Our Model
At PSU GeoPath Program, we pair each of our high school student participants with an undergraduate student, a faculty member, and a graduate student, who serve as their mentors. Together, our high school students with their undergraduate students and faculty mentors form research teams for the academic year. Each week the students will spend two hours of research with the faculty mentors and four hours with their undergraduate mentors. The undergraduate student will act as a lab assistant to the faculty mentor in order to help the research progress smoothly.
Our Goals
For our chapter, our goals are the 3 R’s: Recruitment, Retention, and Role Models.
Recruitment: We hope to bring more underrepresented high school and undergraduate students into STEM fields.
Retention: Once these students are involved in the PSU GeoPath Program, we hope to maintain their interest in pursuing higher education in STEM-related and other studies
Role Models: In the PSU GeoPath Program, both Undergraduates and high school students are paired with faculty mentors that supervise, lead, and direct their research. The undergraduate mentor’s role is to be a mentor that the high students can come to with questions about college life and experiences. Through mentorship, we hope that healthy, positive, and impactful relationships are established within research groups.
Interested in becoming a part of the GeoPath Program?
We are currently accepting registrations for high school student participants and undergraduate, graduate, and faculty/staff mentors for the upcoming 2024-2025 academic year!
More About GeoPath
The GeoPath program is designed to promote and sustain geoscience and related disciplines in underserved and underrepresented minority communities. The goal is to increase the diversity in science, technology, engineering, and math programs and careers, which continues to be a critical issue in postsecondary and workforce realms.
Diversity in STEM continues to be a critical issue in postsecondary and workforce realms. In the GEOPATH disciplines of Earth, Oceanic, and Atmospheric Sciences, the problem is amplified with very limited success for attracting, retaining, and graduating underrepresented minority (URM) students at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Several factors inhibit URM STEM engagement including exposure, mentoring, experiential learning, and math and science preparation. To counteract the impact of these limiting factors, a focused GEOPATH component, designated GEOENV, will be added to the Penn State EnvironMentors program, which provides high school students a research experience throughout the academic year through group mentorship from faculty, postdocs, graduate, and undergraduate students. GEOENV will provide additional opportunities for URM STEM engagement for high school students, with the aim of steering URM students toward college/university Geoscience majors/disciplines and careers/jobs.
Prior to declaring a major in high school and accepting enrollment at a university/college, GEOENV will recruit 16 freshman, sophomore, and junior year high school students per year from 4 locations located in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, representing varied demographic and socioeconomic status. The temporal evolution of this engagement will be qualitatively and quantitatively assessed from pre- and post-surveys and tracking the degree to which student participants major in a geoscience discipline during their college matriculation. High school student participants are assigned to a research team and develop a research project as part of the EnvironMentors program and focus on a GEOPATH discipline in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State University. From yearlong work on a research project, high school student participants present a research poster and papers as final products. GEOENV will also include seminars with cross-cutting themes during the academic year to increase exposure of participants to GEOPATH disciplines. High school teachers will also participate to deepen their knowledge of education of STEM education and research activities in GEOPATH disciplines through a 3-day workshop held at Penn State University each year. Participating teachers are also encouraged to become part of a research team during the academic school year.