Washington State Earth Sciences Summit: Pathways for Undergraduates

Whatcom Community College, Bellingham WA

Investigators

Abstract

The Washington State Undergraduate Earth Sciences Summit will bring together geoscience faculty and staff from community and technical colleges (CTCs) and bachelors-granting universities across the state. The goal of the Summit is to develop a plan where Earth science majors have access to clear pathways that result in successful transfer within the state. Two-year colleges have the potential to be a source of increasing diversity of Earth science majors across the state. However, if the transfer process is unclear or inconsistent or does not effectively prepare students, there could be a bottleneck resulting in a decreasing number and diversity of bachelor's degree recipients. PIs anticipate that the partnerships and structures that will emerge from the Summit will improve both the number and diversity of successful students in geoscience programs. This Summit has the potential to develop a model that could be useful for other geoscience programs, including environmental science, meteorology, oceanography, agricultural and soil sciences, all programs which are generally discovered after students enter college. The Summit seeks to identify the unique barriers that may block transfer pathways in the Washington state system, and the solutions that reduce or remove these barriers that could be extrapolated and adapted nationally. The Washington State Undergraduate Earth Sciences Summit will organize and convene a gathering of undergraduate faculty and advisors who will seek to improve transfer pathways in Washington state. The Summit seeks to build a community of Earth science faculty in the State, and develop relationships between all undergraduate institutions that will facilitate the sharing of ideas and improvement of programs. Summit goals include (1) engagement of key stakeholders to foster discussions about Earth science opportunities through a lens of guided pathways and equity; (2) identification of threshold concept(s), competencies, and self-regulatory strategies that lead to successful transfer; (3) definition of successful transfer and identification of obstacles that impede students' progress in the Earth sciences; (4) exploration and initiation of future collaborations across colleges and institutions, and (5) identification of next steps for improvement of transfer processes at both the institutional level, between institutions, and in Washington state overall. 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.