GEOSCIENCES UNDERGRADUATE RECRUITING EXPERIENCE DURING NEW STUDENT ORIENTATION

This presentation describes Baylor University Geoscience’s experience recruiting new majors and students for undergraduate introductory classes. The recruiting experience presented is from twelve summer orientation sessions totaling 3000 new students and their parents/guardians/friends. Geosciences undergraduate enrollment decreased nationwide over the last 5-10 years. This presentation describes our experience to recruit more geoscience students in undergraduate degree programs and introductory classes. Baylor’s New Student Orientation (NSO) occurred twelve times during the summer of 2022 with groups of 200 to 300 students per session. The NSO agenda is packed with information and activities but can be generally defined as 1) academic major sessions and 2) campus connection services. The geosciences department was one of dozens of presentations describing academics and campus connections that will occurring during the student’s first year. The foundation of Geosciences NSO outreach consist of introductory class flyers, career paths, degree program descriptions, and faculty research areas. This foundational geoscience information was presented and documented during sessions when students interacted with us. This presentation will describe in detail our learnings experiences talking to freshman students. From the student interactions, we learned best practices such as 1) getting their attention, 2) conversation starter questions, 3) three simple questions to determine if you may be a potential geoscience major, 4) recommended “Geo” introductory classes for non-majors. It is too early to determine success or failure, but the experience exposed misconceptions and unrealistic expectations that may aid future recruiting efforts.