AN ENVIRONMENTAL FIELD AND CAREER PREPARATION PROGRAM FOR STUDENTS AT 2-YEAR AND 4-YEAR INSTITUTIONS: A REPORT ON STUDENT ATTITUDINAL CHANGES, SKILL ACQUISITION, AND LESSONS LEARNED FROM A MULTI-INSTITUTIONAL COLLABORATION

Lack of awareness of career options in the geosciences is a widespread barrier to recruitment, enrollment, and retention of majors and program completers, especially those from groups historically underrepresented in STEM (Levine et al., 2007; O'Connell and Holmes, 2011.) at the same time, an increasing demand for a workforce of environmental professionals with content knowledge and skills in a variety of environmental disciplines has manifested itself in declining enrollments in traditional geology field camps. One possibility for combating these issues is the development of field programs that include content beyond "pure geology" and target a diverse student population with respect to institution type and academic background. The ESTEM (environmental science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) program, an NSF-GEOPATHS collaboration between College of the Atlantic (COA), University of San Francisco (USF), and Mt. San Antonio College (Mt. SAC) is a field and career preparation program for students at 2-year (Mt. SAC) and 4-year (COA, USF) institutions interested in careers in the environmental sector. Since 2017, 39 students participated in environmental fieldwork in the Sierra Nevada, CA, and completed geology, geomorphology, hydrology, and botany projects. They also interacted with a variety of local environmental professionals ("stakeholders"), including personnel from the National Park Service, USGS, Southern Sierra Critical Zone Observatory, and Mammoth Community Water District. To aid students in documenting their environmental field skills to future prospective employers, a badge system was piloted in 2018 whereby students had the opportunity to earn badges in field notes, mapping, hydrology methods, and botany methods. Students also had the opportunity to participate in career-related discussions and exercises after the field program. We will report on changes in student content knowledge, skills, career awareness, and career interest and discuss assignment and program-level strategies utilized to promote success for a diverse population of ESTEM student participants. We will also discuss the development and preliminary results of the badge system and challenges related to assignment and badge assessment.