Essays on Geoscience at Two-Year Colleges

Geoscience Projects That Bring the Community into the Classroom part of SAGE 2YC:Workshops:Supporting Student Success in Geoscience at Two-year Colleges:Essays
Michael Phillips, Illinois Valley Community College
I began my professional career working full-time as an environmental geologist outside of academia. I began teaching evening classes at a community college because I wanted to show students that geology was not just as an interesting look into how the earth operates but how the study of the earth directly impacts their lives. To that end, I have used my consulting experiences to shape my assignments, my instruction, and my community outreach.

Examinations of Time part of Rates and Time:Workshop 2012:Essays
Kevin Mullins, Coconino Community College
Examinations of Time is an educator contribution page from the "Rates and Time" workshop series on the Teach the Earth portal, featuring Kevin Mullins' pedagogical approaches to teaching temporal concepts in geoscience and planetary science, with emphasis on relativity, GPS applications, geologic time scales, and student-centered exercises for understanding deep time and variable time perception. auto-generated The author of this page didn't provide a brief description so this one sentence summary was created by an AI tool. It may not be completely accurate.

Collaboration through Coordinated Studies Courses part of Geoscience in Two-year Colleges:Essays
Robert Filson, Green River Community College
Many two-year college (2yc) geoscientists constitute a single-person department within a larger division of other science, math, or engineering colleagues. For many years I was the only geoscientist at Green River Community College (GRCC). We now have two full-time geoscience instructors and three adjunct instructors, but I have found that teaching with colleagues from other departments has been very rewarding and interesting.

Quality, fieldwork, & blogging: my recipe for success part of Geoscience in Two-year Colleges:Essays
Callan Bentley, Northern Virginia Community College
There are a couple of items I'd like to touch on in this essay. Given the breadth of possible questions, I think it would be fair of me to mix and match a bit. So I intend to cover three things here, from general to specific: (1) quality, (2) field work, and (3) blogging.

Activities That Support Student Success in Traditional and Online Introductory Geoscience Courses at Wake Tech part of SAGE 2YC:Workshops:Supporting Student Success in Geoscience at Two-year Colleges:Essays
Gretchen Miller, Wake Technical Community College
I teach two introductory geoscience courses at Wake Tech, GEL 120: Physical Geology and GEL 230: Environmental Geology. I teach both courses in traditional, seated environments as well as online. All of our introductory geoscience courses (including the online sections) require both lecture and laboratory sessions and are 4 credit hour courses.

Ongoing Involvement and Taking Ownership of your Education: Homework, Feedback, and Interactions part of SAGE 2YC:Workshops:Supporting Student Success in Geoscience at Two-year Colleges:Essays
Steve May, Walla Walla Community College
As a full-time physical sciences instructor at Walla Walla Community College, a rural 2-year college, and an adjunct geology professor at Whitman College, a small liberal arts college, I work with two significantly different types of college students. I am often asked about the differences I observed between these two groups and the answer is a fairly simple one, and maybe not what people expect. Yes, the Whitman students probably have somewhat better entrance exam scores, but that is not what I believe to be the most significant difference – to me it is the fact that most of the 2-year students do not feel any real ownership of their education, whereas the Whitman students expect a great deal of themselves, as well as their professors. The way these differences manifest themselves is that a professor at Whitman can expect the vast majority of their students to show up for each class having fully prepared themselves for the topics to be discussed and ready to ask informed questions during class; whereas the 2-year college students need some strong inducements to learn the value of being prepared and what it feels like to have some sense of control and involvement regarding their education.

Promoting Student Success using Universal Design to Decrease Barriers in Higher Education part of SAGE 2YC:Workshops:Supporting Student Success in Geoscience at Two-year Colleges:Essays
Wendi J. W. Williams, South Texas College
I began teaching as a graduate student, and have since continued to grow in my understanding of content as well as educational design and delivery as faculty contributing to both 2-year and 4-year public institutions. Through the years I have become increasingly aware of the many kinds of diversity in my students: learning preferences, amount of college preparation, first generation college-bound, ages represented by concurrent enrollment as high school students through retirees, persons with disabilities, English language learners, and military active duty and/or veteran status. Early in my association with UA-Little Rock, Earth Science faculty joined a pilot program with the Disability Resource Center. "Project PACE" was funded by the U.S. Dept. of Ed and UALR to teach faculty to use Universal Design techniques in order to reduce barriers for the majority of students while increasing access to higher education. NCES (2013) indicates that students with some college courses or who achieve degrees become members of the workforce at higher rates. If redesigning our courses lower barriers, then our 2YC population benefits even more in the long term.

