A SUMMER GEOSCIENCE FIELD TRIP FOR MINORITY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN LOUISIANA: SUCCESSES AND CHALLENGES

The central goal of the NSF funded project “Minority Education Through Traveling and Learning in the Sciences” (METALS) is to excite minority high school students about the geosciences through field based exploration. The project is a partnership between San Francisco State University (SFSU), University of Texas, El Paso (UTEP), Purdue University and the University of New Orleans (UNO). This summer (year two of this four-year partnership) it was UNO’s turn to host the field trip for 30 high school students from El Paso area, San Francisco Bay area, and New Orleans area, as well as 10 graduate students from Purdue University in Indiana. Year one was held in the splendor of the Utah national parks and hosted by the University of Texas, El Paso. Our challenge was to provide an equally exciting and interesting field trip in the steamy heat of the flat Mississippi delta. The resulting experience successfully blended geology, environmental science, engineering, and social science by taking themes ranging from barrier island geology to the engineering projects that control the Mississippi River to the struggles of resilient coastal communities in the face of a series of natural and human-made disasters. We will describe our strategies for meeting the challenges presented by the landscape and the climate, discuss our preliminary findings from years one and two of the METALS project and speculate on the long-term impacts of the program on its participants.