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Making a geoscience difference in Alaska Great Bear Petroleum joins UAF, others in launching Alaska program for rural high school students based on Texas GeoFORCE model Rose Ragsdale For Petroleum News
Rather than bemoaning the thinning ranks of college students studying geosciences in the United States like most of us, a group of energy companies in Southwest Texas joined educators and philanthropists in doing something about it.
Seven years ago, they created a summer program known as GeoFORCE Texas that is designed to expose inner-city and minority high school students to the excitement of learning about the natural environment.
The goal: To inspire these youngsters to tackle difficult high school science and math courses in preparation for pursuing college degrees in science, engineering and math with an eye toward meeting the workforce shortfalls forecast to occur as baby boomers retire.
Today, GeoFORCE has more than 500 student participants and nearly 200 graduates who are college students. Of this group, 81 percent are minorities.
The GeoFORCE success story has inspired Alaska companies and educators to launch a similar program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks as early as June 2012.
“Many of us hear every day when math and science curriculums are discussed that the country needs more science- and engineering-oriented students coming out of university,” said Ed Duncan, president and chief operating officer of Great Bear Petroleum LLC.
Great Bear, a newcomer to the Alaska oil patch, is an independent with offices in Austin, Texas. Last October, the company offered more than $8 million in apparent high bids for 105 tracts covering more than 500,000 acres in an Alaska North Slope areawide oil and gas lease sale.
Focused on drilling for unconventional oil in source rocks on the North Slope, Great Bear is apparently equally focused on making a difference in the lives of young Alaskans.
“My wife and I live our lives with a high social conscience,” explained Duncan in a recent interview.
Great Bear recently opened an Anchorage office. But Duncan and his wife, Karen Bryant Duncan, who is Great Bear’s vice president and corporate general counsel, had already spent months spreading the word in Alaska about GeoFORCE.
“We have a very, very strong commitment to leave a lasting legacy to improve the lives of the next generation coming behind us. Great Bear’s mission statement reflects Karen and my core values.”
A lot at stake As our current work force trained in science, technology, engineering and math ages out of the system, young people will be needed to replace these workers.
Meeting this challenge will be difficult because dramatically fewer Hispanics, African Americans and Native Americans graduate from high school than members of the majority population. In addition, a growing percentage of our youth are minorities.
Using the latest census figures, USA Today reports that more than 48 percent of children in the United States under age five are now minorities. For Alaska, the situation is arguably more desperate.
Graduation rates in the 12-state Pacific and Northwest regions for American Indians and Alaska Natives average 46.6 percent, substantially lower than comparable graduation rates for all other racial/ethnic groups, including whites (69.8 percent), Asians (77.9 percent), Blacks (54.7 percent) and Hispanics (50.8 percent), according to a 2010 study by The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.
Lack of college readiness Even worse, minority students who do earn high school diplomas pursue college math and science degrees in far fewer numbers than do Caucasian- and Asian-Americans. A big problem is the lack of college readiness among minority students.
One priority of GeoFORCE Texas was to meet this challenge and place more minority students in college, pursuing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — the so-called STEM fields. Of the two classes of GeoFORCE alumni who have graduated from high school, 176 out of 189 are attending college, and 100 of these students are pursuing STEM degrees. Not counting the undecided students, a full two-thirds of GeoFORCE graduates started college with STEM fields in mind, and 80 percent of the students are minorities.
This compares to an average of 29 percent college readiness among students in Southwest Texas schools overall as measured by the state’s standardized tests.
Of the 108 GeoFORCE Texas seniors who headed to college last fall, 61 percent reported plans to major in a science, technology, engineering and mathematics field, including 19 percent aiming for earth sciences degrees and 9 percent pursuing engineering.
“We are excited because we’ve seen GeoFORCE work in South Texas,” said Ed Duncan.
Secret of program’s success The strength of GeoFORCE, say its supporters, is its ability to give students a powerful and memorable experience that has a lasting impact on their lives. The ongoing nature of the program — every summer for four years throughout high school — is also critical, as is the intensity of the GeoFORCE experience, with spectacular field trips to emphasize science learning and exciting travel to new environments.
