SZ4D has launched the IMPACTS Community of Practice (CoP)—Impactful MSI Partnerships for Advancing Community Ties in STEM to encourage collaboration, resource-sharing, and strategic planning to enhance student engagement in geohazards and STEM pathways. Read more about the initiative below.

Why is SZ4D supporting a Community of Practice?

The geoscience workforce will experience a labor shortage over the next 10 years (Gonzalez & Keane, 2020). This predicted shortage would impact SZ4D’s goal to better understand how geohazards occur, how they impact society, and how to mitigate those impacts. Therefore, SZ4D aims to increase students’ participation in geohazard academic and career pathways. To accomplish this, the SZ4D BECG committee launched a year-long Community of Practice (CoP) engaging student affairs and co-curricular professionals (SACPs) from 15 Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). The SACPs have unique insights about best practices for increasing students’ interest and participation in geoscience and STEM more generally. 

What is a Community of Practice?

A Community of Practice is a group of people who share a common issue. The group collaborates on a regular basis to address the issue and meet individual and group goals related to the issue. During their collaboration, CoP members share resources, expertise, and strategies for addressing their common issue. This typically leads to developing tools, recommendations, and new knowledge to address their issue. CoP members can address the issue in their own context and/or share their solutions with a larger community. BECG proposed to develop a CoP as part of the SZ4D Catalyst project based on member prior successful experiences with them.  You can learn more about CoPs at this website.

What are the goals of the IMPACTS CoP?

1. To build a community that increases communication and opportunities among SACPs at MSIs.

2. To provide recommendations and resources to SZ4D that identify funding and activities that can  increase students’ participation in successful geohazard academic and workforce pathways. 

What are the benefits of the IMPACTS CoP?

Benefits to CoP Members

1. Members gain a community of SACPs from other similar institutions with opportunities to learn from others by exchanging ideas and practices related to increasing students’ interest and participation. 

2. Members can implement the recommendations, strategies, and tools developed by the group to increase students’ interest and participation in geoscience at their own institution.

3. Members receive an honorarium to recognize their efforts. 

4. Travel expenses for a two-day in-person meeting

Benefits to SZ4D Community

1. The SZ4D community will gain additional knowledge on what has worked to increase students’ interest and participation at a variety of institutions.

2. The SZ4D community will receive recommendations, strategies, and tools to increase students’ interest and participation at their institutions and in their collaborations.

3. SZ4D scientists at MSIs participating in the CoP will gain an SACP colleague to potentially collaborate with on local initiatives.

4. If successful, there will be an increase in student participation in SZ4D and geoscience more generally.

How is the IMPACTS CoP developing over time?

The CoP began in March 2024 and has been working through several phases to grow as a community and to address its goals. The phases are not strictly linear: some phases overlap in time and the group returns to earlier phases as needed.

1. Foster Community: In this phase, we focus on building connections among members and that their participation matters. This phase is vital for creating trust, collegiality, and empathy.  

2. Establish Norms of Collaboration: We co-construct a description of how we expect to interact and collaborate. This phase helps build trust and a shared sense of responsibility to our group. 

3. Function as a Learning Community: In this phase, we collaboratively learn about topics associated with our goals and relevant topics that would support our work towards the goals. 

4. Identify and Conduct Projects: In this phase, the group identifies issues related to increasing students’ participation in STEM. We then work to collectively prioritize the ideas and identify those with the highest impact but still manageable for small teams. We develop those ideas into projects.

5. Advise SZ4D on Increasing Interest and Participation of Students : Leveraging learnings from our prior phases, we provide recommendations, resources, and tools to the SZ4D community on how to increase students’ interest and participation. 

6. Identify Critical, Transferable Elements of the CoP our Experience into a Model for Others: We determine which elements and structures of our CoP are critical to our success and should be included when others seek to use the CoP model. 

7. Increase Community and Broaden Connections: We add new members to our community. We seek opportunities to share our process and outcomes beyond SZ4D (e.g., presentations, written communication).  We seek to connect with other like-minded groups. We reflect on what other topics of interest would benefit from the CoP approach.

What projects are the IMPACTS CoP working on?

Strategies and Programs for Increasing Students’ Interest and Participation

This project initially focused on sharing experiences of CoP members in how they have learned what students are interested in and what activities generate interest.  The project just received IRB approval to launch a survey across a variety of MSI campuses to collect input from students on their interest in campus activities and programming and how these may be related to increasing students’ participation.  The survey asks about their interest in a variety of potential activities based on prior SACPs experience, skills students are looking to develop, and their preference in career preparation programming.  They are also asked about their science identity and demographic information.  The benefit of this study is to help ensure student programming meets the needs of students and increase their participation.

Fostering Research Mentors’ Skills and Knowledge on Increasing Students’ Interest and Participation in STEM Research

This project is developing a resource for SZ4D research mentors and other science mentors to increase mentees’ interest and participation in STEM research. The project has four objectives:

• Synthesize research literature on increasing mentees’ interest and participation in STEM research.

• Create a resource for research mentors on increasing mentees’ interest and participation.

• Develop and implement a survey examining research mentors’ and mentees’ knowledge and needs to increase interest and participation. 

• Develop recommendations from the survey results and share the results with the SZ4D community. 

What do we think are the critical elements of our structure?

• Frequent Gatherings: Two structured zoom meetings each month and an In-Person meeting in Santa Cruz in September.

• Facilitated: Led by two facilitators shifting from primary leadership early on to guide on the side later on.

• Structured but flexible: Zoom meetings have common structure to schedule; Flexible attendance to allow for work commitments.

• Participants Matter: Regular time for members to share their perspectives; Projects emerged from needs and interests of CoP members.

• Community-oriented: Focus on community building; Established norms of collaboration; Ongoing discussions of land acknowledgements and differences in campus communities.

• Co-constructed: Brainstorm ideas to consider options; Use of gradients of consensus to help make decisions (Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision Making).

Who are the IMPACTS CoP participants?

Our IMPACTS CoP brings together SACPs from MSIs and two facilitators from the SZ4D BECG committee. SZ4D community members helped identify and recruit at their MSIs that have connections to STEM research. 

Members

some members are not listed

Carlene Burton, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Justine Schmidt, University of Alaska Fairbanks

Kikilia Lani, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

Leah Turner, Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. 

Rachel Torres, Cal Poly Humboldt 

Sam Franco, University of Minnesota

Wendy Mejia, San Diego State University

Facilitators

Julie Sexton, Independent Consultant

Mike Brudzinski, Miami University Ohio

Reference

Gonzalez, L., Keane, K. (2020). Geoscience Currents: Geoscience Workforce Projections, 2019-2029. Data Brief 2020-025. Retrieved from https://academic.cpp.edu/senate/docs/AP009245ref_9.pdf