EarthConnections: Community Pathways to Geoscience Careers
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EarthConnections is based in communities – linking students, educators, and community leaders together to address a local challenge that can be explored by the students using geoscience. By working with students from diverse backgrounds, the project team is developing a network of people and resources to prepare students to work in their communities addressing environmental hazards and resource issues directly impacting their local community. This project brings together partners who have led successful national efforts addressing components of these challenges with partners in three regions to create pathways in three regional pilots, focusing on key academic transitions in three diverse US communities—Atlanta, Georgia; San Bernardino, California; and Oklahoma—and will use these pathways as laboratories and catalysts for a systemic change in geoscience and geoscience education. These pathways will include multiple opportunities for students to 1) learn geoscience in the context of compelling local issues, 2) use geoscience to address local challenges, and 3) explore geoscience career pathways.
The EarthConnections collective impact alliance develops regionally focused, Earth education pathways that support and guide students from engagement in relevant, Earth-related science at an early age through the many steps and transitions to geoscience-related careers. EarthConnections advances the use of participatory approaches in the geosciences, nurturing a generation of future scientists who are well-versed in methods and strategies for community engagement. This approach has broad, local community impact and will increase the public’s value of and support for geoscience.
Dan Zietlow
Interesting project! Addressing community-specific geoscience problems seems like a great way to get underserved populations involved. What are some of the ways that you will engage these communities to tackle resource issues or seismic hazards and show different career paths? Will you have community members out in the field installing seismometers or cleaning up watersheds, provide open-to-the-public lectures, after-school groups, etc.?
Donna Charlevoix
Thanks for your questions Dan - they are good ones! We have some ideas that I'll outline below. Broadly, our project is designed to answer the type of questions you pose. How *do* we engage students and communities? What opportunities can we leverage and what barriers might we need to overcome?
We have three pilot areas and they are all taking different approaches, working to identify an approach that is the best fit for the stakeholders they are engaging and the community issue they are tackling. For example, the Oklahoma Tribal Alliance is looking at induced seismicity throughout the state and the impacts on energy production, jobs, and the environment. Native tribes have very strong ties to the land and the fist step of engaging the state-wide group with our project team is to hold a convening to both build trust and develop a participatory plan.
The project activities for all three pilot areas will be driven by the needs of the local community. At this point, it is not likely there will be instrument installation or things of that nature due to the funding availability. We are aiming to develop sustainable, engagement plans that will leverage existing local resources. The role of the national leadership team is to bring in geoscience resources and expertise from across the country to the local pilots.
Finally, you offered some possible ways to engage the community and provide information to students about careers in geoscience. As our pilots mature and develop stronger alliances, many of the items you list (public lectures, after school programs, etc.) may be a part of their activities. Rather than be prescriptive, we are working with the local pilots to develop activities that will fit into their local alliance and enhance their communities.
Dan Zietlow
Great, thanks for the info!
Sally McGill
Hi Dan,
In the San Bernardino Alliance, we are planning an event for March 25, 2017 in which students from a local high school and two local community colleges will visit our campus, take a hike to the San Andreas fault, tour buildings on campus that have been seismically retrofitted and ask questions of a geology alumni career panel over a brown bag lunch. The day will conclude with an assignment for the students to interview their peers and family members about their thoughts about the most important geoscience issues in their community. Teachers will collect the student interview results, which will be used to guide planning for future events, perhaps even a future field trip designed by the students for their families.
One possible community issue we may engage with is the continued presence old, unreinforced masonry buildings within the city of San Bernardino. These buildings are a threat to life safety in future earthquakes.
Dan Zietlow
Sounds cool, thanks for the response!
Barbara Rogoff
UCSC Foundation Distinguished Professor of Psychology
Great project! I'm curious about the Oklahoma project, which is especially timely. I wonder how the students are engaging in the project. What do they do? Is it helping with gathering data? Activism?
Cathy Manduca
Director
Hi Barbara -
The Oklahoma project is meeting this week to move forward in answering these questions! All of our regional alliances are starting with community planning meetings. Oklahoma is having theirs this week.
Barbara Rogoff
UCSC Foundation Distinguished Professor of Psychology
Good luck! I imagine there will be a lot of local interest in this project in Oklahoma.
