contexts face similar challenges: learning remotely, limited science literacy, and/or newcomers acquiring English skills. We used NYC-based analogies to describe glacial landforms and processes and asked students to develop their own analogies to enhance meaning-making and student connection to content and processes. Additionally, multiple ways to demonstrate skills and understanding were included (e.g. sketching, storytelling). These practices validate and reflect the diversity, identities, and experiences of students, and communicate to students that they are valued and their varied experiences are an asset in learning. These lessons were developed for synchronous remote learning but could easily be adapted for an in-person classroom setting. Our goals were to increase students' science knowledge by developing an awareness and understanding of the landforms that shape their local environment, stimulate students' interest in science, and develop students' science identities. Changes in science knowledge were measured using a formative assessment probe (Keeley, 2008), changes in students' interest were measured using the science interest survey (Lamb et al., 2012), and changes in science identity were measured using a science identity scale (Hazari et al., 2010).

Preparing graduates to enter the workforce is a common goal of undergraduate geoscience degree programs. Determining what skills are necessary for new graduates to succeed in the workforce requires knowledge of the skills sought by employers of bachelors-level geoscientists. To investigate skills desired by employers, we systematically analyzed job advertisements retrieved from 4 search engines between May and November 2020. We used 15 search words derived from the 2018 Status of the Geoscience Workforce (AGI) report to select job advertisements that required or preferred a geoscience-based bachelor's degree. Additionally, we categorized each advertisement by industry sector based on definitions in the 2018 AGI report. Each job advertisement (n=1214) was coded to identify skills sought by the employer. An initial set of codes was based on skills identified by the Future of Undergraduate Geoscience Education project and additional emergent codes were identified during the coding process. We generated a final set of 34 codes, with definitions and examples, through an iterative coding process, checking for inter-rater reliability. Advertisements were not coded for geoscience content knowledge. The most common skills sought by employers were the ability to conduct field work, teamwork, work with computers, collect, process and interpret data, and communicate effectively, however, the desirability of skills varied across industry sectors. For example, teamwork skills were sought in 60% of mining sector advertisements but only 22% of oil and gas sector advertisements. Our results provide insight into the expectations of potential employers for recent graduates seeking a career in geoscience. Additionally, our results provide geoscience degree programs with critical information required to prepare undergraduates with the necessary skills to be successful in the current job market.

Water is a critical component of Earth systems, including their human dimensions. Water literacy is a key outcome for learners, who should understand how water interacts with different human and non-human systems and to help them develop knowledge, tools, and attitudes to participate in informed decision-making that support water management efforts. It is therefore crucial to foster water literacy in today's global citizens, particularly through formal education. However, research has identified challenges in teaching and learning about water spanning K-16 settings. Water is an interdisciplinary concept that is touched on in many subject areas and disciplinary learning environments. The purpose of this research is to examine water-related standards for teaching and learning from an array of disciplines to develop a comprehensive, transdisciplinary perspective on water education. We ask, What do disciplinary standards specify as outcomes for students' learning about water?, and sub-questions i) To what extent do water-related standards address recognized domains of learning?, and ii) What thematic outcomes for students' learning are apparent across grades in water-related standards?. The study uses a conventional qualitative content analysis complemented by processes from grounded theory to analyze water-related education standards (n=262) from 12 education-oriented non-governmental organizations based in the United States. The results from the study enabled to characterize the water standards according to the cognitive and affective domains of learning, as well as to develop a matrix for water-related standards for each grade band from K-12. The results of the study can help inform teaching and learning to cultivate water literacy.

