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GDEP -- Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Program

• Three-year program - began in Fall 2001
• Funded by the National Science Foundation's Opportunities to Enhance Diversity in Geosciences program (OEDG)
• Designed to attract students from NSF- designated underrepresented groups in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM): African-American, Latino, Native American, Pacific Islander, and disabled students
• Geosciences defined as: studies in the physical geographic, geologic, archaeologic, and environmental science disciplines.

GDEP: An Interdisciplinary Partnership to Improve Opportunities for Students

• A unique teaming among CSULB faculty in geography, geology, and anthropology
• Three departments and two colleges collaborated to provide interdisciplinary Earth system science research opportunities for community college and high school students on the CSULB campus
• Designated partners include 5 local community colleges and the Long Beach Unified School District
• Dedicated to closing the GAP between community demographics and 4-year college geoscience student demographics

Student Enrollment, F/2000 NSF-Defined Underrepresented Groups

NSF "STEM" ethnicities	CSULB	GEOG + GEOL	LBUSC
Native American	0.7	2.2	0.4
African American	6.6	2.2	19.9
Latino/Hispanic	21.1	8.6	43.8
Pacific Islander	0.5	0.7	2.1
Other Groups	6.4	86.3	33.7
Decline to Respond	8.7	0.0	0.0
TOTAL	100	100	100

GDEP: Goals

• A unique teaming among CSULB faculty in geography, geology, and anthropology
• Increase number of underrepresented students with geoscience educational and research experience
• Create seamless transition of underrepresented students from community colleges and high schools into geosciences majors at the university level
• Increase awareness of community college and high school students of the geoscience fields, their career opportunities, and educational requirements
• Enhance the quantity and quality of geoscience research and teaching materials by faculty members from the university, community colleges, and high schools
• Increase the number of geoscience majors who are retained in their disciplines

GDEP: Collaborative Research Activities

• 7 projects involving faculty in geography, geological sciences, and archaeology
• 1 assessment project involving a faculty member in psychology
• 8 weeks of laboratory and field activities during Summer 2002
• 100% time commitment by students
• 66% time commitment by faculty
• Students prepared posters describing their research for a campus research colloquium in August 2002

GDEP: Seven Projects

• Sedimentary geology of the San Joaquin Hills Monterey Formation (Orange County, CA)
• Structural geology of deformation bands in the San Joaquin Hills of Orange County, CA
• Marine geology and geophysics of the offshore Palos Verde Fault (Southern California)
• Pacific Coast of southern Mexico: Active tectonics
• Pre-excavation geoarchaeological assessment of California Channel Island Chumash sites
• Geophysics and GPS: Mapping Malibu Creek Adobe
• Chaparral fire hazard analysis using remote sensing, live fuel moisture field data collection, GPS, and GIS

GDEP: Summer Enrichment Workshops on Campus

• Library skills and resources
• Laboratory and facility tours
• Lab and field safety
• Scientific ethics
• Jobs in geography and geology
• GPS, GIS, and remote sensing
• Presentation software (PowerPoint)
• Web design (HTML and FTP)
• Poster preparation for scientific conferences

GDEP: A Baseline of Student Views of the Geosciences

• Pre-test survey was done in S/02 in Geography (n=41), Geology (n=20), and Anthropology (n=15) GE science courses, followed by post-test to establish student perceptions of geoscience before GDEP's first summer (n=76)
• Pre-test: 76% of questions diverged significantly from neutral, 48% in a positive direction
• Post-test: 76% of questions diverged significantly from neutral, with 57% now positive, but there is no significant difference between the pre-tests and the post-tests

GDEP Student Surveys: Focus on Geography

• In F/02, the surveys were re-administered. Only geography did both pre- and post-test surveys (n=20)
  • Pre-tests showed 60% of answers to be significantly different from neutral; 32% positive, 28% negative
  • Post-tests showed 50% of answers to be significantly different from neutral; 30% positive, 20% negative
  • There seems to be a convergence toward neutrality
• There is, as yet,little improvement in student perceptions of the geosciences, including geography
• GDEP hopes to alter our own p&alig;dagogy to improve these figures over the three years of the project

GDEP: Student Interns' Experiences

• Focus groups were conducted after GDEP to assess its impact on the 5 interns who completed GDEP
• Students liked individual interactions with university faculty, the field activities and workshops, and camaraderie with peers and CSULB grad students
• They reported seeing why math, physics, and computers are important from applications in GDEP
• They were impressed with geoscience-related jobs
• Students commented on positive relations among the 3 disciplines at CSULB and noted divisiveness in some of the community colleges
• All students now want masters and doctoral degrees; all but one want to major in a geoscience and the one plans a geoscience minor

GDEP: First Year Progress

• Created scholarly community and collaborative process to design and carry out project goals
• 5 students completed research projects
• 9 community college and high school faculty participated
• 15 CSULB faculty, staff, and graduate students participated
• Created and implemented evaluation plan
• Institutionalized assessment of geoscience student learning outcomes outside the GDEP projects
• Dissemination in 4 presentations in geography and geology conferences by December 2002 and by the Web -- https://home.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/geography/gdep

GDEP: Challenges for 2003

• Increase number of student and faculty applicants
  • Doing recruitment talks on CC and HS campuses
  • Approaching all CC geoscience faculty, because the one-contact model fell afoul of interdisciplinary politics on the CC campuses
• Clarify summer research expectations before GDEP starts
  • 3 GDEP dropouts were overwhelmed by field work
  • 1 of them did not realize that GDEP is a full-time job
  • We are instituting a field boot camp before student selection
• Expand scope of evaluation
  • We are instituting pre-test/post-test surveys in all GDEP faculty lower division courses to monitor changes in our instructional effectiveness after GDEP experience (CSULB, CC, and HS)
  • We are going to start focus groups in those classes to get qualitative data on benefits to non-participating students due to GDEP

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