boat next to a glacier

About

About Our Project

The Community College Compass project is funded by the National Science Foundation through the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Pathways into Earth, Ocean, Polar, and Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences (IUSE: GEOPAths) program. The ultimate goal of this project is to create elements of guided pathways for the Geosciences at community colleges within the City University of New York (CUNY) system to address the underrepresentation of minorities (i.e. Hispanic/Latinx, African-Americans/Blacks, Native Americans) in the Geosciences field.

The Earth Institute has partnered with six of CUNY’s community colleges, including: the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), Bronx Community College, Guttman Community College, Hostos Community College, LaGuardia Community College, and Queensborough Community College. CUNY is the nation’s largest urban university, offering a range of undergraduate, graduate degrees and continuing education opportunities to over 500,000 students of all ages and backgrounds on 25 New York City campuses. The CUNY system boasts some of the nation’s most diverse and inclusive institutions with 9 colleges listed with the greatest diversity among managers compared with other public institutions in the United States (Hammond, 2019). Focusing efforts at these institutions to engage learners has the potential for great impact in increasing these groups’ interests in the Geosciences.

Broadening participation in the geosciences has been identified as a national priority to develop and maintain a well-prepared work-force. The primary goal of the IUSE: GEOPAths funding opportunity is to increase the number of students pursuing undergraduate and/or postgraduate degrees through the design and testing of novel approaches that engage students in authentic, career-relevant experiences in geoscience. In order to broaden participation in the geosciences, engaging students from historically excluded groups or from non-geoscience degree programs is a priority (National Science Foundation 2020). Project information for the Community College Compass project can be found under award number 1911580.

Guided pathways are a specific set of processes and structures at community colleges that help students complete a two-year degree in a timely fashion and successfully move on to a career or transfer to a four-year college (Bailey et. al., 2015). Guided pathways are a comprehensive model of education that looks to transform college experiences to focus on student success. In our Community College Compass project, we are attempting to develop and implement guided pathways specifically for the Geosciences at community colleges through a collective impact approach that will help students choose a path of study, maintain success on that path, and move on to a Geoscience career or a four-year college.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobs in the Geosciences are expected to grow faster than average, with almost half the current workforce expected to retire within the next 10 years (BLS, 2019). To meet the needs of the future, it is imperative to get students interested in the Geosciences now. The Geosciences are also among the least diverse STEM fields in the United States (Dutt, 2020). There not only a need to recognize this disparity, but to engage in conversations and activities that strengthen the multiple pathways into the Geosciences, including those from community colleges. These ideas and needs form the core foundation of the Community College Compass Project. Our consortium has an opportunity to demonstrate that well-connected networks have an important role to play in bringing diversity into our research communities and promoting inclusive excellence.   

We define the Geosciences as the scientific study of Earth and its four main interrelated spheres: the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, and the biosphere, all of which are characterized in terms of how they work today, how they operated in the past, and how we expect they may behave in the future. As defined by the American Geosciences Institute, “Geosciences” comprises a variety of sub-fields, including traditional solid earth science (e.g., geology, geophysics), environmental earth science, atmospheric science, oceanography, and geo-related disciplines (e.g., hydrology), among others (AGI).

Over the course of this project, we will:

  1. Gain faculty, department advisors, and staff buy-in and enhance collaboration in and across institutions;
     
  2. Provide or increase training to ensure faculty and staff understand what the Geosciences are;
     
  3. Design and introduce critical courses related to the Geosciences and ensure that these are identified on program maps;
     
  4. Ensure faculty and advisors collaborate to define and assess learning outcomes for Geoscience-related programs;
     
  5. Track student progress closely with frequent opportunities for feedback and ensure that they understand how far they have come and what else they need to do to complete Geoscience-related programs;
     
  6. Provide students with detailed information on employment opportunities related to majors in the Geosciences as well as credit requirements to successfully transfer into 4-year degree programs in the Geosciences;
     
  7. Build academic and career communities within majors;
     
  8. Conduct evaluations to assess the impacts of guided pathways elements that have been put into place.

American Geosciences Institute (AGI). (2017, May 16). What is geoscience? https://www.americangeosciences.org/critical-issues/faq/what-is-geoscience.

Bailey, T., Jaggars, S. S., & Jenkins, D. (2015). What we know about guided pathways. New York, NY: Columbia University, Teachers College, Community College Research Center.

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. 2019. Occupational Outlook Handbook,

Geoscientists. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/geoscientists.htm

Dutt, K. Race and racism in the geosciences. Nat. Geosci. 13, 2–3 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0519-z

Hammond, R. (2019, August 18). Colleges With the Greatest Racial and Ethnic Diversity Among Managers, Fall 2017. The Chronicle of Higher Education.

National Science Foundation. (2020). Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Pathways into the Earth, Ocean, Polar and Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences (IUSE: GEOPAths). https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=505169.