On the Cutting Edge A Professional Development Program for Current and Future Geoscience Faculty Heather Macdonald Cathy Manduca Dave Mogk Barb Tewksbury

On the Cutting Edge – Vision and Goals Professional development program for current and future geoscience faculty Funded by NSF Division of Undergraduate Education CCLI – National Dissemination grants Partnership with NAGT Digital resources disseminated also through DLESE and NSDL

Vision and Goals: Improve undergraduate geoscience education Support faculty in improving the content and instruction in their courses –Develop and offer a synergistic, integrated multi-year series of workshops –Create a website to support and extend the reach of workshops –Develop an expanding community of geoscience educators with a strong and diverse leadership

Emerging Theme Workshops Initiate movement of important new science content and teaching methods into main stream geoscience education Importance of bringing leaders together –To learn from each other –To crystallize current state of knowledge or practices –To formulate plans for future development –To reach broader audiences

Common Elements All workshops are expected to –Create a collection of resources –Develop a strategy for moving topic forward –Lead directly to next steps in implementing strategy –Create web-resources that enable broad access to key workshop content –Participate in On the Cutting Edge evaluation activities –Develop leadership capacity in the geoscience community

Extending Workshop Reach What happened:on-line reporting –Program, overview, participants, notes Broadening the discussion –Opening up post workshop discussion On-line learning for faculty –Courses –Activities Resource collections –Syllabi, activities, examples, data, tools…. Learning communities –Discussion, comment/review, mentoring

Examples of Activities and Outcomes Dissemination of information about topic –Tutorials, workshops, short courses –Reference lists –Professional society sessions –Journal articles or topical volumes Dissemination of resources that support classroom implementation –Syllabi –Teaching resources –On-line classroom materials Identification of priority issues and needs Identification and recruitment of key stakeholders Directed outreach to other individuals or groups

Geology and Human Health— Charge to the Workshop Help us identify what and how we are teaching about health issues in the Geo curriculum Advice to NSF and NRC Identify next steps/Develop action plan Contribute Resources, activities…. Ambassadors to the larger community Have fun, make new friends, ….