Tracking the Pathways of Students During Their Transition to the Early Career Workforce part of SAGE 2YC:Workshops:Supporting Student Success in Geoscience at Two-year Colleges:Essays
Carolyn Wilson, American Geosciences Institute
The Workforce Program at the American Geosciences Institute has developed the National Geoscience Student Exit Survey in order to determine the relevant experiences in undergraduate and graduate school, as well as the immediate career plans of students finishing their bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degrees in the geosciences. Specifically, the survey addresses the students' education background, decision points for obtaining a geoscience degree, their geoscience co-curricular experiences, and their future plans for either entering graduate school or entering the workforce immediately after graduation. This work will begin to highlight the sets of experiences and expertise that the typical student graduating with a geoscience degree gained, as well as the industries that are effective at recruiting and the industries where students want to gain employment. Over time there may be some regional differences in these areas, along with differences based on the students' areas of focus for their degree. AGI's National Geoscience Student Exit Survey has been through a two-year piloting phase, and it was recently made available to any undergraduate or graduate department in the United States for spring 2013 graduates.

Supporting Geoscience Student Success part of SAGE 2YC:Workshops:Supporting Student Success in Geoscience at Two-year Colleges:Essays
Anita Ho, Flathead Valley Community College
While I look forward to the workshop and learning about additional strategies and resources for effectively teaching the range of students I see, here are a few approaches I use to support student success.

Beginning a Geoscience Program at a Two-Year College part of SAGE 2YC:Workshops:Supporting Student Success in Geoscience at Two-year Colleges:Essays
Brett Dooley, Patrick & Henry Community College
I teach at Patrick Henry Community College, which resides in a fairly rural and economically depressed part of Virginia. Many of our students are first generation college students and are coming back to school for retraining after having lost a factory job. With the exception of earth science (GOL110), which is not a transferrable science course for general studies students and thus never had any significant enrollment, PHCC has only offered geology classes for four years. Having started the geology program at PHCC, there are three main areas upon which I am focusing to support geoscience students: introduction to the value of geoscience and access, transfer and career option, and training with workforce and transfer skills.

Training the Future Geoscience Workforce at the 2YC part of Integrate:Workshops and Webinars:Geoscience and the 21st Century Workforce:Essays
Shelley Jaye, Northern Virginia Community College
This webpage is an essay detailing a partnership between Northern Virginia Community College and the USGS to develop geoscience workforce training programs, including an Associate of Applied Science in Geoscience Technology, aimed at preparing students for entry-level technician roles and addressing the aging geoscience workforce through community college pathways. auto-generated The author of this page didn't provide a brief description so this one sentence summary was created by an AI tool. It may not be completely accurate.

Preparing STEM Educators part of Integrate:Workshops and Webinars:Geoscience and the 21st Century Workforce:Essays
Shelley Jaye, Northern Virginia Community College
Essay page detailing the Noyce Scholarship Program's partnership between Northern Virginia Community College and George Mason University to prepare STEM educators through paid Learning Assistant positions, mentorship, and scholarships for licensure in secondary education. auto-generated The author of this page didn't provide a brief description so this one sentence summary was created by an AI tool. It may not be completely accurate.

InTeGrate Liaison and SAGE2YC Advisory Board Member from Pasadena City College part of SAGE 2YC:Workshops:Preparing Students in Two-year Colleges for Careers:Essays
Elizabeth Nagy-Shadman, Pasadena City College; Elizabeth Nagy, Pasadena City College
In addition to being an advisory board member for SAGE2YC, I am a co-PI on the NSF-funded, five-year InTeGrate project that aims to improve geoscience literacy and build a workforce that can make use of geoscience to solve societal issues. My role is to oversee the involvement of 2-year colleges (2YCs) and to be certain that issues unique to 2YCs are identified and considered during the program development, testing, and dissemination. As such I am a liaison between the InTeGrate and SAGE2YC groups, and am very excited to be involved in both programs.

