Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge is developing new strategies for exposing K-12 students in Louisiana to geoscience education and career opportunities. Currently, only about 1% of Louisiana students take geoscience in high school as opposed to approximately 99% who take biology. This lack of exposure to geoscience in high school makes it difficult to recruit and retain undergraduate majors, particularly those from underrepresented groups. To address this challenge, PI Nunn and co-investigator Agnew are developing tailored workshops for high school Biology and Physics teachers at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA and Centenary College in Shreveport, LA. Both workshops begin with a field trip, followed by inquiry-based lesson plans focused on topics that can be incorporated into the relevant biology or physics course. Biology teachers directly observe and collect sedimentary strata and fossils in the field, then explore lesson plans on evolution in the fossil record, geologic time, and biogeochemical cycles. Supporting lesson plans and resources, including several thousand Eocene and Miocene shark teeth, collections of common minerals, rocks, fossils, and crude oils, are provided to the teachers for classroom implementation. The workshop for Physics teachers begins with a field trip where stream valleys have created hundreds of feet of relief and a series of waterfalls, allowing participants can see exposures of sedimentary rocks and contacts between sedimentary layers. Lesson plans in Physics are being built around wave phenomena and their application to Earth processes (e.g., greenhouse effect, earthquakes, seismic reflection and refraction). Teachers also have an opportunity to use ground penetrating radar and other equipment to image subsurface features. Lesson plans and related instrumentation that can be used in inquiry-based exercises, such as building structures that are resistance to ground motion during earthquakes, are provided for subsequent classroom implementation. The goals of the proposed program are to: interweave geoscience education into the existing curriculum for high school Biology and Physics classes in order to reach a greater number of students; provide teachers of those classes with lesson plans that promote interest in geoscience, foster critical thinking by students, relate what is learned in class to the real world, and are consistent with current knowledge/research in geoscience; and provide teachers with equipment/supplies that make these lesson plans the highlights of the course. The project is being coordinated with ongoing diversity enhancement programs at LSU including the NSF-funded Geoscience Alliance to Enhance Minority Participation (GAEMP) and the Geoscience Diversity Enrichment program funded by Marathon Oil Company.
