STEM Education

Testing alternative outreach approaches for geoscience recruitment

Recent studies have found that for students entering college, altruism is a desired aspect of a future career. Problematically, few students perceived geoscience careers as altruistic when compared to biology or engineering, and even fewer expressed an undersanding of the potential career paths in geoscience. This dissonance in incoming student perceptions of geoscience may be linked to declining major enrollment. Classically, geoscientists have often cited job benefits such as high income, working outdoors, and travel as reasons to pursue a career in geoscience, but these may not be as appealing to the next generation of scientists. This research seeks to test if alternative forms of outreach and recruitment that highlight geoscientists’ roles in renewable energy, remediation and environmental fields, and studying climate change alter students’ perceptions of geoscientists.

Printable co-operative addition to Carbon Moves!

This files below are a printable .pdf version of the co-operative game addition for the Carbon Moves simulation by Ryan Hollister. For more information on the original activity please visit Ryan Hollister’s website.

Please note that the current version is still in gameplay testing and may need further modification to get an ideal win-loss ratio. Updates to the game will be posted here as they are developed. The carbon reservoirs in this version are slightly modified to represent North Dakota. You are welcome to modify these for your own region! (for more easily editable files, please use the contact page)

Want to help by utilitzing the co-operative Carbon Moves game in your classroom?

We are working on an IRB to bring the analysis of student perceptions of geoscience into classrooms rather than just outreach events. If you would like your classroom to participate and help us collect data with short before and after surveys, please get in touch!