Students participate in summer field sessions, or “academies,” that occur every year throughout their high-school education, with each academy building upon the curriculum of the previous year.
The academies include two- to six-day field trips to places such as Mount St. Helens, Florida Keys, Harpers Ferry, W.Va., Guadalupe Mountains and the Grand Canyon and several days study at the Jackson School of Geosciences on the University of Texas at Austin campus.
Each event includes a detailed guidebook, and the students take quizzes each evening and a final exam. A minimum score of 80 must be achieved to continue in the program.
Coordinators say this approach has had a profound effect on GeoFORCE’s participants.
“We have watched children entering the program at the end of eighth grade become young adults by the time they are seniors, having the competence not only to master their academic requirements but also to impress those around them with their level of maturity and presence, said Dean Sharon Mosher of the Jackson School of Geosciences, UT Austin.
A plan for Alaska Educators at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, joined by the Duncans and Shell Exploration, are spearheading the effort to bring the program to Alaska.
Provost Susan Henrichs, Vice Chancellor Bernice Joseph of the College of Rural and Community Development and Dean Paul Layer of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics signed a memorandum of understanding June 3 with educators at UT Austin to work toward development of an Alaska GeoFORCE program.
Denise Wartes, who has served for many years as director of the Rural Alaska Honors Institute at UAF, will be director of GeoFORCE Alaska.
“UAF, in conjunction with GeoFORCE, will take what works in Texas and adapt it to Alaska,” Wartes said in an interview June 6.
Initially, the program will target Alaska Native students in Barrow and other North Slope villages and hopefully expand.
“If all goes well, we will branch out into other rural communities across Alaska,” Wartes said.
Like the Texas program, GeoFORCE Alaska will work with the science and math teachers at the rural high schools from which it draws students.
“We want the schools involved. We want to excite the teachers about the program, and we want to have a science teacher or two accompany the students on the trips,” Wartes said.
To showcase vastly different geological formations, four field trips are tentatively planned for the Alaska program — Denali National Park and Preserve, the Grand Canyon, Mount St. Helens and Hawaii, she said.
UAF faculty in STEM fields and Alaska energy company executives will serve as instructors and academic advisors.
UAF’s geology department has vowed to assist with the program in hopes of sparking more interest in the geosciences among Alaska students.
RAHI program here for 29 years The organizers also envision the shorter GeoFORCE sessions encouraging students to vie for slots in the longer RAHI program, which offers high school juniors and seniors college-level writing and study skills courses along with choices of petroleum, engineering, business, math, chemistry or education courses and recreation classes.
Wartes said RAHI, after 29 years, is well-known in Alaska’s rural communities and its reputation will help with introducing GeoFORCE in the state’s remote villages.
“The fact that they have been successful for one week in the summer with GeoFORCE would help them realize they can do it for six weeks or eight weeks,” said Wartes, a longtime Alaskan who grew up on the North Slope near the Colville River.
The GeoFORCE Texas 2010 annual report describes the program as being “neither subtle nor inexpensive,” and lists more than $2 million in the program’s kitty from donations, contracts and grants used to fund the program, along with several offshoots including geo-mapping projects for some students.
Though it is still early days, the Duncans say bringing GeoFORCE to Alaska is already winning support in the business community.
“We, as a company, are making a strong commitment to the Alaska program, and we expect Shell will commit,” said Ed Duncan.
Arctic Slope Regional Corp. also signed on, and Doyon Ltd. has expressed interest, he added.
“Many of the companies with offices in Alaska also have offices in Texas, and they are aware of the program’s success and are excited about GeoFORCE being expanded into Alaska,” said Karen Duncan.
“The companies see it as being directly related to what they do. This is also a way for them to reach out and get their names known during the academies and the field trips,” said Duncan, who is spearheading the program’s fund-raising effort.
For more information about making a contribution to GeoFORCE Alaska, contact Karen Bryant Duncan at [email protected].
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