Initial Publication Date: August 6, 2015
Icebreaker Activity
To introduce ourselves, and to inform our discussions over the next couple of days, please respond to the following:
- Write 3 words (or short phrases) that define who your students are;
- Write 3 words (or sort phrases) that describes your institution; and
- Write 6 words that describes who you are, and what your interests are in attending this workshop.
Responses will be recorded on sticky notes, and posted on larger flip charts to aggregate your answers.
Take a look at the responses that have been submitted. In a group discussion, identify responses you thought were particularly interesting, important or intriguing. Did common themes, challenges or opportunities emerge? Participants are invited to comment on contributions that were identified for further inquiry.
Participant Responses
- First generation college students (5)
- Non-traditional (5)
- Diverse in ethnicity and age (5)
- Young
- Majority African American/Hispanic/Native American (3)
- Small town
- Career focused (2)
- Need local jobs
- Family oriented
- Parents
- Hard Working (3)
- Over-committed (2)
- Appreciative
- Enthusiastic (2)
- Motivated
- Supportive
- Honest (painfully)
- Curious
- Open-minded
- Smart
- Believe in education
- More tech savvy each year
- Millennials
- Better than they can imagine
- Looking for inspiration
- Unaware of opportunities
- Provincial
- Quiet
- Challenging
- Financial need (great)
- Wealthy
- Math (and writing) challenged (2)
- Developmentally challenged
- Wide range of abilities
- Yet to be really challenged
- Under-prepared (2)
- Unclear goals
- Distracted (3)
- Not confident
- Disempowered
- Whiny (sense of entitlement)
- Spoiled
- Out of touch
- Don't know what geology is
- General education
- Pre-service science teachers
- Geographers
- Non-majors ==Majors (2)
- Diverse in its population (6); (not necessarily in STEM)
- Desire to be a "world class institution", Also "R1 Wannabe" (5)
- Research intensive (4)
- Liberal Arts
- 2 year college (2YC)
- Mid-level 4 year/Primarily undergraduate institution (3)
- Hispanic Serving Institution (2)
- Historically Black Colleges and Universities (2)
- STEM focused institution
- Science Education Institution
- Large; huge enrollments (3)
- Small (2)
- Regional base
- Urban (3)
- Rural (2)
- Commuter population (2)
- Provincial
- Sprawling district
- On-line
- Competitive
- Innovative
- Supportive (2)
- Great potential
- Friendly
- Low-income
- Crowded
- Quiet
- Transitioning
- Many administrative changes
- Changing to a district centered business model (away from student centered)
- Vision beyond its means
- Pride
- Bureaucratic (2)
- Tuition dependent
- Lack of resources/financial needs (3)
- Cheap
- Under appreciated
- Troubled
- Growth potential/Growing (4) (also: new directions needed to accommodate growth)
.
- Share experience as only TCU program
- Network with similar minded people
- Enthusiastic, meteorologist, educator, first-generation, mom, Zumba
- Too many interests, not enough time
- This is how I get paid
- Learn, network, resources, methods, ideas
- Add to my lesson plans to help my students organize themselves better and to inspire them
- Let's study diversity with more voices
- Improve value of department to the administration
- To learn and network with peers; collaborate, brainstorm
- Explore the Earth, share the knowledge
- Prepare for writing NOAA cooperative science center proposal
- I want to attract majors sooner
- Create new pathways that broaden the geosciences
- Hoping to increase program diversity
- To find out what geo faculty are seeing/thinking
- Continue lifelong work on diversity, equality
- Ideas to recruit, retain underrepresented students
- Identify and mentor geoscientists from a diverse pool
- To increase enrollment in my courses
- Support students at my college
- We're all in the same boat
- Need new ideas to improve success
- Tina asked me, Couldn't say no!
Some observations compiled by D. Mogk
- Participants come from institutions large and small, urban and rural,.... It's clear that this is not a "one size fits all" problem, and we're going to need a lot of strategies and approaches to address diversity in the geosciences.
- Most institutions were described in terms of their spatial setting.... This suggests that we may want to emphasize Place-Based Education.
- Institutions are almost universally under-funded.....We're going to have to work creatively and innovatively to solve this problem with limited (static, or even decreasing) resources.
- Geosciences has a marketing problem: students don't know who we are and what we do.
- Students are in need of mentoring, guidance....somehow we need to train faculty to do a better job in this area (including cultural literacy and sensitivity)
- Students need to have better information about possible career pathways in the geosciences....AGI Workforce resources are a good place to start.
- Many students are under-prepared for advanced study in Geoscience and STEM.....consider High School-College Bridging programs, directing students to programs designed to enable student success, .....
- There's a lot of work to be done in the affective domain; students are: confident, motivated, enthusiastic, curious so let's capture this; they are also afraid, insecure, distracted, etc. so let's deal with this.
- Participants at this workshop are motivated a) to provide a better experience for their students (or to make geoscience attractive to prospective students; and b) to design/redesign programs to improve quality of instruction at their institution.