In this planning effort, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) will lay the foundations for developing the Unique Research Experiences for two-year College faculty And Students (URECAS) program, which is intended to support Earth and space science faculty at two-year colleges as they engage their undergraduate students in research activities. AGU is convening a two-day workshop with 30 attendees to increase awareness about existing opportunities for summer research experiences for undergraduates, identify best practices for engaging two-year college students in research, and consider strategies for overcoming some of the barriers to success. The ultimate goal of this effort is to establish a distributed community of two-year college instructors engaged in geoscience research and develop a strategic plan for new programs that help undergraduate students successfully transition between two-year and four-year programs in the geosciences. Many students who attend two-year colleges come from underrepresented communities in STEM disciplines; as such, this project directly supports the NSF and GEO Directorate goals of broadening participation in STEM disciplines, in general, and in the geosciences, specifically.
Nationwide, approximately 17% of all two-year colleges offer geoscience degrees, and the two-year college (2YC) population is growing rapidly. Although 33% of 2YC students are members of underrepresented minorities, this group earned only 12% of geoscience associate’s degrees in 2008. Thus, engaging with 2YC’s represents both a potential rich source of diversity for the field and an area where much work remains to be done. We conducted an National Science Foundation funded workshop at the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) Headquarters in Washington DC in July, 2012. This workshop gathered over fifty participants including 2YC Earth and space science faculty who conduct research with their students, some of their four-year college partners, members of other scientific organizations, and federal employees working to support Earth and space science education. Our workshop provided an opportunity for 2YC faculty to increase their awareness of existing and successful research programs in the Earth and space sciences, and helped to identify relevant challenges to participation for both students and faculty. Additionally, faculty from four-year Earth and space science programs who have successfully transitioned 2YC students into their programs sparked a discussion of the issues and barriers involved in that process. Outcomes from this workshop include dissemination of best practices for doing student-faculty research at 2YC and in conjunction with nearby four-year campuses or national summer research programs (see urecas.agu.org for a complete report). Our workshop built on previous efforts to coalesce a community of practice made up of 2YC faculty who conduct research in the Earth and space sciences with their students and those who are interested in partnering with or supporting them. The workshop helped to define the path forward towards the implementation of a full program led by AGU that will support 2YC students throughout their Earth and space science educational career at both the two-year and four-year institution, with a particular focus on areas where the pipeline is traditionally leaky. As a first step, AGU piloted a virtual poster session for 2YC students in the Earth and space sciences to present their research projects at the 2013 AGU Fall Meeting.
