The low rates in the participation of underrepresented minority students in science have been well-documented. Underrepresented minorities earned only 17% of all science and engineering bachelor's degrees in 2006; minority enrollment in graduate programs have stayed low at 5.8% in earth, atmospheric and ocean sciences and 9.5% in the biological sciences. For a broad spectrum of society to be engaged, the increased participation of underrepresented minority students (African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians/Alaska Natives as a group) and college faculty particularly from HBCUs and MSIs is essential.
This session provides an overview of a historic partnership between ESA, NEON Inc, and the Science and Engineering Alliance to gather feedback from the educational community and ideas to pilot education and outreach strategies to inform NEON in preparing the field for the study of continental scale ecological change. Activities include a College Speaking Tour, a series of educational webinars and a workshop for college students. It will also discuss findings from the 2008/2009 faculty development workshops on educational approaches in working with continental scale data.
Results/Conclusions
Engaging diverse underrepresented audiences require strategies that include a stakeholder involvement process and the capacity to connect ecological concepts with issues that are relevant. One pilot workshop for college students studied regional ecological data, layered with social economic data in the context of environmental justice and conservation. Preparing faculty to teach from a continental-scale perspective holds several challenges in curriculum building, including: (1) environmental challenges faced locally may be caused by national or global processes. Variables correlated at one scale may not be correlated at another (2) an appreciation of cultural factors and human behavior is necessary to understand how land is being used and how landscape processes are affected. (3) a basic understanding of physical earth systems such as wind, ocean circulation, general vegetation patterns, knowledge of ecosystems and where they are located will be necessary. Knowledge of the N Cycle and definitions of deposition will also be needed.
NEON education requires approaches that are interdisciplinary, multi-disciplinary and intradisciplinary. Change will be needed in our institutions to take on supporting interdisciplinary coursework, and teaching quantitative literacy skills. Datasets for undergraduate education purposes should be accompanied with easy to understand explanations for the data collection process and which can be downloaded for simple analyses by students and other unsophisticated users.