THE GEOSCIENCE AMBASSADORS PROGRAM: LEARNING FROM STUDENTS' STORIES FOR REAL LIFE RELEVANCE AND CHANGE IN THE FIELD

Changing historically exclusive and oppressive norms in the geosciences will inevitably involve establishing processes and routines for recognizing and responding to the real life experiences, histories, perspectives and goals of individuals at the margins of the discipline. The Geoscience Ambassadors, now entering its fifth year of programming at the University of Texas at Austin, represents one evolving approach to empowering diverse undergraduate and graduate student-geoscientists to orient and drive change in the geosciences. Drawing upon critical and narrative perspectives on learning and identity, the program deploys storytelling as a powerful, values-sensitive mode of sensemaking about the world and disciplinary practice. Students are recruited into counterspaces–carefully designed community spaces–that foster personal reflection and critique through storytelling, allowing them to develop holistic, authentic, value-laden accounts of who they are, where they are coming from, and where they are going as geoscientists. Storytelling involves journaling, drawing, “pathway mapping” and the production of audio and video recordings for broader audiences. Through feedback from peers, students develop intersectional understandings of their own identities and gain insight into what their stories say about the geosciences, how the field can and should be changed for the better, and how their experiences and identities uniquely position them as trustworthy communicators to specific identity groups. Building on their “transformational geoscientific identities,” the program then supports the students in co-designing novel changemaking interventions. Unlike many traditional (and important) large-scale outreach programs managed by academic and professional institutions, the Geoscience Ambassadors program specifically prioritizes student perspectives and agency in articulating and acting upon goals and programs of change. The program team will present the current program model and summarize evaluation findings to date, with the goal of stimulating a productive exploration of the ways that we can more intentionally and systematically create opportunities for students to re-envision and redesign the field for greater relevance “in real life” (IRL)