Leveraging a Geosciences Learning Community to Increase Degree Completion Rates and Build Alaska's Exploration Workforce

This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). UAF is a public land- sea- and space-grant university serving Alaska, a state with the highest percentage of Native American residents, approximately 240 remote rural communities, and an economy driven by natural resource exploration and development.

Over its six-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to 40 unique full-time students who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in geoscience. In most cases, first-year students will receive up to four years of scholarship support and returning students will receive up to three years of support. The project aims to increase degree persistence and graduation rates by embedding scholarship recipients in the Geo Learning Community (GeoLC).

Launched in the fall of 2020 by the UAF Department of Geosciences, the GeoLC promotes the success of underrepresented students through cohort building, supplemental instruction, near-peer mentoring, and social activities. To increase retention of first- and second-year students, the project will also support their participation in an introductory field course designed to build students’ skills and confidence through hands-on projects early in the degree program.

A high proportion of prospective UAF students from rural Alaskan communities are low-income, and a majority are Alaska Native. Annual recruiting of scholarship recipients from rural Alaskan high schools is therefore expected to significantly increase the number of low-income and underrepresented Freshmen entering UAF, pursuing geoscience majors, and entering the exploration workforce.

The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. To this end, the project will: 1) provide financial support for current GeoLC participants with unmet need; 2) increase financial, academic, and social support available to low-income undergraduate students majoring in geoscience; and 3) increase retention rates by supporting low-income students’ participation in an introductory, field-based geoscience course.

Alaska Native students with a degree in geoscience will bring valuable perspectives to decisions regarding management of cultural and natural resources and help build resilient Arctic communities. Project outcomes will add to the knowledge base of research on how to recruit, engage, and prepare a diverse, talented student population who can navigate the landscape of Western science while maintaining traditional values.

Results will be disseminated through presentations at local, state, and national meetings. This project is funded by NSF’s Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, which seeks to increase the number of low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need who earn degrees in STEM fields. It also aims to improve the education of future STEM workers, and to generate knowledge about academic success, retention, transfer, graduation, and academic/career pathways of low-income students.

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.