VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES AND MENTORING: A DLESE AND SOARS COLLABORATION

We will describe strategies for building virtual communities to support geoscience students from underrepresented groups. These strategies are being developed by collaboration between the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) and the Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science (SOARS) program.

SOARS increases the number of African-American/Black, Native American/Indian, and Hispanic/Latino/Chicano students enrolled in graduate school in the geosciences and thereafter entering the professional workforce with advanced degrees. SOARS is built around summer research experiences in Boulder-area geoscience laboratories. Two key contributors to SOARS success are its intensive, multifaceted mentoring program and the strong, cohesive community that develops among the SOARS students (or protégés). Both of these elements, however, are most active during the protégés' summer research experiences in Boulder.

DLESE includes a vigorous community of developers, and a growing community of users. Because of the distributed nature of library development, DLESE has developed a number of services to support these communities electronically.

The collaboration between DLESE and SOARS centers on building and adapting DLESE tools and services to extend SOARS mentoring beyond the summer research experience and to support the community of SOARS protégés throughout the year. We will describe strategies, tools, and services that allow protégés and mentors to deepen the face-to-face interactions and to sustain the personal community electronically.