This program creates a top to bottom (Highlands to Piedmont) net of engagement in the Geosciences that takes Newark public school students from first contact in 9th grade through college and into a career. The program is designed to greatly increase the number of underrepresented minority students in the Geosciences and shepherd them into careers in the Geosciences. Ultimately, the program will change the culture in the Newark public school system and with Newark residents to view the Geosciences as a desirable pursuit. The net includes revision of the 9th grade Earth Science curriculum, introduction of modules and hands-on exercises in the related sciences in 10th through 12th grades, a summer institute, an after school explorers group, industrial internships and an informational-advisement system for high school and college students and their families. Revision of the curriculum and development of the supplementary exercises and modules will be done utilizing resources and expertise at Rutgers University. The summer institute will be administered by the pre-college program at Rutgers. Teacher training for the 9th grade teachers and for the modules and exercise in advanced grades will be accomplished by Kean University. The after school and weekend explorers group will be run by the Newark Museum, in part, utilizing resources and opportunities at the Meadowlands Environmental Research Institute. The informational seminars and internship programs will primarily be administered by industrial partners Langan Engineering and Environmental Services Corporation and URS Corporation. Advisement for applying to college and enrichment activities/internships while there will be administered by Rutgers University in conjunction with all other partners. The program will directly engage 100 high school students at various levels and up to 40 college students per year. Less directly, it will potentially engage 2,000 high school students to various degrees.
The Highlands to Piedmont project developed a pipeline for urban minority students from groups who are underrepresented in the geosciences based upon 1) exposing them to the applied aspects and career opportunities, and 2) multiple points of engagement and enrichment. Students from the Newark Public Schools and surrounding areas were engaged in applied geosciences from 8th and 9th grade through college. New and innovative exercises using physical analog devices were developed on oil exploration, mining, tsunamis, earthquakes, flooding, groundwater pollution, geothermal energy and landfills and incorporated into regular lesson plans at several K-12 schools. About 35 of the students per year who developed interest in the geosciences were invited to participate in the GeoExplorers afterschool and weekend enrichment program at the Newark Museum. About 75-90 interested students per year also participated in the Summer Geoscience Scholars Institute. This full-time, 4-week modular program was run by 4 teachers from the Newark Public School system assisted by 4 underrepresented minority students from Rutgers-Newark and up to 8 students from nearby Essex County Community College. The 4 modules included energy, mining, environment and surface processes of the Earth. Each module was designed to be fully immersive with 2 field trips to local geoscience resources (mines, caves, shore, oil refinery, hydroelectric plant, polluted estuary, etc.), presentations by professionals from industry and academia, hands-on exercises including the new described devices and a research project on the environmental health of a local public park. Students collected water and soil samples located with a GPS, chemically analyzed the samples, plotted them on a GIS database, interpreted their results and produced a poster that was displayed the following year at their home schools. The dozen most interested students from the summer program were invited to participate in a special enrichment activity. One year, they helped locate graves in a historically important African American cemetery that had fallen into disrepair using Ground Penetrating Radar. This and the following years project locating battlefield graves on an important Revolutionary War site were heavily covered in the local press and mass media. This gave the students the sense that their activities were important to society as well. To engage the public in support of geosciences, a geoscience festival called Dinosaur Day was held annually at the Newark Museum. Underrepresented minority students from Rutgers and the GeoExplorers program helped run hands-on demonstrations of applied geosciences for visitors. Companies, state agencies and academic associations also donated their time and efforts in displays and demonstrations. This event attracted up to 9,000 visitors per year making it the most successful single day event ever in the 100 year history of the museum and as a result, it is now institutionalized. It also helped change the attitudes of the Newark residents towards the geosciences which helped to encourage the students to pursue it as a career. Unanticipated benefits of the program also resulted. Two dual-credit (high school-college) courses were established at the highest participating high schools and are now permanent. The minority serving Essex County College in Newark offered geology for the first time in 30 years and now has a sequence of courses that lead to a major. Hudson County College is attempting to follow suit. The Rutgers undergraduate assistants persisted with their major, graduated and pursued graduate studies at a substantially higher rate than their predecessors and reported that acting as a role model to younger students was a life-changing experience. Researchers from the University of Arizona came to study the Rutgers-Newark geology program because they deemed it the most diverse in the United States. The study is on triggers that entice underrepresented minority students to pursue the geosciences in college and the Highlands to Piedmont program figures prominently in the reasons.
