Geography Undergraduate Program Essentials: Placement

A framework for addressing the lack of diversity in the Geosciences through evaluating the current structure of institutional efforts

“…Recruitment and retention issues lead to students not seeing career viability or altruistic potential. Even when interested, there's a lack of financial and educational support to retain students sometimes from lack of Geosciences-educated K-12 teachers (Bednarz, 2016, c;Estaville et al, 2006a, b;Levine et al, 2007;O'Connell & Holmes, 2011;Sherman-Morris et al, 2013;Vila-Concejo et al, 2018).…”

“…In recruitment, numerous programs show outreach generates interest amongst students for pursuing the Geosciences (Adetunji et al, 2012;Estaville et al, 2006a;Huntoon & Lane, 2007;Stokes et al, 2007;Velasco & De Velasco, 2010;Wechsler et al, 2005). Increasing Geosciences outreach to teachers, or parents and general society, improves Geoscience knowledge and interest, and helps raise its profile (Bednarz, 2016;Estaville et al, 2006a, b;Huntoon & Lane, 2007;Sherman-Morris et al, 2013).Through activities, these programs provide valuable Geosciences experiences for students, parents, and educators fostering interest and support for career paths. However, simply adding minoritized people to academia, which has systematically prevented their participation, fails to cultivate a truly inclusive environment that leads to retention (Núñez et al, 2019).…”

“…These broad and complex challenges provide context for the project discussed here. To address one element of the leaky pipeline, we created a camp for middle school girls, a group identified in the literature as important to foster Geosciences interest in at an early age (Estaville et al, 2006a;Frye et al, 2018). Intervening at the middle school level raises the profile of a Geosciences career earlier than high school interventions.…”

Assessment and Evaluation of GIScience Curriculum using the Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge

“…In a recent series of articles addressing student recruitment, retention and placement in geography programmes, Estaville et al (2006aEstaville et al ( , 2006bEstaville et al ( , 2006c find that the most important traits of successful geography programmes (including GIS&T) are quality curricula, practical relevance and geospatial skills, all of which can be evaluated in the assessment process. These traits very closely mirror the stated rationale for publishing the BoK (DiBiase et al, 2006, pp.…”