Collaborations among geoscience-oriented departments at California State University, Long Beach (Geological Sciences, as well as portions of the Geography and Anthropology departments and a new, fast-growing Environmental Sciences and Policy (ES&P) program) are characterized by attention to three important elements: (1) community-based partnerships and research, (2) outreach and continuity within educational pipeline transitions from high school, to community college, to university, and, (3) sharing of resources and expertise. Three specific collaborations, (1) creation of the ES&P, (2) the NSF-funded Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Program (GDEP), and, (3) the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Materials, Environment, and Societies (IIRMES), are powerful illustrations of how these collaborations can work to foster geoscience student recruitment and academic development, particularly at urban, highly diverse institutions with limited resources. Through a combination of student surveys, focus groups, and institutional research supported by the GDEP program, we know (e.g., Whitney et al., 2005) that non-Caucasian students often express less affinity for the geosciences as a focus of study than Caucasians. Early exposure to positive field and laboratory experiences, better understanding of geoscience career possibilities, and better advising at high school and college levels are all excellent strategies for heightening student interest and recruitment in the geosciences, yet appear to be lacking for many of the students in the greater Long Beach, California area. GDEP, ES&P, and IIRMES all challenge these lacunae by emphasizing hands-on learning, research on relevant community-based problems, and one-on-one or small group research, advising and mentoring. Our current challenge is to help our high-school and community-college colleagues adopt their own model of these active-learning strategies, thereby priming the pump and patching the pipe(line) for student success in the geosciences. Whitney, D., et al., Ethnic Differences in Geoscience Attitudes of College Students, EOS, v. 86, #30, 26 July 2005 Acknowledgement: We acknowledge the support of NSF GEO 01-19891. URL: https://cla.csulb.edu/departments/geography/gdep/

Manduca, et al., ED12A-01: workshop participants created a document describing characteristics of thriving geoscience departments.

Keane, ED12A-02: Two aspects of successful programs of particular note are those that retained strong, core basic geology academic programs, and those that continue to actively produce master's students.

Furbish, ED12A-03: The health and stature of an academic department are strongly influenced by how its vision and mission mesh with those of the college/school and university.

Geissman and McFadden, ED12A-04: Any strong geoscience department that functions within a university environment where resources are exceedingly limited, rewards are few and far between, and administrator turnover rate is exceedingly high (etc.), has probably figured out how to survive and has adhered to certain survival tactics for many years. One critical aspect of success is open and frank discourse.(and another ) is the fair treatment of faculty in any form of productivity evaluation.

Clark, ED12A-05: MU-DES will continue to offer programs leading to degrees in geology, meteorology, and ocean science, but in addition, the B.S. in Integrated Earth Systems will serve those students who find excitement at the boundaries of these disciplines, and prepare them for careers in this emerging field.

Clement, et al., ED12A-06: The first strategy was to create tenure-track positions with a 50% assignment in the Earth Sciences Department and 50% in a research center on campus. The second strategy is to develop strong courses for non-majors that satisfy FIU's University Common Curriculum requirements.

Rhodes, ED12A-07: (T)he faculty adopted a goal of having the combined number of geology and geography majors in the department equal 1% of the university's undergraduate enrollment, which then stood at 12,400. The most important move toward the goal occurred when the Department began actively recruiting majors from all introductory geology and geography courses.

Ambos, et al., ED12A-08: (ES&P, GDEP, and IIRMES) are powerful illustrations of how these collaborations can work to foster geoscience student recruitment and academic development, particularly at urban, highly diverse institutions with limited resources.

[ PPT 1 ] The previous presentations have enumerated the problems facing the various geosciences and shared creative responses to them. This presentation will review how California State University, Long Beach, a comprehensive, master's-granting, minority-serving, urban university, has responded to these challenges.

[ PPT 2 ] Geosciences at CSULB are housed in three coöperating departments: Geological Sciences, Geography, and Anthropology. These three departments have engaged in at least three major interdisciplinary collaborations: the creation of the Environmental Science and Policy Program (or ES&P), the Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Program (or GDEP), and the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research in Materials, Environment, and Societies (or IIRMES).

