GeoSCOPE (GeoScience Career OPportunity Exploration) will build long-term, self-sustaining linkages between the Department of Earth Sciences at Florida International University (FIU), a Minority Serving Institution, and beginning FIU undergraduates, Miami-Dade community college students, and Miami-Dade County high school teachers. The project will expose early career FIU and Miami-Dade community college students, over 70% of whom are from groups under-represented in the geosciences, to geoscience career opportunities, through workshops and paid internships. It will also inform high school teachers about geoscience career opportunities, through a yearly workshop highlighting the work of local geoscience agencies, private firms and departmental research at FIU. Undergraduate students, recruited from lower division science and engineering classes at FIU and at Miami-Dade Community College will participate in summer workshops highlighting interesting and professionally promising areas of research done by department faculty. Examples are: 1) Applied Hydrogeology in South Florida; 2) Environmental Geology of the Florida Keys; and 3) Geology of South Florida and the Caribbean, all of which have a significant field component; and 4) Applications of GIS in the Geosciences and 5) Mineral Geoscience, which are technology based. Following the workshops, students will be employed in paid internships, both within the department and cooperating local agencies, such as the United States Geologic Survey (USGS), Miami-Dade Department of Resource Management (DERM) and the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD). Students who choose a geoscience major, and complete one subsequent year of coursework, will receive a second summer internship with a stronger research component. Ultimately, such students are expected to become fully integrated into on-going funded Earth Science faculty research.
