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Identity and belonging are key components to student longevity in STEM and are particularly important for retaining BIPOC, low-income, and first generation students. Previous work emphasizes the importance of scientific competence, research performance, and recognition by scientific community members as key to building a STEM identity that persists (Carlone & Johnson, 2007), increasing the likelihood of retention into the STEM workforce. The Keck Geology Consortium REU, with funding from NSF, developed the Gateway program for rising sophomores in 2017 to support and build these three components of science identity for underrepresented undergraduates in the geosciences. Here we present stories from the Glacier National Park, Montana environmental geoscience Gateway project, alongside consortium-wide data, and consider ways in which scientific identity is developed. In summers 2018 and 2022 we brought together groups of 5-8 students, mostly from underrepresented groups, all of whom were finishing their first year of college. Students were from a variety of backgrounds and institutions, but primarily from SLACs, and had little/no prior research experience. Projects lasted 5 weeks, with one week of pre-field knowledge and skill development (competence) two weeks in the field in eastern Glacier National Park collecting data, and two weeks at the Continental Scientific Drilling (CSD) laboratory at the University of Minnesota analyzing sediment cores. Students presented their research at subsequent Geological Society of America meetings (performance and recognition). Survey results and anecdotal stories suggest all three key aspects of STEM identity-building were supported by the projects. In addition to identity and values activities at the project start, blogging and reflection activities supported development and integration of a science identity. Performance and recognition opportunities were threaded throughout; students shared their research with the public (Park visitors encountered in the field), with Park Rangers/Interpretive staff (during informal presentations), and with staff, students, and visiting scientists at the CSD (daily interactions in the lab). These less-official forms of performance and recognition greatly contributed to the students’ sense of ownership and expertise.
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Roving with a Digital Visual Library: Increased Learning Opportunities at Carlsbad Caverns National Park
At Carlsbad Caverns National Park, park rangers blended traditional personal interpretation with technology to showcase park-based research and to advance science literacy among visitors. Interpreters and Scientists Working on Our Parks (iSWOOP) provided interpreters with professional development and a selection of visualizations from scientists’ research on Brazilian free-tailed bats and their habitat at Carlsbad Caverns. After using tablets containing these visualizations for informal interpretive interactions, the interpreters responded to an open-ended survey. The authors examined interpreters’ responses, finding that interpreters regarded tablets as helpful in accomplishing several interpretive goals, especially in particular locations. Interpreters were strategic in initiating and sustaining interactions. Visitors’ reactions were positive; nevertheless, there were challenges indicating that this new form of interpretation is worthy of further research.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1323030
- PAR ID:
- 10044062
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of interpretation research
- Volume:
- 21
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1092-5872
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract Since 2001, beetles have killed two‐thirds of the pine trees in British Columbia, Canada, decimating the predominant commercial tree species in one of the world's largest timber economies. Attempts to construct and circulate computer models of the infestation and its aftermaths, however, have obscured destabilizing changes across state institutions for environmental research. Juxtaposing literary conceptualizations of distributed authorship with ethnographic critiques of technoscientific bureaucracy, this article examines how the proliferation of computer models in contemporary resource planning institutions has altered the ways experts participate in and sanction interpretive communities. The dynamic conceptualizations of authorship produced through these exchanges challenge existing portraits of anticipatory governance, an emergent mode of administration that often relies on models for procedural implementation and narrative framing even as it circumscribes modellers’ voices to specific moments of interpretation and critique. While modellers make claims on distant futures to provoke discussion among diverse actors, later interpreters may highlight a model's apparent precision or its radical uncertainties to defer criticisms of problematic interventions and government restructuring. Such modes of attribution have deepened many scientists’ sense of estrangement from the interpretive communities their models help to engender.more » « less
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