[ PPT 3 ] The Institute for Interdisciplinary Research in Materials, Environment, and Societies, or IIRMES, is a relatively new research center at CSULB, which grew out of the joint work among faculty in a number of disciplines who needed similar equipment and began writing grants to acquire them. A multidisciplinary community emerged, which collaborates on grant-funded research and contract work. IIRMES currently includes six labs, a wet lab, an ICP-MS lab, an organic lab, an SEM and TLC lab, a stable isotope lab, and most recently a thermoluminescence lab. IIRMES presently includes faculty from Geology, Anthropology, Biology, and Physics and Astronomy, and a new faculty member in Geography. This research-oriented collaboration is only one example of cross-disciplinary work at CSULB.

The Environmental Science and Policy major resulted from discussions among the three geoscience departments and the departments of Biological Sciences, Economics, and Chemistry about creating a program at the boundaries of these disciplines. The graduates of environmental science programs elsewhere felt that they had not been prepared to deal with political-economic and cultural dimensions of environmental questions. The graduates of environmental studies programs regretted that they had not acquired enough science background and felt that they were less competitive in seeking environment-related jobs.

The resulting Environmental Science and Policy degree requires a common core in both natural and social sciences. Students then select a bachelor of arts track, emphasizing social science and policy, or a bachelor of science track, emphasizing bioscience and geoscience. Students are also strongly encouraged to seek out double majors with the six coöperating departments or with others having relevant concerns, such as Journalism, Political Science, or International Studies.

The program is to remain an interdisciplinary program organizing the course offerings of the six participating departments into a coherent whole, neatly balancing the interdisciplinary nature of the emerging fields of environmental science and policy, while encouraging deeper ties among the existing traditional departments.

[ PPT 5 ] ES&P launched in Fall 2003 with 12 majors, grew to 28 by F/04, and this semester has 54 majors, about evenly split between the B.A. and the B.S. Nationally, there is some concern that growth in environmental science and environmental studies might siphon earth and environment oriented students away, especially from geology and geography. This is certainly not the case at CSULB, where the growth in ES&P does not cooncide with drops in any of the three geoscience-related majors. Comparing F/03 data with F/05 data, Geological Sciences has held steady ; Geography has increased markedly; while Anthropology has increased slightly. This coöperative curricular endeavor has, therefore, grown the overall number of students pursuing majors related to the earth and environment, without hurting any one traditional department's major declarations and increasing enrollments in the traditional departments' courses.

[ PPT 6 ] The Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Project is an NSF-funded project, which created an unusual collaboration among the 3 CSULB departments, 5 local community colleges, and 5 local high schools in the Long Beach Unified School District. CSULB is a Federally-designated Minority Serving Institution, but that would have been hard to detect among their largely white majors in 2000 before GDEP.

The purpose of GDEP was to increase the diversity of the three geoscience- related majors by building a seamless pipeline for underrepresented students from local high schools and community colleges into CSULB's geoscience departments.

Faculty at CSULB created summer research projects that included both field and lab components, recruited community college and high school faculty into them, and had them nominate promising students of NSF-defined STEM-underrepresented groups from their classes. Roughly ten of these would be chosen each summer from Summer 2002 through Summer 2004 to work as research assistants with the CSULB, community college, and high school faculty and CSULB graduate students.

[ PPT 7 ] Throughout each eight week GDEP summer, the student research assistants worked on projects that entailed either a two week out of town field camp or a weekly series of field days at sites within about two hours' distance from CSULB. On campus, they worked on lab data acquisition or field data processing.

All GDEP interns were brought together repeatedly during the summer to attend workshops on such topics as jobs in geoscience, ethics in science, use of equipment, and use of PowerPoint to give talks or create posters. At the end of the summer, the students had to put together a talk and then a poster for a culminating symposium on all the GDEP projects, to which were invited campus administrators and local news media. The students were also funded to give papers at professional conferences, and several have, in fact, done so.

