The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), a Carnegie research-intensive university situated in the southern Rio Grande Rift on the border between Mexico and Texas, is building a geoscience recruitment and training network with two goals: 1) to increase the number of Hispanic American students who receive bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in the geosciences and then enter geoscience careers and 2) to increase awareness about the geosciences as an important and relevant scientific discipline with many career opportunities among high school students and teachers, community college students, and undergraduate students at UTEP. To build and sustain our network we are carrying out four linked activities: 1) a two-week summer program for high-school freshman that each year exposes 30 students and 6 teachers to a variety of topics in the geosciences and demonstrates how the chemistry and physics covered in freshman science courses integrates with geoscience; 2) a follow-up program with teachers that will assure integration of geoscience-related lessons into the ninth grade integrated physics and chemistry curriculum, 3) a mentoring and research experience for eight undergraduates each year and 4) a fellowship program for two Ph.D. students each year. Anticipated outcomes from our work include models for: 1) a recruitment and training network that works for geoscience; 2) preparing teachers to incorporate geoscience activities into physics and chemistry curricula and for assessing their effectiveness; and 3) a vertical mentoring structure that stretches from high-school students and teachers through undergraduate students to Ph.D. candidates that promotes both student success and interest in geoscience. By creating a network that encompasses all aspects of the geoscience pipeline from the K-12 schools to the Ph.D. in one location with a large Hispanic American population, we expect to make a major contribution to changing the demographics of the future geoscience workforce.
