Field Geophysics as a Mode for Community Engagement: The Cornell Experience
Abstract
Engaged Cornell is a university initiative that has supported and facilitated efforts by Cornell faculty and students to expand their involvement with the surrounding community in meaningful ways. Most of these efforts have involved the social sciences and/or the arts, with physical sciences being relatively poorly represented. In the fall of 2017, faculty in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric proposed to implement a new version of the Department's Field Geophysics course that would build ties to the communities in which geophysical studies might be carried out, and to address geological issues of direct and real interest to those communities. An equally important goal was to make students aware of the perspectives and communication needs of any community which might be the ultimate consumers of any scientific results collected. A collateral goal was to require sufficient field experience that the course could satisfy our curricular requirement for field experience.
The course was also an opportunity for building longer term ties to relevant geological organizations also working for the community, in particular the local office of the US Geological Survey and the New York State Museum. The first iteration of the course was offered in the Spring of 2018. A second version, building in part from the experience in 2018, was offered in the Spring of 2019. Here we will review the original goals and organization, as well as the challenges encountered, in establishing a long-term, community-engaged geophysical observation program at Cornell.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMED13A..03B
- Keywords:
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- 0840 Evaluation and assessment;
- EDUCATION;
- 0845 Instructional tools;
- EDUCATION;
- 1974 Social networks;
- INFORMATICS