About the SAGE 2YC Project
The Importance of Geoscience Education in Two-Year Colleges
Two-year colleges (2YCs) play crucial roles in meeting the nation's geoscience and STEM workforce needs and in increasing public scientific literacy. 2YCs enroll over 45% of all U.S. undergraduates and serve a large number of women, minority, and first-generation college students. In addition, the 2YC teaching environment is one of the most challenging as community colleges are primarily open-access intuitions that serve an extremely diverse student body; teaching loads are heavy; there is an increasing use of adjunct faculty; and there is limited support for participation in professional development activities, widely recognized as the source for many critical improvements for improving student learning. The SAGE 2YC project seeks to make an impact in this important area.
SAGE 2YC: Supporting and Advancing Geoscience Education in Two-Year Colleges
The original SAGE 2YC project focused on disseminating evidence-based information about effective teaching strategies and workforce development programs to faculty at 2YCs. The project used workshops at the national, regional, and local scales as well as at professional meetings to provide professional development for full-time and adjunct geoscience faculty. These efforts, particularly the development of a cadre of faculty interested in leading their own local workshops, laid the groundwork for the subsequent phases of the project. Learn more about the original SAGE 2YC »
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SAGE 2YC: Faculty as Change Agents
The SAGE 2YC: Faculty As Change Agents project has built a national network of self-sustaining local communities of 2YC geoscience faculty and administrators who use evidence-based strategies to improve all students' academic success, broaden participation, and facilitate students' professional pathways into the STEM workforce. A synergistic program of research and evaluation that is fully integrated in the project has advanced knowledge and understanding of the effectiveness of professional development models for full-time and adjunct geoscience and STEM faculty.
Project Goals:
- Build a sustainable national network of 2YC leaders (change agents) who catalyze change at multiple levels from their courses to institutions in their local regions and within the community of practice;
- Implement high-impact evidence-based instructional and co-curricular practices that support the academic success of all students, broaden participation, and promote students' professional pathways into geoscience; and
- Investigate models of professional development for full-time and adjunct 2YC geoscience faculty that promote the cycle of innovation, where faculty learn from the research of others, make changes in their own practice, and share what they have learned with the education community.
The project's professional development program has worked with three cohorts of 2YC geoscience faculty teams to implement evidence-based instructional and co-curricular practices at their institutions. The inclusion of administrators supports systemic change at each institution. The faculty teams expand the reach of the project by engaging additional two-year and four-year faculty in their institutions and regions using a combination of workshops and other activities. Online resources and virtual professional development activities support faculty to implement changes on their campus, and provide a persistent resource for the full geoscience and broader STEM communities.
Project Personnel Advisory board Change Agent Cohorts
Disclaimer: Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.