Ventura, California's 2023 winter storm activity underscored the impact that runoff has on recreational water quality and public health. To examine public perception of stormwater runoff, coastal water quality, and community decision-making toward recreating in polluted water, an online survey of the Ventura River watershed community determined…

Incorporating scientific uncertainty as part of science teaching means acknowledging that there may be incomplete or potentially limited scientific information when scientists draw conclusions. In the geosciences, scientists routinely make inferences about the Earth based on observations of the present, and test those observations against…

An opportunity exists to attract students from historically underrepresented communities into the geosciences, the least diverse of the STEM fields. Home to a diverse population, Riverside County in Southern California supports several community colleges with thriving geoscience programs where students can take a range of geology courses in…

Community colleges are a major entry point for many students to post-secondary education, particularly for minority, first-generation, low-income, and older students. A range of factors including transfer-readiness, curricular alignment, financial barriers, and transfer guidance, influence successful transfer between two-year colleges (2YCs) and…

Although field and research experiences have been shown to help retain students in the geosciences, there is less known about how and why this is the case. We created a field-based research experience for five students with a range of backgrounds and prior experiences. We used mixed methods case study research to identify affect-related…

This first analysis of aggregated data from the Kahoot! game-based player response system demonstrates that it can provide assessments of overall US student polar knowledge and identifies differences in polar knowledge across several states. A kahoot online quiz on polar topics recorded over 25,000 United States teacher-hosted classroom players…

This qualitative study examines the experience of 12 Native American youth who participated in culturally appropriate geoscience summer programs throughout California. These programs have been shown to change participating youths' perceptions of science. After the programs, the youth are more likely to describe science as something tribes use to…

University earth science departments seeking to establish meaningful geoscience outreach programs often pursue large-scale, grant-funded programs. Although this type of outreach is highly successful, it is also extremely costly, and grant funding can be difficult to secure. Here, we present the Geoscience Education Outreach Program (GEOP), a…

Students in an introductory physical geology course often have difficulty making connections between basic course topics and assembling key concepts (beyond textbook examples) to interpret how geologic processes shape the characteristics of the local and regional natural environment. As an approach to address these issues, we designed and…

Native American nations in the United States have a unique legal status that is rooted in a complex relationship between the United States federal government, individual state and local governments and tribal authorities. Although geosciences are often at the center of these relationships, especially as they pertain to the development of natural…

A field course attended by science teachers in California's Owens Valley incorporated geospatial technology to reinforce the relationship between elevation, aspect, or the direction a mountain slope faces, and vegetation. Teachers were provided GPS units to record locations and plant communities throughout the 9-day field course. At the end of the…

Field instruction is a critical piece of undergraduate geoscience majors' education, and fieldwork remains a major part of the work of professional geologists. Despite the central importance of field education, there exists relatively little educational research exploring how students learn to solve problems in geological fieldwork. This study…