Bridging Science and Public Understanding of Long-term Soil, Water, and Vegetation Monitoring: Opportunities for broader impact connections with InTeGrate

Abstract:

Long-term monitoring of soils, water, and vegetation is crucial in understanding sustainability-related issues faced by society in our changing environment. Promoting buy in through public literacy and preparing the future workforce to address these challenges is a key goal of the InTeGrate project. The InTeGrate project is an NSF STEP Center that endeavors to infuse teaching about the Earth into undergraduate courses across the curriculum. The project aims to connect this knowledge to societal issues that students can relate to and opens the door to interdisciplinary problem-solving that is needed to face the Grand Challenges facing society. The project features publicly-available interdisciplinary, faculty-contributed teaching materials that engage students in learning about the Earth by focusing on pressing topics. These topics include water, food resources, energy, and hazards. Further, web pages built around teaching methods such as service learning, working with data, and teaching in the field, help engage students in active learning and making meaningful connections to their coursework. In addition, teams of interdisciplinary faculty are creating project-developed courses and modules designed to engage and promote students’ literacy in sustainability and global change issues. These materials are designed for both science and non-science majors at the undergraduate level and have been rigorously reviewed and tested in the classroom. Topics include sustainable agriculture, soil and society, climate change, critical zone science, water resources, and more.

We invite you to partner with the InTeGrate project as you think about broader impacts related to your work. Examples include contributing to the community collections by creating a case study detailing your project and how faculty can use it in their classroom, designing example activities that utilize your datasets, and more. Check out the site at: serc.carleton.edu/integrate/