Over 143 million people live in an earthquake prone region of the United States. Over 55 million people (or one-third) live in Washington, Oregon, and California, face much of this earthquake hazard and risk. In light of this, the U.S. Geological Survey and partners developed the Advanced National Seismic System's ShakeAlert® Earthquake Early Warning system for the West Coast of the United States to detect significant earthquakes quickly. A ShakeAlert Message is sent to delivery partners to alert people and automated systems. IRIS and UNAVCO, in collaboration with the USGS and ShakeAlert® system partners at large, are developing a suite of educational activities and animations designed to inform and engage multiple audiences, from middle school students through senior citizens in a range of learning environments.The suite of learning materials provides learners in formal and free-choice settings with a suite of scientifically accurate educational resources on earthquake hazards, particularly on the west coast. Short (2-3 minute) animations and scaffolded activities address earthquake concepts, related natural hazards (e.g., tsunamis, volcanoes, and landslides), mitigation and planning, and how earthquake early warning works. Animations show learners what to do in the event of an earthquake, how to respond to a ShakeAlert system message, and how the Shakelert system works. Each activity provides 5-, 15-, and 30-45 minute options to fit various learning settings. Activities address misconceptions about earthquakes, such as the relationship between an earthquake's magnitude and its intensity. Partners at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry are leading ongoing evaluation and assessment of the effectiveness of our educational resources and to help build our resources with cultural inclusion in mind. Here we present the ShakeAlert educational activities and animations, available through ShakeAlert.org, developed to date, and our preliminary assessment tools.

The drinking water contamination crisis in Flint, MI, in 2014-2019 raised public outcry and awareness of the potential health consequences of regulatory failures and industrial threats to this essential natural resource. But students and the public alike may see such sensational stories on the news and imagine that drinking water contamination is a rare and remote occurrence. In this poster, we share a newly-developed set of place-based lessons related to ongoing drinking water contamination with PFAS chemicals in central North Carolina. Using an inquiry-oriented approach, undergraduates discover how water and contaminants move through the global, local, and urban water cycles; how regulated and established contaminants differ from emerging ones; how animal and human health studies and their inherent ambiguities are leveraged in conversations about local and national regulations; and how power and privilege play out as citizens and local government leaders grapple with if, when, and how to take action. Throughout the unit, students engage in team-based discussions, data analysis, and literature research on these ongoing issues. The unit culminates in a community-engaged project that allows students to explore multiple avenues for engaging in advocacy and partnering with local community organizations. Our lessons are developed with introductory-level university environmental science and biology courses in mind, but could easily be adapted to a high-school context. This place-based unit is localized to central North Carolina and could be adopted by other universities in the region; However, PFAS contamination is widespread across the U.S., and we will offer recommendations for colleagues interested in developing similar lessons for their own local settings.

The Science Education Resource Center (SERC) currently hosts materials from over 120 geoscience education projects and the majority of geoscience faculty report using their materials to support their teaching. However, the project-focused nature of the SERC website means that information is siloed and users have difficulty navigating the full breadth of the collections. The Compass project addresses this challenge directly. Its goal is to improve the discoverability of SERC-hosted materials as well as to connect users to earth education resources beyond SERC's own webpages. Along the way Compass will explore broader questions of how faculty explore web-based teaching resources. Compass is grounded in the principles of user-centered design. It builds on explicit understanding of and input from the community of users, evidence-informed evaluation, and repeated refinement through reflection and iteration. The project is engaging in annual cycles where improvements in SERC's discovery infrastructure are prioritized, implemented, and their efficacy evaluated. The project draws on input from a group of Community Discovery Advisors (CDAs) – stakeholders from across the geoscience education community – as well as coordination with NAGT through its Teach the Earth committee, and other outreach to community partners. The project's initial round of planning took place this spring through meetings with the CDA and informed by input gathered from the community. Here we present the outcomes of that work: the plan for the initial set of targeted improvements to SERC discovery infrastructure, as well as initial progress on implementing the plan.

