Mission

Our Mission

Broadening Participation in Geoscience. The goal of the RESESS internship program is to increase the number of students from groups that are underrepresented in the geosciences relative to their proportions in the general population.

Diversity in the geoscience workforce is extremely low. Only a handful of people from underrepresented populations complete graduate degrees in the U.S. each year. For example, statistics gathered for the National Science Foundation(1) in 2007 show that, one Native American, three Black Americans, and twelve Hispanic Americans earned Ph.D.s in the Earth sciences out of the 347 Ph.D.s earned by U.S. citizens and permanent residents. This is a meager 4.6% of doctorates, while these groups make up more than one third of the U.S. population.

RESESS is dedicated to increasing diversity in the Earth science workforce through providing research experiences, confidence-building, and encouragement. Thanks in part to RESESS, students go on to the workforce or graduate school knowing that they are not alone, and that they are supported.

  • RESESS intern Adelicia Johnson presenting her research.
    RESESS intern Adelicia Johnson discusses her summer research at the 2018 RESESS Colloquium. August 1, 2018. Boulder, Colorado. (Photo/Daniel Zietlow, 2018)
  • Four interns discuss a poster that is lying on the table in front of them.
    2018 RESESS and GeoLaunchpad interns practice their poster talks for the End of Summer poster session. (Photo/Aisha Morris, UNAVCO)
  • RESESS intern Joel Johnson smiles in front of his research poster at AGU.
    RESESS student Joel Johnson presents research poster at AGU 2018.
  • One intern is speaking while the other interns look on at a professional development seminar.
    RESESS interns discuss best practices for resumes, CVs, and cover letters in their Communications Seminar, run by UNAVCO staff. (Photo/Beth Bartel, UNAVCO)

Our interns also learn about communicating their science to a broader audience. This past summer, we held a weekly workshop for interns on communicating science using a variety of methods including oral presentations, poster presentations, research paper writing, and professional self-marketing.

This project is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1724794 GEO-EAR.

(1) sources: National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, Completions Survey; and National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Statistics, Integrated Science and Engineering Resources Data System (WebCASPAR), https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/webcaspar/.