GEOSCIENCE AMBASSADORS: AN EXTRACURRICULAR COLLEGE-LEVEL PROGRAM TO CULTIVATE TRANSFORMATIONAL GEOSCIENTIFIC IDENTITIES THROUGH STUDENT-CRAFTED STORIES

Recent outreach initiatives in the geosciences have focused on increasing demographic diversity and engaging students from underrepresented communities, especially in academic programs. Here we present a strategy to increase inclusivity in such a program based on the concept of ambassadorship. Geoscience Ambassadors, an extracurricular program for undergraduate and graduate students that has run for five years at The University of Texas at Austin, developed a model that links student identity learning with discipline-focused change to learn about, communicate, and challenge ideas about what it means to be a geoscientist. Participants used an autobiographical narrative approach to illustrate their unique pathways as aspiring geoscientists by crafting influential personal stories and inspirational videos tailored for different audiences, and designed a changemaking activity for a community of their choice. A total of 31 Ambassadors completed the program, ultimately producing 31 short video stories, as well as accompanying website profiles and outreach activities. In this presentation, we describe the program’s three main complementary curriculum components—(1) Meetups for Active Community Building; (2) Storytelling; and (3) Designing for Change—and programmatic implementation. We highlight the value of the program to participants who learned to think, write and talk in ways that helped them make progress in developing what we have called transformational geoscientific identities. Through its five years of existence, the program shifted from a semester-long format focused on community outreach to a shorter workshop implementation with more in-class work, which increased student engagement with crafting their personal stories in varied formats. We found that this structure specifically positioned, prepared and empowered students as communicators and mediators between geoscientific disciplines and communities that have historically been marginalized and excluded from them. The Geoscience Ambassadors program challenges us to think more creatively about how students experience new pathways into and within the geosciences, and how they can communicate such pathways to new disciplinary spaces for themselves and others. We propose design principles for refining and adapting this approach to changemaking in other contexts.