31 Tell Me a Story! Communication and Outreach in the Geosciences II

Saturday, 29 March 2025
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
130AB

APPROACHES TO REVERSING THE TREND OF DECLINING GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION

Paper number: 31-2
Program: Theme Sessions
Time: 1:35 PM – 1:55 PM

Authors

Abstract

Get in the van. Water pays the bills. We all live downstream. You can make your own luck. Reciprocity is expected. Geology rocks. Carpe diem. Think like a drop of water. I have used a lot of catch phrases to entice students to become geoscientists. My strongest advice, however, has to be to sell geology by the landscape first, not mineral lattice first. Show photos of spectacular landscapes. Reveal the gripping aftermath of natural disasters. Describe the necessity of mining. If it can’t be grown, it has to be mined. Even given dynamic marketing though, geoscience education is clearly contracting. What can be done? Geoscientists need to compile effective portrayals of dynamic careers, adventurous discovery, and aggregate job demand. The value of science needs to be broadcast. We need an attractive video to capture the audience that way that Top Gun bolstered recruitment for the US Navy. There is no doubt that the struggles in geoscience education are not a local, nor regional challenge, but rather global in scope. The one thing that we cannot do, however, is to accept the decline. We must rise to the challenge of bolstering recruitment, curricula, and programming.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 3

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025NE-408652

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