USING PARTNERSHIPS BETWEEN TWO- AND FOUR-YEAR COLLEGE FACULTY TO BRING RESEARCH INTO COMMUNITY COLLEGES: CHALLENGES, BENEFITS, AND CALL TO ACTION

If trends continue, more and more students at four-year schools will have completed their first two years at community colleges. Due to challenges that exist in doing research at two-year colleges, most of these transfer students will not have been exposed to research. As a result, these students may lack understanding of the nature of science and scientific methods. But research is also an important recruitment and retention tool. Exposure to research at the community college should attract more students to geoscience, and bring more undergraduates to programs at four-year colleges. Because community colleges tend to tap diverse populations, adding research to the community college setting might also help meet goals of diversifying the geoscience workforce. The benefits of research inclusion abound, and luckily, many of the challenges faced by community college faculty regarding research could be overcome by partnerships with four-year colleges. This presentation will address challenges to community-college faculty, elucidate benefits for both two- and four-year college faculty involved in partnerships, and encourage discussion about fostering successful partnerships and other ways to involve community colleges in active geoscience research.