Planning grant Increasing geoscience graduate students in Tennessee's flagship state university

This project aims to increase the number of students in the geosciences. The project will develop a long-term collaboration between Tennessee State University (TSU) and University of Tennessee at Knoxville (UTK) to strengthen their Earth sciences academic and research activities. The project will benefit both the students and the geoscience community by providing opportunities for academic and professional development, enhancing the geoscience workforce, and advancing the scientific understanding of Earth and planetary processes. The project will use a combination of methods to achieve its goals, such as: 1) campus visits by faculty to lead class lectures or present at department seminars, 2) UTK and TSU collaborative mentorship of student research projects during the regular school year, 3) UTK faculty mentorship of TSU student research as summer interns at UTK, and 4) access of TSU undergraduates to four introductory geology online courses offered by UTK: 101 (physical geology), 102 (historical geology), 103 (environmental geology), and 104 (planetary geology). The project will also create paid research internships for undergraduate students and proactively advertise them with campus organizations. The project will organize mentoring training for all Earth and Planetary Sciences faculty personnel who have existing undergraduate research funding opportunities. The project will document the success of these methods via focus-group evaluation by the National Institute for STEM Evaluation and Research at UTK. Success metrics will include student research publications, conference presentations, graduate school admissions, and student feedback. 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.