NAGT: SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OF TEACHERS HELPING TEACHERS AND STUDENTS

The National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT) traces its origins to a May, 1938 gathering at Augustana College when a handful of individuals, from one-person departments at Midwestern, liberal arts colleges, met to provide mutual support, share experiences and pedagogical resources. As the membership of the organization diversified to include university, K-12 and 2YC teachers the organization’s name changed accordingly, but members have always stayed true to the mission of bringing teachers together “to foster improvement in the teaching of the Earth sciences at all levels of formal and informal instruction.”

From its earliest beginnings NAGT section meetings have facilitated networking and sharing of pedagogies through field trips, talks and workshops. During the past 15 years, NAGT’s Distinguished Speakers and Traveling Workshop programs have brought national figures to campuses and regional groups across the United States. To facilitate communication between 2YC instructors, the Geo2YC division was established in 2011. Since 1951, the Journal of Geoscience Education has provided Earth science teachers a venue to share curricular ideas and pedagogical research. In 2011, NAGT began publishing In the Trenches to provide additional resources for teachers and complement JGEcontent.

Since 1965, college students have benefited from summer USGS internships offered through the NAGT-USGS Cooperative Summer Field Training Program. In 1974 NAGT established a field camp scholarship program to help deserving students partially offset the cost of attending field camp. Since 1986 countless undergraduate students have been introduced to the Earth sciences by the AGI-NAGT Laboratory Manual for Physical Geology. More recently, the AGI-NAGT textbook Living with Earthhas been used to introduce college students to environmental science.

NAGT members have been enthusiastic participants in numerous national initiatives including the American Geological Institute’s Earth Science Curriculum Project (1970s), the American Academy of Science’s National Science Education Standards (1980s), the Digital Library for Earth Science Education (1990s), the NSF-funded On The Cutting Edge workshop series (2000s), and the National Research Council’s Next Generation Science Standards (in progress).