Website Resources and Support for Two-Year College Geoscience Educators

Geoscience faculty at two-year colleges (2YC) face a number of challenges, from the wide diversity of the student population to being isolated from other geoscience faculty. Several projects have developed web resources that address some of these issues by providing professional development, teaching materials, and opportunities to connect with their colleagues at other institutions. The Role of Two-Year Colleges in Geoscience Education and in Broadening Participation in the Geosciences project brought together 2YC faculty from across the country for a planning workshop to discuss these issues and propose strategies and mechanisms to strengthen the 2YC geoscience education community (http://serc.carleton.edu/geo2yc/index.html). The website now hosts more than 30 essays on the state of 2YC education, teaching activities, and course descriptions submitted by 2YC faculty as well as an email discussion list and other ways of networking and discussing important. One outcome of this work is that the National Association of Geoscience Teachers has created a division for 2YC faculty so that members can network with each other and discuss solutions to pressing issues. (http://nagt.org/nagt/divisions/2yc/index.html) The On the Cutting Edge program has an array of professional development resources available (http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/). Over its decade of work, the program has developed resources on topics of interest to 2YC faculty including: teaching introductory courses, the affective domain, teaching with data, metacognition, online courses, teaching about hazards, and many others. There are also extensive collections of teaching activities and visualizations. In addition, the program continues to hold face-to-face and virtual professional development workshops and webinars that are accessible to 2YC faculty and can help them feel less isolated The Starting Point: Teaching Introductory Geoscience (http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo) website is specifically aimed at all those teaching introductory classes, including two-year college faculty. This website includes information about a variety of teaching strategies (e.g., lecture tutorials, service learning, just-in-time teaching) and a set of geoscience teaching examples. This is valuable for faculty interested in new approaches to teaching or who want to see examples of activities they can adopt or adapt. The interdisciplinary project Two-year College Outreach Across the Disciplines (http://serc.carleton.edu/econ/2yc/disciplines/index.html) summarizes best practices in nine disciplines, including the geosciences. At a 2011 workshop, sponsored by Economics at Community Colleges, faculty compared notes on what has worked and what hasn't in terms of strengthening disciplinary and interdisciplinary education at 2YCs. (http://serc.carleton.edu/econ/2yc/index.html) These and other projects have developed resources for supporting and enhancing the efforts of two-year college faculty in the geosciences. A variety of these materials is available via the Teach the Earth portal at http://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/.