The Role of Geoscience Departments in Preparing Future Geoscience Professionals Carol J. Ormand*, Science Education Resource Center R. Heather Macdonald, College of William and Mary Cathryn Manduca, Science Education Resource Center * cormand@carleton.edu ED13A-0597 Web Resources Recommended Strategies serc.carleton.edu/departments/professional Workshop participants developed the following list of recommended strategies for preparing our students for professional careers in geoscience: The Building Strong Geoscience Departments project aims to foster communication and sharing among geoscience departments to facilitate rapid dissemination of strong ideas and approaches via workshops and web resources. Online resources feature successful strategies and specific examples from a wide variety of geoscience departments, including resources on preparing our students for their future careers. Work with your alumni. Maintain records of alumni career paths to share with students and their parents. Facilitate communication between students, faculty, and alumni. This leads to a better understanding of job opportunities, skills needed, and career paths. Build opportunities into your program for students to learn and practice the skills they will need in their future careers. Communicate career information early and often. This helps you recruit students, helps keep your students motivated to learn, and reminds them of the range of options available. Communicate the connection between your program and careers to a broad audience, including students, parents, alumni, employers, your campus career office, your alumni office, and your campus administration. This will help you to design and implement stronger programs that are valued by your institution. Introduce (or expand) a global component to your program. Globalization is changing the opportunities for students and the skills that they will need, as geoscientists and as citizens. Assess your curricular and co-curricular offerings to evaluate the impact that specific programs have on your students. This allows you to invest your time in your most effective programs. Help students to recognize and articulate the skills that they have mastered (both geoscience skills and general skills). Listen to your students as they talk about their career aspirations or interests. Respect their choices. Help your students to understand that employment opportunities are cyclical and vary with the economy. Share your challenges and successes with colleagues. 2007 Workshop serc.carleton.edu/departments/professionalprep In 2007, we held a workshop on the role of departments in preparing students for geoscience careers, including traditional roles in academia, government research, industry and teaching, as well as opportunities in business, law, public service, and elsewhere. The workshop brought together representatives from 26 departments to share effective strategies and to develop new ideas. We focused on the following questions: For what professional opportunities are we preparing students? What skills, knowledge, experiences, and abilities lead to success? What types of advising and mentoring are needed? How can we best work with campus career centers? How does a department know when its programs are successful at preparing students for careers in the geosciences? This project is sponsored by NSF.