Preparing Students from a 21st Century Demographic for the Geoscience Workforce

Preparing students for the workforce at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) represents a unique challenge as over half our undergraduate majors are the first in their family to attend college, most have rarely ventured beyond the highly urbanized border region, over 75% are Hispanic, and few know any practicing geoscientists outside the university community. One of our most successful activities for preparing students for the workforce is our annual student research colloquium that will be held for the 25th consecutive year in spring 2011. The colloquium encourages our undergraduate and graduate students, as well as students from the local community college, to present their research to professional geoscientists. They also interact with these geoscientists in a number of other social activities that extend over a 2-3 day period. Formal feedback is provided to the Department by these professionals to help us improve the skills and knowledge base of our students for the workforce. We also invite geoscientists from our local community to talk to undergraduates in a variety of formal and informal settings. Another successful program includes an NSF funded program to give undergraduate students research experience during the academic year, called Pathways, that prepares them for professional life beyond UTEP. Furthermore, we require students who complete internships at the start of their junior or senior year to make presentations to lower division students. Based on suggestions from our alumni, we have begun to implement class projects that expose students to “real world” type problems, including writing work plans and estimating budgets for proposed field work. For example, our senior seminar in environmental science requires students to write and present environmental assessments of selected “fictitious” (but plausible) projects that focus on the border region. Local professionals assist the students with organizing and writing these assessments and their final oral presentations are judged by a panel of professionals. Our multi-faceted approach of engaging a broad audience to assist with the development of our students and our targeted programs has enabled us to develop a strong pipeline of well-trained, diverse professionals to enter the geoscience workforce.