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We describe our efforts at building programs in Earth and space science over the past decade at four Minority Institutions, Medgar Evers College, Norfolk State University, South Carolina State University and the University of…

Startling national statistics continue to illuminate the need for increasing the number of underrepresented minority students graduating with degrees in the geosciences. With increasing minority populations in the U.S., diversity…

Decades of science education research have provided us with a variety of tools to deal with the cognitive processes behind our students’ learning. However, we have placed much less attention on student affect, the feelings,…

Summer camps have proven to be effective tools to engage students in the geosciences. Findings from this study highlight perceptions and experiences of middle school students from predominantly African American school districts in…

An effective partnership with Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) has been established with the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Building on a commitment to increase…

This article offers a set of design principles distilled from the Building Engineering and Science Talent (BEST) examination of over 100 programs with documented success in recruiting and retaining minority students in sciences,…

The Geosciences Institute for Research and Education at the University of Michigan–Dearborn has been an example of a successful and effective model in increasing the participation of underrepresented groups in the geosciences. The…

Out of all the physical sciences, earth sciences has the lowest participation of underrepresented minorities. Past research on factors contributing to the lack of diversity in geosciences, has focused on inadequate teacher preparation, lack of relevance or undefined career path, isolation and…

Geoscience faces dual recruiting challenges: a pending workforce shortage and a lack of diversity. Already suffering from low visibility, geoscience does not resemble the makeup of the general population in terms of either race/…

Geoscience education researchers are working to understand how we can most effectively increase our overall geoscience workforce capacity. The present study employed an inductive approach to explore the critical experiences that…

Data available from the National Science Foundation Division of Science Resources Statistics demonstrate that since 1966 fewer bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. degrees have been awarded in the geosciences than in any other STEM…

Summer programs are a common strategy for increasing interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) careers among K-12 students. Here we report four years of results from a two-week program designed to expose…

Researchers participated in a week long field experience for high school students to increase the pipeline of diverse students into the geosciences major.  Surveys were conducted with students and their parents to understand what the participants had learned about geosciences. About 56% of…

High school students in a large urban area, undergraduate students, and geoscience faculty at a local college used a place- based pedagogical approach to engage in real geoscience problem-based inquiry in a local urban park. The…

A model deployed at Savannah State University (SSU) for enhancing diversity in the geosciences provides much needed African-American role models in the sciences for school aged children in the surrounding community. The most common…

Using a conceptual framework constructed around self-efficacy, this study explores specific recruitment programs that may contribute to the development of self-efficacy for students of color in the geosciences. This mixed methods…

The Rural Alaska Honors Institute (RAHI) is an intensive, six-week residential high school-to-college bridging program aimed at preparing talented rural Alaska youth for the social and academic challenges of college. Since its…

The geosciences continue to lag behind the other sciences in both diversity and degree completion rates of students transferring from two-year colleges (2YCs). Critical to strengthening the transfer student…

Meeting the future demand for a qualified geoscience workforce will require efforts to increase recruitment, retention, and graduation of an increasingly diverse student body. Doing this successfully requires renewed attention to…

Do students really enroll in Introductory Geology because they think it is ‘‘rocks for jocks’’? In this study, we examine the widely held assumption that students view geology as a qualitative and remedial option for fulfilling a…

This is a case study of an NSF funded program to increase participation in STEM and geosciences for American Indian students. Culturally relevant practices were utilized such as the Circle of learning, a conceptual framework that emphasizes trust and relationship building between researchers,…

Queer Science is a new program at the University of Minnesota that invites queer and transgender high school students to the university. Students participate in college-level hands-on experiments with transgender and queer scientist who serve as mentors and role models for the participants.…

The University of New Orleans (UNO), Department of Earth and Environmental Science has been successfully recruiting minority geoscience students since 1974. The basis for that program is a field trip for high school students…

Research experience for undergraduate (REU) programs are designed to recruit students to science and engineering research careers by allowing the students to conduct research with faculty mentors. International research experiences…

Ethnic and racial minorities constitute an important part of the geosciences community because of their diverse perspectives and backgrounds. However, the geosciences have the poorest diversity record of all the science and…

We describe the Fisk-Vanderbilt Masters-to-PhD Bridge program as a successful model for effective partnerships with minority-serving institutions toward significantly broadening the participation of underrepresented groups in the…

We present a quantitative evaluation of the effectiveness of a newly developed introductory course, Geology of Mexico, in attracting Hispanic students, encouraging them to take more geology courses, and recruiting them to the major…

This paper discusses experiences and lessons learned from developing an interdisciplinary graduate program (IDP) during the last 10 y: The Howard University Graduate Program in Atmospheric Sciences (HUPAS). HUPAS is the first…

The MS PHD'S Program facilitates the involvement of minority undergraduate and graduate Earth system science students in a series of activities designed to: (1) increase exposure to and engagement in the Earth system science…