HR: 17:00h
AN: ED34A-05    [Abstracts]
TI: Report on the Special JGE issue on Strengthening Diversity in the Geosciences.
AU: * Alexander, C J
EM: claudia.j.alexander@jpl.nasa.gov
AF: Jet Propulsion laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, CA 91109, United States
AU: Riggs, E
EM: emriggs@purdue.edu
AF: Purdue University, 250 North University Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2066, United States
AB: The fall meeting 2004 saw an unprecedented number of papers directed at the subject of enhancing racial diversity in the geosciences. That followed on the heels of an unprecedented number of papers at the AMS meeting that same year. NSF, AGU, and NAGT recognized that, after decades of dedicated effort in the field with only modest results, the time was ripe for a compendium of those best and not so successful practices to be published, targeted to the community of scientists concerned, as well as program managers, and heads/chairs of geoscience departments throughout the county. Thus an unlikely collaboration was spawned, and a special issue of the Journal of Geoscience Education (JGE) was initiated, jointly published by the AGU and the NAGT, sponsored by NSF. The issue is called Enhancing Diversity in Geoscience Education, and will be published late in 2007. Major findings of this Volume include the following: *The Earth and space sciences have the lowest participation rate of underrepresented minorities compared with all other physical sciences [e.g., NSF Publication 04-317, 2004]. Only 1-2% of the undergraduate student population enrolled in geoscience degree programs is African-American or Hispanic and only 1% of the PhDs produced in these disciplines in recent years have gone to minorities [R. Czujko (AIP), 2005];  *There are huge regional dichotomies in minority population, and geoscience specialization. An educational and recruitment approach that focuses on those aspects of the geosciences most relevant to audiences in their area and most appropriate to the expertise of the scientists involved, can have high efficacy; *The most successful programs take pains to account for culturally-specific learning styles, cultural issues with pedagogy, and community preferences and priorities; *Top-down efforts to increase diversity on the part of science / funding agencies and Universities, while a necessary component to any successful program, are not sufficient to ensure success. The strongest programs enjoy a local synergy of grassroots, personal commitment from individual scientists, and the vision and high-level support of the institutions and agencies in which they work. Robust mentoring can be an important component of such a program. The issue, edited by Alexander and Riggs, will have a run of 5000, and will be gratis to all geoscience department heads/chairs, NASA, NOAA, and NSF program managers.
DE: 0825 Teaching methods
DE: 0850 Geoscience education research
DE: 0855 Diversity
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting