ENGAGING COMMUNITY COLLEGE TRANSFER STUDENTS IN EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE

Faculty from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and the Physical Geography concentration in the Department of Geography at the University of Tennessee (UT) are participating in an NSF-funded GEOPATHS project, along with faculty collaborators at three local Community Colleges (CC’s): Pellissippi State, Roane State, and Volunteer State Community Colleges. The number of transfer students in geoscience programs at UT has increased substantially over the past several years and now compromise nearly half of new majors. This increase is likely, related to the near-universal availability of free community college tuition guaranteed under the recently passed ‘Tennessee Promise’ state program. This abstract describes activities underway at UT to engage CC transfer students in research projects, internships, service learning and other “experiential learning” activities. To accommodate the influx of transfer students, several new group research projects were launched. These include a water quality survey of wells, springs and streams in Knox County. A GIS-based system was established for locating springs, wells and prospective stream monitoring sites. The system also has layers showing geology, land use, satellite imagery, roads and other boundaries, and can be used in the field with a smart phone to locate sites and input sampling data. Another new project involves student-led laboratory experiments to measure feeding traces created by sea urchins feeding on cow bones, to better understand the origin of similar marks on fossil bones. Undergraduate students are also participating in new projects and ongoing research on determining climate, flood and fire records in sediments from sinkholes and backwaters. Overall, this is a good example of how faculty in two geoscience departments at UT worked together to provide increased opportunities for experiential learning for our students and of the challenges faced in developing these opportunities.