THE ROLE OF TWO-YEAR COLLEGES IN GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION: ISSUES, CHALLENGES, AND OPPORTUNITIES

Two-year colleges play an important role in producing earth-science literate citizens, teaching science to pre-service K-12 teachers, and contributing to the geoscience workforce. Given their highly diverse student population, two-year colleges provide a potentially rich conduit for broadening participation in the geosciences. However, participation of two-year college faculty and two-year colleges in the national geoscience education community has been limited. An NAGT-sponsored workshop held in 2000 brought together faculty from two-year and four-year institutions to discuss issues facing two-year college faculty and to propose strategies to increase the participation and leadership of this group. Challenges include limited resources, isolation and lack of a community to support geoscience education at two-year colleges, less than ideal communication and connections between two-year and four-year institutions, underrepresentation of two-year college faculty in many geoscience education venues, limited opportunities for targeted geoscience professional development, and lack of support for and encouragement of scholarship at two-year colleges. Recognition of the important role that two-year colleges and faculty can play in broadening participation in the geosciences and in geosciences education overall provides many opportunities for future work. In exploring these opportunities, it is useful to consider the programs for two-year college faculty in chemistry, mathematics, and physics, which range from separate organizations to committees within organizations and which include some professional development specifically targeted for two-year college faculty. An important next step is for the community to discuss issues and propose directions for future efforts to build a network of two-year college geoscience faculty and to expand the participation of two-year college faculty in geoscience education endeavors.