John Taber
Hi Barbara,
While we will be first listening to the community to learn what approaches they think would be most effective, we will be offering active learning opportunities that we have developed via other projects, such as the Quake Catcher Network, which provides simple ground motion sensors that students can use to record earthquakes as part of a larger network.
Lisa Lynn
This is a very cool project. I like the focus on community-relevant concerns and activism. Besides the impact on public value of and support for geoscience, are you measuring any outcomes for the students involved, such as science identity, interest in a geoscience career, or the proportion of students who choose a geoscience major in college, etc.? I realize those may be longer-term goals and not data you'll have right away! Just wondering how you're thinking about the impact on the students who are involved.
Barbara Nagle
Hi Lisa, To add to Cathy's answer, we are getting input from our three Regional Alliances to hone in on possible outcome measures related to science identity, interest, confidence, and valuing science.
Cathy Manduca
Director
Hi Lisa -
Yes these things are of high interest and we are getting ready to test an instrument that we hope will be quick and useful across educational levels.
You may also be interested in the InTeGrate Attitudinal Instrument which was developed by one of our alliance partners for use with undergraduates to get at just these things. It was given pre-post as part of classroom instruction. http://serc.carleton.edu/integrate/about/iai.html
Lisa Lynn
Cathy and Barbara, thanks for your replies and for sharing this tool! I will need to check it out! I think it's great that you're getting input from the Regional Alliances in developing outcome measures, using that broad base of expertise to identify the important outcomes.
Partially related conversation here (http://includes2017.videohall.com/presentations...) about consulting partners on outcomes as a tenet of collective impact work. I'm sure this is coming up in lots of threads.
Leslie Goodyear
Principal Research Scientist
What an interesting project! I'm particularly interested in how you plan to support these critical transitions and ensure that students are putting their learning in the larger community and career contexts.
Cathy Manduca
Director
Leslie -
The San Bernadino Alliance is the furthest down this path. They are making use of geology clubs which pull students from multiple levels and institutions. You can learn more here: http://serc.carleton.edu/earthconnections/sanbe...
We expect that each regional alliance will have a different strategy that suits their community and its existing resources/structure/connections.
Allison Rowe
Thank you for sharing this informative video! Your project is inspiring. I am especially impressed by your model of a national leadership team bringing geoscience resources and expertise to three regional alliances. Might you be willing to share what strategies/tools you use to coordinate/communicate between these partners located across the country?
I also admire that you are starting with community planning meetings in each region. Did the national leadership team provide each regional alliance with a framework for how to set up the community planning meetings? If so, what strategies did you recommend? Or did each regional alliance organize a community planning meeting in its own way? Thanks!
Cathy Manduca
Director
Hi Allison -
Thanks for your questions. Our leadership team (which includes the leaders from the 3 regional alliances) had an opening face to face meeting last November and has been meeting roughly every 6 weeks since then. We have a list serve we use for communications and are monitoring its use as a metric of alliance health. Each regional alliance has a liaison who is a program partner to ensure that they have someone focused on bringing resources into their alliance from the breadth of the alliance. Our work is all organized in a set of workspaces on the SERC website. You can learn more about those tools here: http://serc.carleton.edu/serc/about/serckit.html
For the first three regional alliances, we discussed strategies for the community meetings as part of our leadership team meetings and then each regional alliance organizes its planning meeting in its own way. This is appropriate given the highly variable contexts and goals across the regional alliances. As we move forward with more regional alliances we will provide more formalized support for planning these initial meetings.
Allison Rowe
Wow! Thank you, Cathy, for this helpful information. I think it's amazing that your leadership team has been able to meet so regularly-- this seems like a key to success! I also love the idea of using online communications as one measure of alliance strength. Thank you for sharing the SERC tools-- I will definitely check these out. I would love to learn more about how you advise planning these initial meetings; our pilot project has linked up with partners in other states, and I think an community planning meeting would be a good step to take in each location. Is there any chance you have resources available on your SERC website about this? Or do you plan to in the future?
Cathy Manduca
Director
A goal of the project is to create a scalable framework for supporting new regional alliances- so yes we will have resources on the website in the future. Not quite there yet. The Oklahoma project had its planning meeting last Friday and Atlanta will have theirs on Wednesday. Unfolding in real time :).
Allison Rowe
Cathy, thank you for your response-- that is very exciting, and I look forward to keeping up with your project as it progresses!
Further posting is closed as the event has ended.