CLASSROOM EARTH Emphasizing
Geoscience as the True Epitome of STEM
Hailey Pantaleo, SA-9978 - University of Michigan Abstract
While it may be obvious to those of us in geoscience just how complex and scientific geology is, not everyone knows it to be a STEM category. Until students get the chance to explore Earth Science courses, many are unaware of how much technology, engineering, mathematics, and other sciences like chemistry, biology, and physics, are involved in geology. It is an incredibly interdisciplinary study that provides the foun- dation for a variety of future careers. Unfortunately the opportunity to learn Earth Science prior to college is not afforded to everyone, especially students attending poorer school districts, which are disproportionately BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) students. Women in STEM programs also lag behind with outreach to young girls interested in geoscience. While the diversity of geoscience has increased overall in the past century from originally being only white males, there is still more outreach to be done to increase the presence of Earth Science in all communities. Emphasizing geoscience as a legitimate, challenging STEM career choice may be the first step in getting more youth interested.
Keywords: Sand, slopes, monitoring, stability, apparent cohesion
While majoring in Earth sciences with a focus in geology as a young woman, I didn’t know if I was technically considered a woman in STEM. “STEM”, the umbrella term for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, always felt like something totally separate from geology. It was not until col- lege that I realized just how involved geology was with all of the categories of STEM.
In high school I believed that geology was the sole focus of Earth sciences, and as such, I and many others I knew excluded this field from the umbrella of “STEM” as it didn’t seem to “fit in”. Science, to me at the time, felt like medicine, chemistry, biology, astronomy, and physics. For a long while I was under the impression that geologists mainly identified rocks in the field and worked for oil companies. I recently took a small poll on Twitter about whether or not Earth Science is a part of STEM, and found that approximately 13% of my 39 respondents do not think it is. However, I can understand where this belief comes from. Until college, it had never crossed my mind that geology would incorporate math, engineering, and technology, and that it was such an advanced form of science people study it in laboratories. And until college, it had never occurred to me that geoscientists must account for
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biology, chemistry, and physics combined to fully understand geology itself.
There are a few courses at my university that particularly stood out to me and made me recognize geology/geoscience as a legitimate STEM category. My freshman year of college, I took an introductory geology course. In our laboratories, I was surprised to end up performing taste, scratch, and chemical tests on rocks. In my junior year, I took both Geochemistry and Geobiology, in which we performed chemical laboratory experiments and discussed how important biological events contributed to geologic anomalies, such as the banded iron formations that we see today. These were the courses that first showed me how truly scientifically involved geology is.
In my sophomore year of college, I took an introductory environmental science course, in which we learned about the processes involved in oil mining, renewable power sources, and dam building. I learned how important understanding the geology of an area was when mining and doing construction projects. The complexity of it all helped me realize how Earth science is intricately intertwined with many engineering feats.
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