103 Balancing Tradition and Innovation: Evolving Geoscience Curricula for a Changing World (Posters)

This session examines geoscience curricula balancing traditional foundations and innovative, interdisciplinary approaches. We invite abstracts exploring how programs address evolving societal challenges while preparing students for licensure exams and diverse career pathways.

Monday, 20 October 2025
8:00 AM - 5:30 PM
HBGCC, Hall 1

Using Your Teaching to Improve Student Success and to Move Forward Your Research Agenda

Paper number: 103-9
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 8:00 AM – 8:00 AM

Authors

Abstract

In a changing landscape of federal funding for academic research, faculty members may be considering alternative ways to achieve their research goals, using the resources and opportunities already available to them. One of those opportunities is to integrate research into coursework through Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs). CUREs are great vehicles for increasing student access to research experiences. CUREs also have the potential to contribute to faculty research productivity. Creating CUREs aligned with your overall research agenda can bring more minds and hands to bear on questions, allow the exploration of a larger variable space, and provide more freedom to pursue new and untried research directions. Explicitly identifying research activities for students that serve both learning goals and research goals enables a CURE to serve multiple purposes. In resource-limited circumstances, CUREs can be a particularly cost-effective method for continuing to make progress in pursuit of research and publications, while also benefiting students. This can be supported by existing tools like the EvaluateUR-CURE method (https://serc.carleton.edu/evaluateur/cure/) that can augment your CURE with a turnkey evaluation approach that also promotes student growth and structured mentorship. This poster will consider types of Geo research that lend themselves to the CURE approach, and point to existing datasets or campus-based field experiences that can be used to answer novel research questions with students.

Adapting from the CUREnet institutes model (https://serc.carleton.edu/curenet/), a series of planned virtual sessions will help undergraduate faculty rethink their research plans to capitalize on CUREs while offering their students high-quality, hands-on learning experiences.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 6

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-414093

© Copyright 2025 The Geological Society of America (GSA), all rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to the author(s) of this abstract to reproduce and distribute it freely, for noncommercial purposes. Permission is hereby granted to any individual scientist to download a single copy of this electronic file and reproduce up to 20 paper copies for noncommercial purposes advancing science and education, including classroom use, providing all reproductions include the complete content shown here, including the author information. All other forms of reproduction and/or transmittal are prohibited without written permission from GSA Copyright Permissions.