UNDERGRADUATE GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION FOR A SUCCESSFUL, SUSTAINABLE, AND JUST FUTURE

Important goals of geoscience education are to prepare an educated public and a workforce that can apply geoscience knowledge to the challenges of living successfully, sustainably, and justly on the Earth. Geoscience education can enable recognition of when geoscience knowledge is useful; develop knowledge, skills and self-efficacy to support personal action; and develop communication and organizational skills that support the use of geoscience by communities and groups. Education for majors can create a workforce prepared to use Earth and environmental knowledge, skills and habits of mind to pursue sustainable, just solutions to problems. Because geoscience knowledge is powerful, such an education must be accessible to all parts of the population to create a sustainable, just future.

In addition to making use of effective teaching methods known to increase access to learning, education for a sustainable, just future makes explicit the relationships between the Earth and the humans that inhabit it. Many programs and resources including the InTeGrate teaching materials (serc.carleton.edu/integrate) have modeled how this can be done. To move further toward use of knowledge for individual and collective action, students need opportunities to practice using their knowledge to address societal issues. From labs to research experiences, geoscience programs provide a multitude of opportunities to practice using research skills. We need a similar range of opportunities to practice applying geoscience to societal issues. Just solutions are integral to sustainability, therefore an explicit treatment of ethics and justice is essential for all students. Bringing discussions of ethics and justice into the heart of the curriculum provides the opportunity to develop ethical literacy, to incorporate perspective beyond ones lived experience, and to engage in respectful discussion, interrogation, and evaluation of ideas. Fully integrating 1) learning about the relationship between the Earth and humans; 2) opportunities to practice using geoscience knowledge to address societal issues; and 3) discussions of ethics and justice can create a radically transformed context for learning geoscience that is more accessible to a broader student population and better preparation for our individual and collective future.