The Earth Moves Me!: An Education and Outreach Campaign for Broadening Geoscience Awareness in Hawai'i

As a premier teaching and research university in the Pacific, the University of Hawai'i (and its Earth Sciences Department) has a unique responsibility to help address the imbalance of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders in the geoscience workforce. The Earth Moves Me! campaign is an education and outreach initiative at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa (UHM) designed to recruit, retain, and prepare the next generation of diverse geoscientists in Hawai'i by connecting K-16 students with local geoscientists, geoscience data, and place-based discoveries. The Earth Moves Me! team consists of 8-10 UHM undergraduate and graduate students with backgrounds in Earth Science and Elementary Education. Our program delivers interactive geoscience educational activities to local classrooms, with a specific emphasis placed on opportunities for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students to learn about local geoscience processes (plate motions, volcanism, and seismicity), to identify local geohazards, and to connect students with geoscientists in the community. Several mobile interactive stations form the core of our classroom connections and discussions of future geoscience career pathways. Here we report on different strategies for empowering a new generation of traditionally underrepresented students to take full advantage of geoscience data for improved diversification and a broadening of participation in the geosciences.