CHANGE AGENTS FACILITATE IMPACTFUL TRANSFORMATIONS TO GEOSCIENCE CLASSROOMS

Geoscience faculty members from Wake Technical Community College (Wake Tech), the largest two-year college (2YC) in North Carolina, have been participating in the Supporting and Advancing Geoscience Education in Two-Year Colleges (SAGE 2YC) project since 2012. Two of the Wake Tech geoscience faculty formed a North Carolina Change Agent Team under the most recent SAGE 2YC: Faculty as Change Agents project. The Change Agents attended national workshops and then shared the practices learned with Wake Tech geoscience faculty and other educators in North Carolina by leading regional workshops. Their participation in the SAGE 2YC project has provided many tools to help support student success in our introductory geoscience courses.

Using tools and resources shared in the national and regional SAGE 2YC workshops, all of the geoscience faculty at Wake Tech have worked together to improve student success in the classroom. A common list of detailed student learning objectives was developed for the Introductory Geology course as a first step in backwards design. Faculty have chosen different approaches to using the learning objectives, including using them as study guides, note taking templates, and as a way to provide students a better understanding of the expectations for each lesson. Faculty have also utilized data collected from common questions and assignments over the last ten plus years to design interventions to improve student success on specific course topics. Currently, a database of successful classroom activities and interventions is being compiled with plans to share with other North Carolina 2YC geoscience faculty.

In addition, Wake Tech faculty have implemented changes in order to broaden participation and facilitate professional pathways in geoscience. In order to support student interest in geoscience careers, particularly for students from groups that are underrepresented in geoscience, the Wake Tech geoscience faculty are working with local partners to provide paid summer research experiences and mentoring to students. Furthermore, some of these mentored geoscience students created and continue to lead an on-campus geoscience club, which was the first 2YC student chapter of the Association of Environmental and Engineering Geologists (AEG).