GP-EXTRA: Place-Based Participatory Path to Geoscience

Northern New Mexico College, Espanola NM

Investigators

Abstract

Part 1 - Northern New Mexico College serves a population that is 72% Hispanic and 18% Native American. They have resided, uninterrupted, in the Espanola Valley for over 400 and 1000 years respectively. It is a place of great beauty, history and poverty. Its meager mineral beds were tapped out over 100 years ago and its high desert climate supports only small, largely subsistence, farms - irrigated by a communal acequia system that has been in continuous use for hundreds of years. There is evident pride in participating in the stewardship of a place that offers its fruits so grudgingly. The project intends to expand on this pride by engaging our undergraduates in the detailed mapping of the many layers of their environment, in the assimilation of these layers, and in the tactile simulation of natural and human-caused events (fire, flood, infestation, migration) within and across these layers. The complexity of these events and their cost in lives and livelihoods have lead many communities to invest in relevant technology. Given the low level of scientific and computational literacy in rural America this reliance on technology forces local environmental stakeholders to forfeit their agency to an outside technical expert. The intent of the project is to prepare undergraduates to assume this crucial role in their community. An expected outcome of the project is the resulting increase in pride, stemming from such place-based participation, will firmly set undergraduates on a pathway into the Geosciences. The project's goals are focused on creating a platform for students that emphasizes modeling, learning and collaborative planning. The project seeks to equip undergraduates with systems thinking skills and have them serve as valued participants in environmental planning and flexible ambassadors of new technology en route to deeper learning in the Geosciences. The aims of the project's collaborative planning experience would (1) help non experts better understand complex human-natural interactions and to use that knowledge to (2) engage in more truly collaborative and creative planning activities. The former will give students the skills to pursue Geoscience while the latter will assure them that these hard won skills matter to the Earth and their community. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.