GeoPREP

In May of 2007, Stony Brook University’s STEP, CSTEP and LSAMP programs partnered with the Department of Geosciences in a National Science Foundation initiative call Opportunities for Enhancing Diversity in the Geosciences (OEDG).  Initial funding for two years was followed up by an additional five years of funding in the summer of 2009.  The program, called GeoPREP, collaborates with Brookhaven National Laboratory, the University’s Center for Science and Mathematics Education, and Stony Brook’s Department of Geosciences and Technology and Society and the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.  

GeoPREP is a multi-track program that serves underrepresented minority students from high school through graduate school.  Program elements include an intensive summer residential geoscience research program for high school students, a series of in-service teacher training workshops to develop new interdisciplinary geoscience curricula, and through partnering with Brookhaven National Laboratory, webcast from the National Synchrotron Light Source and further development of the Open Space Stewardship Program.  Additional components where added, including academic-year university laboratory visitation program that provided for expanded hands-on geoscience learning activities, scholarship support for undergraduate in the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participate, and a longitudinal study of attitudes and possible biases towards the geosciences by underrepresented minority students.