Apply!
Applications are now open for the 2024 Geoscience Ambassadors Program. We are looking for new leaders who are ready to use their unique story to broaden understanding of and appreciation for geosciences across communities. It is open to all students at UT JSG who are sophomores through graduate students.
The Geoscience Ambassadors Program, funded by the HHMI Professors Program, was launched in fall 2018 at the Jackson School. The goal is to empower the next generation of geoscientists to challenge cultural norms and ideas about what it means to be a geoscientist, and repattern the field in ways that make it more hospitable and relevant.
To date, the program has engaged three cohorts of 45 Ambassadors in a process of reflecting upon their individual identities, where they come from, and the barriers, pivotal experiences, and tensions they have experienced. Through this process, they have learned to craft authentic, video-based "changemaking stories" that narrate their personal journey into the geosciences in ways that speak effectively to an identity group or home community to which they feel connected. Ambassadors have interacted with more than 60 community representatives and shared their stories through outreach and educational activities that have directly engaged about 1500 individuals in schools, youth organizations and elsewhere. Past participants have found that these activities contributed to their own professional development, strengthening their graduate school applications, job application documents, and designs for future change-making and mentorship activities. The program has reached a broad audience of geoscientists, teachers, education researchers, and changemakers through conference workshops and sessions at AGU, GSA’s On to the Future Program, and NAGT’s Earth Educators’ Rendezvous. Learn more here.
This year, the Ambassadors program will be organized as a workshop in a series of five meetups. Through this workshop, Ambassadors will draw upon their own personal experience to craft stories that influence how others perceive and engage with the geosciences. All participants will be expected to showcase their personal narrative on the Geoscience Ambassadors website as their own web profile, which will include both a written presentation (with pictures) and a short (3 min.) video story. Participants will also develop outreach or inreach project ideas based on the pathway reflections in the program.
The program is open to Undergraduate Students (Sophomores-Seniors) and Graduate Students at the Jackson School of Geosciences. Ambassadors will receive a stipend of $250 to support their participation in the program, specifically attendance of the meetups and completion of the core program activities. The 5 meetups will begin in late January and occur in person and occur approximately every two weeks through late March.
Please submit your application by January 29 if you would like to be considered for a Geoscience Ambassador position for the Spring 2024 Cohort.
Application link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1nodYulrZNepGf6WkiEh9vFOTfFjDmJrQpawyIa1PpLY/edit
Questions? Contact a member of our team:
Dr. Julia Clarke at Julia_Clarke@jsg.utexas.edu
Dr. Lucas Legendre at lucasjlegendre@gmail.com
Dr. Adam Papendieck at apapendieck@jsg.utexas.edu
Dr. Kathy Ellins at kmkellins@gmail.com
About the team: https://www.geoscienceambassadors.net/about
Best,
Adam, Julia, Kathy, and Lucas