Faculty play an important role in attracting students to the geosciences, helping them to thrive in geoscience programs, and preparing them for careers. Thus, faculty have the responsibility to work toward broadening participation in the geosciences by implementing equitable and inclusive practices in their teaching and their programs. Faculty professional development that promotes diversity and inclusion is one way to move evidence-based practices into wider use. The adoption of these practices may be accelerated through a professional development diffusion model that amplifies the impacts through the work of faculty change agents. An example of this approach is the SAGE 2YC professional development program, in which faculty change agents learn and practice strategies during workshop sessions, implement changes in their own teaching, and then work in teams to lead workshops in their region under the auspices of the national program. Although this example focuses on two-year colleges, the model is applicable to faculty professional development more broadly. The success of the model is due in large part to a suite of leader-developed workshop sessions and curated resources that change agent teams may select and adapt for the regional workshops they lead. Furthermore, change agents are trusted colleagues, which makes adoption of the evidence-based practices by regional workshop participants more likely. Increased adoption of a change agent approach to faculty development will support the creation and sharing of additional resources, leading to wider diffusion and implementation of inclusive teaching practices.

The geosciences have a pervasive, persistent, and deeply troubling lack of diversity, despite the availability of a suite of well-documented, research-based strategies for broadening participation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The pervasiveness, persistence, and depth of the problem indicate that the lack of diversity is systemic, and is embedded in the culture of our discipline, including in the academic departments where future geoscientists are educated. Shifting the demographics of our community will therefore require changing the culture of geoscience, including within our departments. Departmental change is possible and can be accelerated intentionally. Levers for cultural change include using data to illuminate the need; incentivizing the work that closes equity gaps and builds inclusive environments; and developing a departmental community of practice committed to just, equitable outcomes. Departmental discussion groups can facilitate and support both the development of a community of practice and the ongoing work of the community, including identifying context-appropriate solutions from the research literature. The SAGE 2YC project (Supporting and Advancing Geoscience Education at Two-Year Colleges) has used discussion groups to raise awareness and understanding of the factors leading to homogeneity in the geoscience community and of the strategies for achieving equity and inclusion. SAGE 2YC participants have successfully closed or narrowed equity gaps. As scientists, we have the skills necessary to gather, analyze, and interpret relevant data and to evaluate the efficacy of strategies we implement. As humans, we have the moral and ethical responsibility to do this work to improve equity and inclusion in STEM.

Over the past 20 years, the proportion of US geoscience undergraduate degree recipients from marginalized racial groups has increased about threefold, more than for graduate degrees. Much of this progress currently is concentrated at relatively few universities.

We present the case for introductory geoscience courses as model venues for increasing the quantitative literacy (QL) of large numbers of the college-educated population. The geosciences provide meaningful context for a number of fundamental mathematical concepts that are revisited several times in a single course. Using some best practices from the mathematics education community surrounding problem solving, calculus reform, pre-college mathematics and five geoscience/math workshops, geoscience and mathematics faculty have identified five pedagogical ideas to increase the QL of the students who populate introductory geoscience courses. These five ideas include techniques such as: place mathematical concepts in context, use multiple representations, use technology appropriately, work in groups, and do multiple-day, in-depth problems that place quantitative skills in multiple contexts. We discuss the pedagogical underpinnings of these five ideas and illustrate some ways that the geosciences represent ideal places to use these techniques. However, the inclusion of QL in introductory courses is often met with resistance at all levels. Faculty who wish to include quantitative content must use creative means to break down barriers of public perception of geoscience as qualitative, administrative worry that enrollments will drop and faculty resistance to change. Novel ways to infuse QL into geoscience classrooms include use of web-based resources, shadow courses, setting clear expectations, and promoting quantitative geoscience to the general public. In order to help faculty increase the QL of geoscience students, a community-built faculty-centered web resource (Teaching Quantitative Skills in the Geosciences) houses multiple examples that implement the five best practices of QL throughout the geoscience curriculum. We direct faculty to three portions of the web resource: Teaching Quantitative Literacy, QL activities, and the 2006 workshop website - Infusing Quantitative Literacy into Introductory Geoscience Courses. These portions of the website are designed to give geoscience faculty the resources they need to infuse quantitative content into their entry-level courses, thereby building the QL of the students who enroll. The infusion of QL in the introductory geoscience classroom allows faculty to realistically represent the quantitative nature of the science to the students who may need it most. Ultimately, the inclusion of pedagogically sound quantitative activities and exercises will serve to increase QL of our educated citizenry.

The Math You Need, When You Need It (TMYN) is a set of online tutorials designed to help students develop and review mathematical skills that are applied in undergraduate geoscience courses. We present results of a three-year study of more than 4000 students in 106 geoscience courses at a variety of post-secondary schools who were assigned TMYN tutorials as supplemental mathematics instruction. Changes in student scores from pre- to post-test suggest that the support provided by programs such as TMYN can begin to reduce the gap between mathematically well-prepared and underprepared students; in essence, TMYN levels the quantitative playing field for all geoscience students. On average, both high- and low-performing students who fully participated in the use of TMYN as a part of their course showed learning gains, although gains were larger for students who performed poorly on the pre-test. Our findings emphasize the conclusion that students who interact with context-specific quantitative problems can potentially improve their mathematical skills, regardless of initial level of mathematical preparation. We suggest that this type of support could generalize to other science courses.

Lessons learned and applied during a recent workshop can help authors, from students to seasoned professionals, work together to produce more equitable and effective writing.