GRANDE: Geoscience Program Adaptation to Natural Disruptive Events
Purpose:
The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is conducting a multi-year study to identify best practices for preparing and leveraging natural disruptions in geoscience academic departmental operations, teaching, and research, further strengthening geoscience academic programs and improving institutional resilience that can ensure a robust knowledgebase and workforce to help society sustain or even thrive in the face of increased hazards from earth processes. For more information, please visit the GRANDE project website: https://grande.americangeosciences.org
You are being invited to participate in this study because you are located in the United States and are a geoscience employee (including K-12 and postsecondary faculty and staff, non-academic professionals, or post-doctoral fellows), a geoscience college or university student, or a recent geoscience graduate who earned your degree since 2014. You must be at least 18 years old to participate in this study.
Procedure:
The study will be implemented through a series of online surveys, oral history interviews, and in-person and online focus groups. Study participants will be provided the opportunity to share their perspectives on the following topics:
- Impacts to departmental operations including impacts on teaching, research, recruitment, and administrative operations, as well as losses to physical plant infrastructure and changes such as implementation of recovery/disaster plans
- Specific improvements or changes to physical plant and equipment as a result of the event and how they changed or impacted the department
- Pedagogical accommodations, including teaching modes, scheduling, and alternative activities in response to disruptive events
- New research and teaching directions influenced by specific events, to include specific, identifiable opportunities that arose in light of the impacting event, such as field trips to areas particularly impacted and new research opportunities – both with external and internal funders and student research
- Impacts to participants’ work, including changes in priorities or professional focus, impacts to studies, research and job search intentions
- Perspectives of how survey participants see the role of natural disasters and hazards within the geosciences over the course of their career as a catalyst for professional activity, and what the key geoscience questions relative to those issues will be for the new generation of geoscientists to address
- Perspectives of societal preparedness for the impacts of climate change.
Risks:
There are no foreseeable risks for participating in this study, but some potential minimal risk includes the time spent completing the surveys, oral history interview, or focus group activities, and the risk of breach of confidentiality.
Benefits:
While there may not be any immediate benefits for you as participants, there would be indirect benefits. The opportunity for lessons learned by the geoscience discipline and innovations by departments and faculty can be used in modeling potential mitigation of impacts and unique learning opportunities within higher education, as well as across all formal education levels. Identifying the universe of responses is the first step towards developing systemic approaches and strategies for advancing educational resilience in increasingly disruptive environments.
Confidentiality:
All the data collected from this study will be housed in a secure database and your identity and survey responses will be separately stored, only joined via an offline stored token. Oral histories and focus group input will be kept confidential unless you consent to sharing the information publicly. The only people that will have access to the study’s data will be the project’s research team who are all employees of AGI. We will keep your identity and the information you supply private. We will not share your personal information with anyone outside the project team. The only instance—and such occasions are rare—when we would release information about you to anyone without your permission would be if we were required to do so by law.
Voluntary Participation:
Your participation in the surveys, oral history interviews, and focus group activities is completely voluntary and will not affect your future engagement with activities or programs of the American Geosciences Institute. You can decide to not participate or to discontinue your participation at any time without penalty.
If you have any questions or concerns about this study, please contact the primary investigator:
Christopher Keane, Director of Geoscience Profession & Higher Education
keane@americangeosciences.org
(571) 483-5430
4220 King Street, Alexandria, VA 22302
Statement of Consent:
If you have read the above information, received answers to any questions, and agree to participate in the study, please click, “Next.” If you do not wish to continue, please close your browser to exit this survey.
