Findings and Recommendations - New Research Opportunities in the Earth Sciences - page 104

Education Statistics, 2011). A gender gap persists in the Earth sciences and, although
the Earth sciences are doing better than other math and physical sciences in terms of
gender equity, there remains substantial room for improvement. The female share of
Earth science students at all levels has steadily increased over the past decade, but
still only 35 percent of Earth sciences post-docs are women (NSF, 2011). As in other
sciences, at each career step through graduate school to professorship, the number of
women relative to men declines (NRC, 2006), a condition that increases women's
isolation as they advance in the discipline. The committee agrees that including ideas
and perspectives of underrepresented groups serves both underrepresented groups and
the discipline itself.
To some extent, the disparities in training and inclusion are driven by larger
social issues that are beyond the capacity of the EAR division or this committee to
address. However, NSF is making progress on many of these challenges (see, e.g.,
NSF, 2008, 2010), and EAR is working to enhance diversity, education, and
knowledge transfer through the outreach efforts of EAR-funded groups, such as IRIS
and NCED, and the committee encourages EAR to continue these efforts. There are
several areas in which the committee believes EAR could benefit from focusing its
resources, and the following suggestions are meant to guide those efforts. The
committee mentions several specific NSF initiatives as examples but does not mean
to imply that these initiatives are the best vehicles for EAR efforts going forward.
The EAR division will know best how to implement these suggestions, including the
specific initiatives that could be expanded or developed.
Finding 1: Bringing the Earth sciences into the high school curriculum at the same
level as chemistry, biology, and physics would pay large dividends to the discipline in
the next generation. As an integrative discipline, the Earth sciences can be used as an
umbrella course to bring together core math and science knowledge and, while other
integrative disciplines such as “environmental science” and “human geography,” have
Advanced Placement (AP) courses available to high school students, the Earth
sciences remain notably absent from the AP course list. The EAR division may also
consider both laboratory and deployable scientific instruments for high school
classrooms. Much of the exciting and relevant work in the Earth sciences is done
using unique instrumentation, and some underrepresented minorities may prefer a
laboratory setting to fieldwork (O'Connell and Holmes, 2011). Exposing students to
the types of instruments they would use in a career in the Earth sciences, with an
emphasis on laboratory instrumentation, could boost interest and understanding. A
schoolyard version of the Long Term Ecological Research program with an Earth
science emphasis would build on existing NSF programmatic infrastructure.
Finding 2: Promoting early awareness of the Earth sciences on college campuses is
key. One of the best times to capture students' interest is as they are entering college.
Earth science gap-year internships would incentivize early exposure to the Earth
sciences for students who defer college entry for a year. Deferring college entry is
becoming increasingly common, and students who take a gap year may perform
better as undergraduates (Birch and Miller, 2007). Gap-year internships could be
incorporated into research proposals as a supplement to encourage this specific type