This collaboration between the Consortium for Ocean Leadership (COL), the American Meteorological Society (AMS), James Madison University (JMU), and Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC) is convening a four-day planning workshop to explore novel approaches to broadening participation in the geosciences (and climate science in particular), through leveraging of paleoclimate data obtained by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). The workshop will engage 25 faculty from minority-serving institutions (MSIs), education and assessment professionals, and subject matter experts. The ultimate goal of the workshop is to plan additional programs that use hands-on approaches to educate MSI faculty about ocean drilling-based paleoclimate research and guide integration of this research into curricula used at such institutions at a large scale. The project seeks to integrate effective educational strategies developed through the COL Deep Earth Academy School of Rock program, the JMU Building Core Knowledge curriculum, and MSI faculty networks developed by the AMS during implementation of their professional development course on climate science.
Through NSF Award #1201642, the project team of Consortium for Ocean Leadership (OL)/Integrated Ocean Drilling Program’s (IODP) Deep Earth Academy (DEA), James Madison University (JMU), American Meteorological Society (AMS), and Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC), partnered to integrate investigations of ocean core data of paleoclimates into course curricula of minority-serving institutions (MSIs). The grant activities promoted integration and sustainability of major NSF-supported programs – IODP/DEA School of Rock (SOR) workshops, JMU-led Building Core Knowledge (BCK) curriculum, and the AMS Climate Studies Diversity Project – to enhance geoscience study opportunities at MSIs. The project team planned and conducted a 4-day DEA/SOR workshop at the IODP Gulf Coast Repository at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX, from 4-7 June 2012, involving 12 MSI faculty team members and content and curriculum experts (Figure 1). About one-third of faculty participants taught at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and the remainder taught at Hispanic Serving Institutions and/or colleges with 25% or greater minority-student populations. All faculty members were experienced in offering AMS introductory-level college courses (AMS Climate, Ocean, and/or Weather Studies) and either currently taught a full climate course or significant climate topics. Faculty participants analyzed seafloor cores and data in collaboration with scientists who conduct IODP-related research (Figure 2), discussed how to incorporate BCK activities into their local instruction, and offered strategies for large-scale program implementation. Each day the workshop balanced experiential learning and feedback (curriculum discussion and reflection). The workshop instructors used the "Do-Talk-Do-Talk" approach, focusing on learning-by-doing and extended inquiry. Participants used ocean core data to practice forming and testing alternative hypotheses, and inferring broader implications of scientific results (Figure 3). MSI faculty provided significant feedback to the project team via workshop gallery walks, oral discussion, video interviews, and extensive post-workshop evaluation. Participants noted the following as most valuable aspects of the SOR workshop: the lab exercises, details of the subject matter, access to materials (real cores and real samples), networking, learning new techniques and topics and determining how they could be used in teaching, and the team aspect – working as a member of a scientific team. All participants surveyed were interested in participating in an expanded project, with responses ranging from serving as a mentor during (66.7%) or after (55.6%) a future SOR, and reviewing proposals and/or curriculum (55.6%). This data suggests that an expanded, long-term project has high interest and success potential, but will require deliberate and careful attention to the needs of MSI faculty, particularly those using materials at the community college level. As a faculty participant explained, "many of my students are at-risk students that must take developmental classes. I thought that the exercises might be too difficult. But after talking to some of the other School of Rock participants and staff, I feel that my expectations of my students might be too low. So I am going to give it a try." The project team recently solicited qualitative feedback from MSI faculty participants concerning which SOR workshop/BCK materials they have been able to use in their courses, and what they plan to incorporate in the future. All of the faculty who provided feedback had already or planned to incorporate data or instructional models they used at the workshop. A faculty participant stated succinctly that "I plan to use Chapter 2 in which students identify a core and plot it on the world map to teach distribution of sediments. Rather than just showing a PowerPoint slide of the types of sediments found in specific parts of the ocean, the material lends itself to an inquiry, active learning discovery based approach. I also feel it will be beneficial to have students look at core photographs to see how the methodology and the scientific process work. I found that looking at the cores and using the database is much more informative and engaging than just presenting the results. Students will actually be learning as a scientist and not as a passive observer." In summary, the intellectual merit of the project encompasses the authentic ocean-core data and published inquiry-based BCK exercises used to train MSI faculty at the SOR workshop. The flexibility and interdisciplinary nature of these materials means that trained faculty can use them in a variety of geoscience courses, including those focused on climate change and oceanography. Lasting impacts include solidification of a four-tiered partnership (IODP/DEA, JMU, AMS, and LAVC) and sustainability of major NSF-supported programs. Expansion of the planning grant initiatives will lead to enhanced scientific literacy and options for integrating research-based, data-rich geoscience curricula for MSI faculty and students, thus strengthening the pathway towards advanced geoscience study and careers.
