With rising college tuition and uncertainty of the return of investment in higher education, it has become increasingly important to prepare students with marketable skills for the workforce and arm them with the tools to secure employment. Online education and Professional Science Master’s programs often try to address the deficiencies graduates face when seeking employment, but these strategies aren’t always widely accepted within traditional academic programs.

Geoscience education is at an important juncture. New curricular standards, current events, and workforce trends are all adding to the established rationales for geoscience awareness, generating an imperative for geoscience education that is stronger than ever. To respond to this imperative, geoscience educators need information on which to base plans for individual and collective action. Over the past several years the American Geosciences Institute (AGI) has been collecting data for a series of reports that support informed discourse in geoscience education.

The Antarctic Journal of the United States was published by the U. S. National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs (NSF-OPP) from 1966 through 2002. It was preceded by four other publications: the Antarctic Status Report, USNC-IGY; the Bulletin of the U.S. Antarctic Projects Officer; the Antarctic Status Report; and the Antarctic Report. The journal documented U.S. activities in Antarctica and related activities in other locations. It also tracked trends in the U. S. Antarctic Program and reported on Antarctic Treaty meetings.

The geoscience community provides the knowledge, experience, and ingenuity to address a wide range of societal needs. We study the Earth system and the complex geologic, marine, atmospheric, and hydrologic processes that sustain life and economic activity. Geoscientists provide valuable insight and their knowledge should be considered when decision makers develop policy options.

For the past two years, AGI’s Geoscience Student Exit Survey has been used to collect data investigating successful two-year college transfer students. Geoscience graduates with a bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral degree who spent at least one semester at a two-year college were asked questions about the vehicles for successful transfer to a four-year institution and the major challenges faced while working towards their terminal degree. All recent graduates that take AGI’s Exit Survey have the opportunity to share their major challenge or challenges to obtaining their terminal degree.

In 2013 and 2014, the Geoscience Student Exit Survey administered by the American Geosciences Institute was used to investigate the transfer experiences of students who attended a two-year college (2YC) for at least one semester during their postsecondary education. Combined, over 27% of recent geoscience graduates reported having attended a 2YC for at least one semester. These graduates were invited to identify which factors allowed them to be successful in transfer to the receiving four-year college or university (4YC).

One of the cornerstones of UNESCO's mission is capacity building, and in the context of science, both the development of the human resources to promote sustainable science as well as to be a catalyst for economic and social development. This is a role that the geosciences have played, and will increasingly play into the future.

According to the American Geosciences Institute’s Status of Recent Geoscience Graduates 2014 report, 51% of undergraduates choose to major in the geosciences during their first or second year in college, indicating the importance of the introductory geoscience courses as a recruitment tool for future majors. Not only are the introductory courses key for recruitment, often they contain non-science students trying to complete their science credit. Therefore, the geoscience introductory courses may be the last opportunity to teach non-science majors how to think critically and scientifically.

The objective of the Michigan Science Teaching and Assessment Reform (Mi-STAR) curriculum design process is to generate a sequence of middle school integrated science units that address NGSS, are Michigan-centric, use inquiry-based lessons, and demonstrate 21^st-century applications. Mi-STAR’s process depends upon the collaboration of scientists/engineers and middle school teachers.

The NGSS provide a unique opportunity for the Earth and space science community to work together in new ways toward a common goal of full implementation of the Earth and space science domain of the NGSS, and toward teaching and learning in three dimensions: practices, crosscutting concepts and disciplinary core ideas.