Author(s):
Environmental Data Literacy: Holistic Scientists for 21st Century STEM CareersNeed: To develop and evaluate innovative methods for promoting discipline-specific data literacy in environmental science among undergraduate STEM students, Saint Joseph’s College of Maine is developing an Environmental Data Literacy Program. The goal of this project is to prepare undergraduate students to fill the growing professional, scientific, and management careers that communities and society require to manage issues such as climate change and ecosystem disruption. There is a need for STEM education that prepares undergraduate students in the “hard skills” of data analysis and interpretation, and the “soft skills” of outreach and communication to diverse stakeholders and audiences. The objectives are (1) develop coursework to establish a new minor in Environmental Data Literacy, to train undergraduates in the hard and soft skills of data literacy and (2) to provide students field experiences and capstone research opportunities, in a community-based learning format with regional partners.Guiding Question: We will determine whether a focused minor is effective at delivering key 21st-century data science priorities for environmental science STEM programs. To answer this question, the research plan evaluates the influence of this curriculum on students’ technical competencies and communication skills, self-efficacy, and retention, graduation, and employment outcomes. Outcomes: After two years of course delivery, each of four novel courses has been delivered at least once. Internal and external evaluations of student learning indicated the need for revision to course content in each case, to varying degrees. In general, overly technical content presented an impediment to student achievement of learning outcomes, and this content has been (or will be) modified to use simpler data analysis platforms. Project-based learning and active learning techniques have met with considerable success in student achievement, representing the most productive approaches to developing holistic environmental data literacy.Broader Impacts: Saint Joseph’s College of Maine’s Environmental Data Literacy minor will improve the education of undergraduate students in a key STEM field that affects the following: (1) the well-being of individuals in society, (2) the public’s engagement with science, and (3) partnerships between academia and public/private partners. With increasing disruptions to ecosystems and municipalities caused by climate change, society depends on environmental scientists to collect, analyze, interpret, and apply environmental data to construct the conceptual models of ecosystem function needed to inform resource management. Deeper partnerships with public- and private-sector institutions are key to ensuring these courses will produce the integrative environmental data literacy skills needed by the next generation of environmental scientists. The comprehensive dissemination of this research should support the adaptation and implementation of this minor or analogous models in undergraduate education. This has the potential to multiply the number of undergraduates trained in this critical aspect of 21st century environmental science, and broadly advance STEM teaching practices.
Coauthors
Marion Young, University of Virginia Wise
