INCREASING DIVERSITY AND ENHANCING ACADEMIA IN THE GEOSCIENCES

IDEA (Increasing Diversity and Enhancing Academia) recruits motivated and talented undergraduate URM students interested in participating in a 10 week full-time summer research program. Students work with UNC-Chapel Hill faculty on cutting-edge science, participate in graduate school preparation seminars, and share experiences with each other. IDEA provides the foundation and skills necessary to pursue a graduate degree in the geosciences. The program began in 2012 with funding to provide stipends to 6 students each summer and 4 students during the academic year.

A large part of the success of the program has been the voluntary involvement of faculty who provide meaningful research experiences and mentorship to the IDEA students. In the past 4 years, 15 faculty in 4 departments have actively participated in providing significant research experiences to 29 undergraduate students. Of these 15 faculty, 7 have been early-career faculty. Thirteen PhD students have also gained significant student mentoring experience while working with the IDEA program.

Faculty member interest has developed over time. The number of position descriptions submitted by faculty has grown from 5 in the first year to 14 in the fourth year. Faculty members have also been critical in applicant recruitment. Student feedback suggested that they were more likely to apply if a professor personally encouraged them to do so. The reason was that these students did not believe they were competitive applicants because they did not have previous research experience. However, the end of summer evaluations indicate that the students felt that they had significantly increased their competency in 15 out of 19 research skills after the IDEA undergraduate research experience.

Faculty mentors have leveraged the IDEA program in a number of ways. One of our faculty mentors has developed IDEA Plus, which secured additional funding through the Broader Impacts section of his NSF grant for IDEA students to gain science communication skills and work with school-aged children to educate them about current coral and climate change research. Creating opportunities such as these to provide models of collaboration continue to strengthen institutional partners and provide various pathways for URM students to enter the geosciences.