GP-UP: Project RESTORES (Retention of Earth Science Trainees through Opportunities in Restoration and Environmental Sciences)

Highly urbanized coastal areas—such as the New York City metropolitan area—are among the nation’s most susceptible to the effects of sea-level rise. Coastal geoscientists in these areas will be in high demand to help restore and prepare coastal environments, yet the challenge of producing a diverse and talented workforce to match this need remains. Project RESTORES (Retention of Earth Science Trainees through Opportunities in Restoration and Environmental Sciences) builds on a body of evidence regarding the needs of students who have been historically excluded in STEM and implements best practices for supporting these students through geoscience pathways from high school to careers. The PIs plan to leverage Molloy College’s established success in recruiting a diverse STEM student body to forge new opportunities in coastal geoscience education. The demographics of the targeted "recruitment" schools ensure the project will help close the gap between workforce needs and the skills of graduating geoscience students. The project seeks to produce geoscience professionals capable of helping to prepare coastal ecosystems for climate change and other stressors in our changing world. The overarching goals of RESTORES are to increase the number of students in the geosciences; retain a high rate of students who have historically been excluded in STEM; build faculty and institutional capacity that supports these students sustainably; and produce highly qualified geoscience graduates to fulfill the growing need for these professionals in the project area. RESTORES entails three objectives in support of these goals: 1) to implement and evaluate targeted recruitment activities to increase geosciences enrollment by 55% over three years; 2) to develop a robust framework to support and retain participants in the education-career pipeline; and 3) to provide rigorous geosciences research experiences for project participants. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.