Essays on Broadening Access to the Earth and Environmental Sciences

These essays were contributed in association with the February 2014 workshop on Broadening Access to the Earth and Environmental Sciences held at Arizona State University. Workshop participants and community members submitted essays in response to the prompt:

Submit a 1-2 page essay describing how your programs help students understand the relevance of their learning about the Earth to issues they care about. What does it mean to be "societally important" and "relevant" to your student population? How does this work inform the department's work throughout the cycle of attracting new students, supporting them through the major, and preparing them for careers?

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Increasing Participation in the Geosciences at El Paso Community College
Joshua Villalobos, El Paso Community College
Community Colleges currently serve 44% of all undergraduate students and 45% of all of all first time freshmen in the US. The combined low cost and flexibility of community colleges has also meant that they accommodate a large percentage of minorities entering higher education. Hispanics now constitute 15% of the general population and 19% of college population in the US. This increase has led to more Institutions being designated HSI (Hispanic Serving Institutions) by the federal government, where at least 25 percent of the full-time-equivalent students are Latino.

Institution Type: Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI)

Sustaining an Undergraduate Research Program that Serves as a Bridge Between 2YC and 4YC
Diane Doser, University of Texas at El Paso, The
For the past ~4 years the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) has been working with El Paso Community College (EPCC) to help ease the transition of underrepresented students in geoscience and environmental science between our institutions. One of most successful activities has been the establishment of cross-institutional research projects with EPCC students. Support for the projects originally came from WAESO (Western Alliance to Expand Student Opportunities) and later an NSF OEDG grant to EPCC, but continuation of the research program requires it to become self-sustaining. In the past year we have focused on a variety of research projects that can be conducted in agricultural fields located with ~300 m of the Mission del Valle campus of EPCC. The projects primarily focus on geochemistry, geophysics and sedimentology and how these factors affect agricultural crop yields.

Institution Type: Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI)

The SOARS Program - Engaging Minority Students through Geoscience Research Experiences
Rebecca Haacker, UCAR
Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric and Related Sciences (SOARS) combines a summer internship with year-round mentoring, conference travel, and publishing support. During their ten week internship at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), SOARS protégés get to choose a research topic and will explore it with the help of their scientific mentors. They also attend a weekly scientific communication workshop, seminars about graduate school and career choices, and complete end-of-summer poster and oral presentations. Topics of research span the broad field of climate and weather, including computing and engineering in support of the atmospheric sciences.