GEOPAths-UP: Recruiting and Retaining Non-geoscience Minority STEM Majors for Geoscience Service Learning and for the Geoscience Workforce.

Cuny New York City College Of Technology, Brooklyn NY

Investigators

Abstract

There is a preponderance of well-established recent studies that sound the alarm concerning the nation’s STEM workforce in general and its geoscience workforce in particular. These studies highlight: 1) the importance of STEM to the nation’s well-being, security, and global competitiveness; 2) the need for equity, access, increased enrollment, and diversity in STEM disciplines; and 3) the current and projected increase in STEM workforce shortage. The sustained capacity of the current and future STEM workforce to meet the nation’s scientific and technological needs is threatened by a sharp decline in the number of available STEM professionals. At current rates, the geoscience workforce is rapidly depleting, and its future shortfall is approaching a state of crisis. There are simply not enough new geoscience personnel entering the geoscience workforce to replace retiring geoscience employees – hence there is a gap that is expected to widen over time. This project seeks to help in ameliorating the nation’s geoscience plight by creating a year-round geoscience workforce preparation, geoscience service learning, and geoscience career mentoring program for non-geoscience minority STEM students beginning at the critical juncture of their senior year. The overall goal of the program is to construct an innovative, viable, and sustainable pathway to the dwindling geoscience workforce by tapping into a non-traditional and diverse pool of students. The program has added values in that it not only replenishes the geoscience workforce, but it also supports geoscience education, promotes diversity and inclusion, and benefits society as a whole by producing geoscience literate citizens. The program is designed to achieve the following two primary goals: 1) to broaden the geoscience workforce pathway for non-geoscience minority STEM majors; and 2) to create a multi-sector geoscience workforce development infrastructure. The objectives of the first goal are delineated in the following EPA–E theme of the geoscience transitional workforce program: EXPOSURE: Expose undergraduate seniors to the geosciences, PREPARATION: Provide undergraduate seniors with critical geoscience workforce skills and professional networks, APPRENTICESHIP: Engage undergraduate seniors in meaningful real-world, service and experiential learning via geoscience applications, and EXPERIENCE: Culminate into/with a geoscience internship-workforce experience. The objectives of the second goal are associated with the Apprenticeship component above: a) Create a student-faculty-industry paradigm of mentoring for the geoscience workforce; b) Create a professional workforce development structure among participating organizations, and c) Design peer-to-peer mentoring support structures. Twelve students will be recruited each year to participate in the structured geoscience workforce model program mentioned above – Exposure, Preparation, Apprenticeship, and Experience. The students will not only be supported with cohort-building activities, but they will also participate in two geoscience internship programs that will equip them with geoscience knowledge and workforce skills, service learning experiences, summer internships at a federal, local, or private geoscience facility, mentoring by geoscience practitioners, and networking opportunities with geoscience companies and geoscience professional societies. The expectation through this initiative will be that many underrepresented minority (URM) students who would otherwise not pursue a geoscience career may now choose to follow a geoscience corridor that could not only lead to lucrative geoscience careers, but could also help to improve the nation’s grave geoscience workforce dilemma. 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.