Increasing the Participation of African Americans and Native Americans in Geoscience through a Innovative Partnership between an HBCU and a Tribal College

Tennessee State University, Nashville TN

Investigators

Abstract

Increasing the Participation of African Americans and Native Americans in Geoscience through an Innovative Partnership between an HBCU and a Tribal College This award is being used to establish a partnership between Tennessee State University (TSU), an Historically Black University, Oglala Lakota College (OLC), a Tribal College, and Arizona State University, in order to broaden participation of underrepresented groups in the geosciences. The GeoRobotic Analytical Sampling Project (GRASP) will create an engaging, rigorous, and pedagogically sound geoscience curriculum for students, teachers and parents in historically underrepresented communities. The new GRASP curriculum will provide K-12 teachers with fundamental knowledge of basic geoscience concepts and modern scientific research methods through activities that center on the Mars research and education programs at ASU. Teams of geoscientists and educators will work with 8 teachers, 80 high-school students and 10 college students over two years to design and conduct a geoscience robotic exploration of the rolling hills of Tennessee and the badlands of South Dakota using authentic research investigations from the Mars Student Imaging Project. The program will be implemented through the Science, Engineering, Mathematics and Aerospace Academy (SEMAA) programs at TSU and OLC, which annually reach over 1,500 minority students each year. In Tennessee, participating teachers and students will come from two low-income schools in Davidson County. SEMAA students will participate in semester-long, academic year Saturday Academy programs and a Summer Academy (15-21 hours of instruction each). Over the two-year program, activities are partitioned into four phases: Mission Planning; Geoscience Sampling Techniques for Scientific Investigations; Design of GeoRobot for Remote Sampling; and, Mars Simulation With Remote Sample Collection. Students will learn about basic geoscience concepts; the electromagnetic spectrum; GPS, GIS and remote sensing technologies; geoscience sampling techniques; robotics and robotic soil sampling; and soil and rock analysis. Prior to each Academy, the ASU Mars Education staff will provide teacher training in Earth science concepts, inquiry-based learning, use of GIS-based software tools, and thenl provide on-going professional development and support for the teachers throughout the program. For the OLC students, resources will be blended with the "native ways of knowing" and distance learning modules will made flexible, so as to accommodate different levels of technological infrastructure available in these communities. On-going evaluation of the project using a Logic Model strategy and a variety of quantitative and qualitative tools will be used to monitor changes in student understanding of geoscience concepts and their attitudes toward geoscience careers, as well as impacts on the instructional styles of participating teachers. Understanding how these culturally distinct partners interact, share information; and instruct teachers and students will also be part of the ongoing assessment. If shown to be effective, the GRASP curriculum has the potential for being more widely disseminated through the national SEMAA organization.