Food, energy and water (FEW) are critical systems for humanity and subject to rapidly growing global demand compounded by climate change. The inter-dependency among these resources is multifaceted and complex, requiring an effective and coordinated Nexus approach. These challenges provide a rationale for sustained, systemic, and interdisciplinary educational efforts focused on food, energy and water systems in a wide array of educational contexts. The National Collaborative for Research on Food, Energy, and Water Education (NC-FEW) is an NSF-funded, emergent, transdisciplinary community of postsecondary educators and discipline-based education researchers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds engaged in sustained network- and capacity-building. Here, we present preliminary findings from an onboarding survey of 165 members of the NC-FEW community, primarily postsecondary faculty from a diverse array of disciplines, to better understand the depth of their FEW-Nexus knowledge base, confidence with FEW-Nexus teaching and education research, and sense of community affiliation. Results show that NC-FEW members are able to characterize FEW-Nexus concepts with approximately 56.57% accuracy. Participants were more confident about general teaching & research abilities (Mean=3.8) than with FEW-Nexus teaching & research proficiency (Mean=3.3). One-way ANOVA test showed a statistically significant effect of 'Professional Roles' and 'Disciplinary Identities' on FEW-Nexus teaching and research confidence at p<.05 level. Also, results demonstrate that participants feel connected to the community of FEW-Nexus educators only 'To some extent' (Mean= 2.28). Multiple regression analysis indicated positive impact of community interaction on teaching confidence, research confidence, and sense of belongingness to the community and vice-versa. These findings highlight the importance of boosting members' confidence and strengthening their sense of community affiliation to enhance their knowledge of the FEW-Nexus, as well as their Nexus-focused teaching and education research , therefore having important implications for ongoing NC-FEW community activities and broader postsecondary reform efforts.

For decades, California has relegated Earth science to a second-tier status. The rollout of the Next Generation Science Standards led to a shift where Earth science now takes a much more central role. After California adopted the NGSS in 2013, it began drafting its own curriculum framework to envision how the standards should be implemented in California classrooms. There was no explicit effort to elevate Earth science, but the shift grew out of two other pressures: 1) a desire for science integrated across the disciplines; and 2) environmental educators pushing for more emphasis on interactions between human and natural systems. At the high school level, we outlined a 'three course model' where students used traditional biology, chemistry, and physics concepts to explain Earth and Space science phenomena, with particular emphasis on the environmental problems of the day. Climate change is a central thread to all three of the courses. We gave the courses new names, "Living Earth", "Chemistry in the Earth System", and "Physics of the Universe". While Earth science still doesn't sit on equal footing as those three traditional science courses, districts that adopt this model elevate Earth and space science to a central role in every science course. More than half of California districts have adopted this three course model and the UC system now accepts it as a legitimate laboratory sequence. The challenge is now about implementation. Few publishers have crafted materials for the courses and teachers remain underprepared to integrate the Earth science content into the disciplines in which they hold credentials. Earth scientists have a new footing, but now we need to step up to help realize the potential of this transition.

To enhance expert-made and effective geoscience educational (GeoEd) videos more accessible for teachers and students, we built a place-based, geoscientist-reviewed GeoEd video library based on the widely-used Google Earth platform. Earth science topics are typically complex in terms of location, timing, and how these are best explained, and are often related to a specific location or region that is intrinsically interesting. The Google Earth GeoEd Video Library (GEGVL) provides a "clickable" index of high-quality, place-based geoscience videos that are geospatially organized in Google Earth as a first-level visual index. The global map shows where the content of these GeoEd videos focuses, allowing students and teachers to "roam" the Earth to find videos about places or events that interest them. Our approach links student knowledge of key processes with places they know or that interest them and uses a platform that requires no learning curve. GEGVL also provides a way for geoscience instructors to quickly find high-quality GeoEd videos to use in the classroom. We are beginning to populate GEGVL. The link for the sample GeoEd Video Library (KMZ file) is https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UYy-Rn7V7Yp6AZ4plrZkZypHQ28nZohK/view?usp=sharingWe invite contributions to GEGVL from all geoscientists; please contact the first author for more information.

To prepare students to address water-related challenges, undergraduate courses must provide them with opportunities to learn and reason about water issues. Water in Society is an introductory-level, innovative, and interdisciplinary undergraduate course offered annually at a large mid-western university from 2017 to 2020. The course focuses on both disciplinary concepts and civic engagement, and is designed around a variety of interactive, research-based practices to support students' learning, engagement with authentic data, scientific models and modeling, and collaboration and learning among peers. This study aims to evaluate, "how have students' outcomes and perceptions changed over four years of the course?". The results are based on data from students (n=212) in four consecutive years of the course. Each year, students' satisfaction with the course improved. Multiple measures are used to evaluate students' learning about water content knowledge, model-based reasoning, and socio-scientific reasoning. By the end of each iteration of the course, students improved their knowledge of hydrologic concepts, independent of their initial level. Students may need more guidance to use and interpret the results from the computer-based water models and develop socio-scientific reasoning skills for water challenges.

