Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Project: Student Responses.

This paper describes an interdisciplinary project at California State University (Long Beach) designed to increase the attractiveness of the geosciences to underrepresented groups. The project is called the Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Project (GDEP). It is a 3-year program which began in the fall of 2001 with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The project's purpose is to attract NSF-defined science, technology, engineering, and mathematics minorities in local community colleges and high schools into the geosciences through an intensive summer research experience at California State Long Beach. The geosciences are defined as physical geography, geology, archaeology, and environmental science. An important aspect of GDEP is assessment of the degree to which it accomplishes its goals. To establish a baseline of general education student perceptions of the geosciences, surveys were distributed to sections of each department's basic general education science course. The survey consists of 25-30 questions to be answered along 1-5 point Likert scales ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Results remain disappointing. At this stage, 60% of student pre-test responses diverged significantly from neutral, with positive and negative divergences roughly equal at 32% and 28%, respectively. In the post-tests only half diverged significantly from neutral. In all, student perceptions basically became overall more neutral. (BT)