Building an Effective and Affordable K–12 Geoscience Outreach Program From the Ground Up: A Simple Model for Universities

ABSTRACT

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 small-scale, very affordable model tested for 5 y in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of California, Riverside (UCR). GEOP provides in-class presentations for local K–8 classrooms; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics mentoring for middle and high school students; day-long events on the UCR campus for middle and high school students; and it allows UCR Department of Earth Sciences to participate in a wide range of community events. The program is managed by UCR graduate students, affects ~4,000 people (K–12 students, UCR students, the Riverside community at large) and operates for less than $3,000 U.S. annually. The GEOP model prioritizes simplicity, flexibility, and affordability to best meet the educational needs of Riverside County, California.

Key words::

• K–12 outreach
• mentoring
• community education

Acknowledgments

We thank NASA Innovations in Climate Education (NICE), the UC Riverside Department of Earth Sciences, and the Moscorello Family Foundation for their support; and Teresa Lloro-Bidart for her evaluation, Cassy Rose for her work in initiating the program, and Lucas Joel for serving as interim program manager. We also thank John Robertson, Dale Moore, Edgar Rodriguez, and Michele Hampton of the RUSD for their enthusiastic collaboration with GEOP. We are very grateful to William Powell for his continued support of GEOP. Finally, we thank the UCR Geology Club and graduate students, particularly Scott Evans, Jacqui Gilchrist, Chrissy Hall, Sara Henry, Kayla Kroll, Aaron Martinez, Corrie Neighbors, Megan Rohrssen, and Kenny Ryan for developing various aspects of this program.