Cultivating climate literacy among students allows them to understand, communicate, and make informed decisions about the weather, climate, functions, and impacts. Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) and the Essential Principles for Climate Literacy (NOAA, 2009), partnered with science education reform, have created teaching and learning opportunities about Earth's climate and GCC in formal K-12 classrooms. However, teachers still report feeling challenged in understanding Earth's climate system, underprepared in teaching it, describing GCC instruction as a low priority (Hestness et al., 2011; Plutzer et al., 2016). We engaged in a 3-year, NSF-funded project to design and implement a new, 3-week curriculum unit designed around an online, computer-based global climate modeling tool to address this need. Based on HS-ESS3-5 (NGSS, 2013), this geoscience curriculum engages students in an authentic exploration of the Earth's climate and GCC using the Easy Global Climate Model(EzGCM) grounded in authentic NASA climate data. We followed two secondary science teachers over three years, using a combination of interviews, classroom observations, and daily reflections to access 1) In what ways do teachers implement the project curriculum? 2) How and why do they implement it in the ways that they do? and 3) How teachers' implementation changes during the project? Our findings from this longitudinal mixed-methods study show that in Y1, while the project curriculum was primarily built to highlight the practice of using climate models, teachers focused on describing model construction. However, while this remained true for one teacher across all three years, the other teacher made significant changes to her implementation during the project. During all three years, both teachers brought external resources than those explicitly written for the CliMES curriculum. These findings have implications for curriculum design, teacher professional development, and how secondary science teachers can support student learning about Earth'sEarth's climate.

NAGT ended fiscal year 2020 with 1,711 members—our highest number in more than 15 years and an increase of 111 members over 2019. In 2020 and 2021, the COVID pandemic has highlighted some of our strengths as an organization: we are nimble and responsive to current needs in the community, we have a deep and rich set of online resources that can be enhanced with new ideas and content, and we are experienced in offering online professional development activities and know what it takes to make these effective. However, 2020 also brought challenges to the organization and to our members, and highlighted some of our weaknesses. One of those weaknesses is the lack of a current strategic plan to help guide our goal-setting and decision-making. The last time NAGT went through a strategic planning process was over ten years ago, and the organization has changed considerably since then. A current, robust strategic plan will outline goals in areas like reach, diversity, and impact of programming and allow us to set benchmarks against which we can measure our progress annually. We began the strategic planning process by conducting a member survey at the end of 2020, and continue to seek feedback from our members about their interactions with the organization. In this interactive poster, I will share results of the survey and strategic planning updates, and seek additional input from members.

Climate change is the result of complex interactions between natural science systems and social systems. For humans, climate change may have both emotional causes and emotional consequences. In this study, we asked how the perceived complexity of climate change relates to anxiety about climate change. We theorized that differences in depth of understanding of climate change captured by the perception of complexity might distinguish adaptive from maladaptive levels of climate change anxiety. We conducted online surveys with an undergraduate sample (n = 209) with measures of climate change anxiety and perceived complexity of climate change. We found no relationship between the perceived complexity of climate change and anxiety. We also conducted exploratory factor analyses of our measures. We identified three factors in our measure of climate change anxiety (general anxiety, persistence of anxiety, and difficulty regulating anxiety), and two factors in our measures of perceived complexity (the complexity of cause, and the complexity of effect). Analyses conducted with these factors found that 1) the perceived complexity of cause was negatively associated with general anxiety about climate change (the more complex they thought the problem was the less general anxiety they reported), and 2) overall levels of persistent anxiety were lower than general anxiety. Together, these suggest that students have effective strategies for regulating negative emotions about climate change, and that thinking about cause and avoiding effect may be one of these strategies. We are currently testing this hypothesis using a novel information-seeking paradigm where subjects will be presented with a complex scenario and asked to choose to learn more about the cause or the effect of the scenario. The paradigm will be followed with measures of emotional outcomes relevant to the scenario. We hypothesize that choosing to learn about cause will be associated with more positive emotional outcomes.