T82 Declining Enrollments in U.S. Undergraduate Geoscience Programs: How Did We Get Here and How Do We Get Our Groove Back?

Monday, 5 November 2018
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Room 234

MAKING CLASSROOM AND PROGRAM LEVEL CHANGES TO SUPPORT STUDENT SUCCESS: PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR 2-YEAR COLLEGE GEOSCIENCE FACULTY IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Paper number: T82-9
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 10:10 AM – 10:25 AM

Authors

Abstract

The Supporting and Advancing Geoscience Education at 2-Year Colleges project (SAGE2YC; NSF-DUE) is a network of community college faculty "change agent" teams who use evidence-based educational practices to support student academic success, broaden participation, and facilitate students’ professional pathways in STEM. In the pursuit of these goals, change agents make modifications to improve their individual instruction (classroom-level) and their department or program (institutional-level.) They also participate in annual workshops and virtual workshop series with other change agents on a variety of topics related to the SAGE2YC program goals and develop and lead professional development workshops for local community college geoscience faculty. This presentation is a report on classroom-level, program-level, institutional-level modifications and workshop results from the Southern California (cohort 1) Change Agent Team. The authors have led two annual regional workshops which focused on transfer success and metacognition in 2016 and on active learning strategies, summative assessment and formative assessment in 2017. In 2018, we convened a workshop, Strong Starts and Transitions, which addressed societally relevant teaching materials, the academic job search and tenure process, and professional development opportunities for community college faculty. At the individual level, accomplishments include changes to our teaching such as implementation of group exams, active learning strategies and student performance reviews. Departmentally we have seen adjunct instructors benefit and share from their participation in workshops, growth in core geoscience class enrollment and discussion about the differences between the diversity of the college and the diversity of students enrolled in our program. At the institutional level, the authors have undertaken the creation of a new Geotechnician Certificate. We will discuss individual and team strategies for improving faculty instruction, student awareness of geoscience careers and transfer pathways, the construction and impact of a local network of 2-year college geoscience faculty, effective strategies for geoscience workshops and the implications of these changes for student enrollment in geoscience programs.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 50, No. 6

doi: 10.1130/abs/2018AM-323783

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