Pairing 2YCS with research-focused universities part of SAGE 2YC:Workshops:Preparing Students in Two-year Colleges for Careers:Essays
John Taber, EarthScope Consortium
Given the value that has been shown for early research experiences for undergraduates, including for students who have yet to decide on a major, IRIS would like to partner with other organizations to develop, or help build on a student research program that integrates research opportunities at two-year and four-year schools. We have experience running a national distributed REU program for upper-level students with math, physics and/or geoscience background, but need to learn more about the needs and interests of first and second year students, as our current program has evolved into one where most participants have completed their junior year...

A "Jobs in Geosciences" Speaker Series: Addressing What Geologists Really Do part of SAGE 2YC:Workshops:Preparing Students in Two-year Colleges for Careers:Essays
Lynsey LeMay, Virginia Peninsula Community College
The geology department at Thomas Nelson Community College (TNCC) recently initiated a program to bring geologists employed in a variety of fields to campus. Noted both anecdotally and through survey data collected about perceptions and careers in geosciences, students often have misconceptions about what geologists actually do in their various job functions. To address these misconceptions, the "jobs in geosciences" speaker series was started. This was funded by a small grant from the TNCC Educational Foundation.

VoiceThread for On-line Courses part of SAGE 2YC:Workshops:Preparing Students in Two-year Colleges for Careers:Essays
Bob Ford, Frederick Community College
I wish I could write a concise, but elaborate statement describing all the wonderful things we are doing to prepare our students to be successful in geoscience degree programs and careers, but I cannot. We are a small to moderate sized school. Most of the students taking our science courses are non-science majors satisfying general education requirements or students trying to get into one of our allied health programs...

Education to dispel the misconception that Cape Cod is a big homogenous sandbox part of SAGE 2YC:Workshops:Preparing Students in Two-year Colleges for Careers:Essays
catherine etter, Cape Cod Community College
Cape Cod Community College offers an A.A. with matriculation agreements for a seamless transfer to 4 year institutions, a technical A.S. in Environmental Technology, and a selection of environmental certificates. Our educational packages support a diverse group of learners from adult students (15 years and up) with no science background to professional scientists/engineers with years of education and work experience...

Developing meaningful and manageable research opportunities for community college students: lessons learned from semester #1 part of SAGE 2YC:Workshops:Preparing Students in Two-year Colleges for Careers:Essays
Becca Walker, Mt San Antonio College
Each semester, there are a handful of students in the science building every day working at the tables outside of the classrooms, dropping by office hours with hand samples, and asking questions after class related to, but beyond the scope of, the topic covered that day. They are the "repeat offenders" who have taken several courses in the department and are hungry for more. But when I say "more", I don't mean yet another rock identification lab or plate tectonics lecture...

Strategic Advisement for Career and Transfer Success part of SAGE 2YC:Workshops:Preparing Students in Two-year Colleges for Careers:Essays
Amanda Colosimo, Monroe Community College
While Monroe Community College (MCC), in Rochester, NY, has grown significantly in the past decade, it has also seen tremendous faculty turnover, as professors with 30 years tenure have been replaced by less experienced but enthusiastic new faculty. Administration has been largely supportive, frequently funding experimental projects and professional development opportunities for junior faculty members...

Strategies for raising awareness of geoscience related careers at 2-year colleges part of SAGE 2YC:Workshops:Preparing Students in Two-year Colleges for Careers:Essays
Ben Wolfe, Kansas State University
I am single faculty discipline at my campus, part of a large urban multi-campus district in Kansas City, Missouri with a total of three district full-time geology faculty. The overwhelming majority of students at my institution take geoscience courses (e.g. physical geology or physical geography) to fulfill part of the general education requirements of the Associates in Arts degree or General Education certificate for transfer to a 4-year school...