ENGAGING NATIVE AMERICAN STUDENTS IN RELEVANT GEOSCIENCE PROJECTS

The Pre-Engineering Education Cooperative (PEEC) program is a National Science Foundation-funded initiative to engage Native American and Native Hawaiian students in engineering disciplines. South Dakota State University and the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology have established a cooperative program with Oglala Lakota College, the university serving the Pine Ridge Reservation, in an attempt to bring more tribal students into STEM fields. The disciplines and interests of the students tend to be wide-ranging, but both the Geology and Geological Engineering and the Civil and Environmental Engineering departments at SD Mines are actively engaged in a number of geoscience research projects that are directly relevant to tribal students, including an investigation of the potential for heating a greenhouse using geothermal energy resources on the reservation. The geothermal component of the greenhouse design gives students some experience with the practical uses of geoscience on the reservation, and encourages them to incorporate local geological factors into the design. A second project is investigating sand and gravel resources on the reservation for use in construction. Aggregate brought in from off the reservation is prohibitively expensive, and students can immediately see the benefit of assessing local deposits as potential supplies. Additional projects related to reservation hydrogeology, land use, drought planning, and water resource availability all have an environmental or geoscience component recognized by the students. Geoscience studies have also been carried out by SD Mines in cooperation with Sinte Gleska University, the tribal college on the Rosebud Reservation. This research focused on assessing shallow natural gas resources in the Niobrara Formation, which is highly productive in eastern Colorado. At Rosebud Reservation, it occurs at depths of only about 1,500 to 2,000 feet (460 to 610 meters), and contains moderate quantities of biogenic gas that could be used locally. Current research includes designing a production well along with a transmission and distribution system. An excellent strategy for "filling the geoscience pipeline" is to help the students make the connection between Earth science research and the practical applications of such knowledge in their communities.