GP-UP: Geosciences Students Excelling in Real, Vital Investigations with Community Engagement (GEO SERVICE)

This project is jointly funded by the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) program.

In response to educational and workforce needs, the Geosciences Students Excelling in Real, Vital Investigations with Community Engagement (GEO SERVICE) program aims to increase the number of undergraduates pursuing a geoscience major at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette by engaging students in career-relevant, community-focused, extracurricular service- learning experiences. Many key issues affect the recruiting of geoscience majors, including a lack of student exposure during high school to geoscience-career related experiences and pathways.

GEO SERVICE will develop a bridge program for high school students to engage into early service-learning experiences designed to address questions relevant to the students as well as to their communities and regions. The project activities involve accessing and analyzing diverse datasets applied to answer specific questions about natural and/or human induced changes that affect local and regional communities, such as coastal wetland loss and flooding occurring in Louisiana.

The project is designed to focus on undergraduate research experiences, leading to engagement and sustained student interest in STEM careers. The collaboration between undergraduate and graduate students, University faculty, and community mentors promotes the development of skills needed in STEM careers.

The GEO SERVICE project is an effort to address the future STEM and geosciences workforce needs. The goal of the GEO SERVICE program is to increase and retain the number of undergraduates pursuing a geoscience major. The GEO SERVICE program partners undergraduate students with faculty, graduate students, and community mentors in a program that includes learning geosciences content relevant to addressing environmental challenges, while engaged in broadly mentored, research-based, community-focused Service Learning Projects (SLPs).

Each SLP will comprise research, data gathering, and problem solving, followed by preparation of final reports and visual presentations for an Earth as Art exhibition. These activities described above will meet the following objectives: 1) Recruit and sustain pre-college and early college students into undergraduate geoscience programs. 2) Establish new projects that integrate undergraduate research experiences with community-focused service learning for collaborative cohorts of geoscience students, with mentoring by faculty, peers, and professionals. 3) Demonstrate career opportunities through applied research addressing real-world problems. 4) Provide students with experience designing projects, analyzing data, using sophisticated career-relevant geospatial technology, and preparing effective presentations. 5) Improve the understanding of geosciences information among diverse communities.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.