EASING TRANSITIONS (IN AND OUT) FOR GEOSCIENCE UNDERGRADUATES

Our GEOPATHS project (Freshman Year to Geoscience Career) addresses two transitions that have been major obstacles to student success at the beginning and end of their undergraduate careers.

2-YR TO 4-YR INSTITUTION: Our strategy is that QCC and LAG students become familiar with QC curricula, faculty, students, and facilities as soon as they declare a geoscience major. Thus, QC faculty participate in LAG and QCC advising and recruiting events and a 3-campus community of geoscience students participate in social events, field trips, and a tour of QC laboratory facilities. Unexpectedly, RESEARCH is proving to be an increasingly valuable area of community building. NYC has provided significant funds for CC research and several LAG and QCC faculty are working in the same areas as QC faculty. CC students can start research projects using QC labs and in collaboration with future QC mentors and continue without skipping a beat when they transfer to QC, vastly smoothing the transition through research.

Our first 3-campus research symposium in mid-September combined both the community-building and research components of this strategy and has already strengthened ties among faculty from our campuses.

TRANSITION FROM BA to GRADUATE SCHOOL OR EMPLOYMENT: Many of our students are the first in their families to go to college and their primary goal is to graduate; they put off planning their next step until too late for it to be a simple transition, do “something else for a year” and wind up dropping out of the pipeline. With the QC Career Guidance Office, we have designed a carefully scaffolded series of workshops for freshman through senior year that stimulate early planning and build search, application, resume writing, and interviewing skills. We use AGI and UNAVCO videos to inform students of career opportunities but are adopting a more personal approach through alumni panel discussions and a video library of interviews with alumni from a broad range of geoscience careers.