[ PPT 8 ] David Whitney, a psychologist, served as the project evaluator, assessing the impacts of GDEP on students and faculty. He reports that GDEP has been a life-changing experience for the student research assistants and all the faculty involved. Of the 29 student interns, fully 27 enrolled in institutions of higher learning, and all of these selected STEM majors. The majority chose majors in geology, geography, archaeology, or environmental science and policy. Moreover, all of thse have expressed interest in completing their bachelor's degrees and moving on to graduate school. They report feeling a greater sense of confidence, personal self-worth, and a sense that being a geoscientist would be both interesting and well-paid.

The community college and high school faculty have reported satisfaction at being able to engage in actual scientific research. They have added more hands-on science activities to their courses and speak with their students about geoscience careers. They feel that they are now more effective recruiters for the geosciences. The CSULB faculty have reported getting a much better sense for the obstacles facing underrepresented students, particularly those who grew up in poorer, central city environments without any chance to go off camping or otherwise be exposed to the physical landscape enough to become interested in the earth sciences. They feel that they better connect with such students in their lower division general education courses and are making an effort to communicate career opportunities in their classes, since good jobs are a compelling concern for these students and their parents. Very commonly, CSULB faculty have reported a better understanding of the kinds of work being done in the related disciplines and enjoying the larger geoscience community made up of the CSULB GDEP faculty and the participating faculty in the surrounding community colleges and high schools.

[ PPT 9 ] The hope for GDEP is that it would increase the diversity of the students majoring in the geosciences. Results have been positive but a little mixed. Before GDEP began, Geography's 65 majors in Fall 2001 were fully 60% non- Hispanic white; this semester, after the conclusion of GDEP, Geography's 112 majors are only 46% non-Hispanic white. Anthropology had similar, though more muted results. In Fall 2001, the116 Anthropology majors were 40% non-Hispanic white, while, this semester, the 120 majors are slightly less, 38%, non- Hispanic white. Geology proved a little contrarian: Its 39 majors in Fall 2001 were only 44% non-Hispanic white, while the 42 majors this semester are fully 57% non-Hispanic white. I think this is less a trend than a small sample effect, however.

[ PPT 10 ] Interestingly, by indexing the fall enrollments of Geography, Geology, Anthropology, and Environmental Science and Policy as a percentage of each program's largest enrollments during the 1997-2005 period and then regressing the index on the percentage of non-Hispanic white majors, it appears that increasing the ethnic diversity of a program is associated with a growth in those majors. We think this is an important point to consider: The earth and environment related disciplines have overwhelmingly drawn white students, disproportionately male, possibly a legacy of the outdoorsy middle class family experiences of camping in Yosemite or the Grand Canyon, where an interest in the landscape is ignited. In California, this is a declining demographic, however, and any department in a diverse region that does not increase its appeal to other kinds of students is going to decline along with that traditional demographic. The GDEP approach is one possible response.

[ PPT 11 ] It is possible to grow enrollments in the geosciences if departments reach out to others sharing common interests in the earth and environments on the same campus and on other institutions nearby. Departments can band together to create interdepartmental research facilities like IIRMES and faculty-student research partnerships like GDEP, which exemplify integrated earth system science and service to the communities surrounding their campuses. They can come together to create rigorous interdisciplinary curricula, like ES&P, which expose students to the various geosciences and environmental fields.

Our appeal cannot be confined to a declining demographic. One of the most important aspects of success in recruiting, not just underrepresented minority students but students from working class and poor backgrounds, is the creation of mentorship pipelines leading from high schools through the community colleges that are so critical to poorer and minority students to the four year bachelor's programs and graduate school. These pipelines are formed from the personal and professional communities built by collaborative research and curricular partnerships, such as GDEP. And good, old-fashioned, highly energetic recruitment and publicity efforts can't be overlooked, either! [ PPT 12 ]

Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Project: https://cla.csulb.edu/departments/geography/gdep/

Institute for Integrated Research in Materials, Environment, and Society: http://www.csulb.edu/programs/iirmes

Environmental Science and Policy Program: http://www.csulb.edu/programs/es-p

Department of Geography: https://cla.csulb.edu/departments/geography/

Department of Geological Sciences: http://seis.natsci.csulb.edu/

Department of Anthropology Program in Archæological Science: http://www.csulb.edu/programs/archy/