Section 6. Fostering and Implementing Change

Transformative Change — ​What, Why and How

Transformative changes in graduate geoscience education are needed to ensure the long-term health of geoscience graduate programs and to produce geoscientists with the skills and competencies needed to address global societal challenges that require geoscience solutions. Graduate education needs to be student focused, and students should take ownership of their education, developing the skills and competencies they need to be successful in their future careers. Cultural changes as well as structural changes will be necessary in many departments to achieve these changes.

Currently, many advisors focus by default on research productivity and preparing their doctoral students for academic employment, primarily in a research university, with the commonly unspoken goal of replicating themselves. In these situations, graduate education is advisor centric and controlled rather than student focused. This focus and control by the advisor can lead to toxic academic environments where students are not recognized for their contributions and must meet advisor demands regardless of the advisor’s behavior. Teamwork and collaboration among students and other faculty is often discouraged. However, only about half of all doctoral students go into academia, including four-year colleges without graduate programs and postdoctoral positions (Figure 3.9b); consequently, even fewer go into permanent research-oriented faculty positions. Many finishing doctoral students report that they do not wish to go into academia, especially research-intensive programs, because of the level of stress and what they experienced in graduate school (National Academies of Science, 2018). Very few master’s students (at most ~10%; data from Keane et al., 2021) go into academia, even those who go on for a doctoral degree. This current graduate culture is unsustainable and detrimental to the future health of the geosciences. Academic culture also needs to change its focus from rewarding only individual accomplishments to recognizing the performance and achievement of teams.

Culture change in departments is very difficult, and the first, essential step is to demonstrate it is needed. The perception of many faculty is that the status quo is working, so why change the system? Why is this change a high priority? Many faculty at research universities presume that all or at least most of their students will go into academia, but the data shows that this is not true (Figure 3.9b). Some may feel that only students who go into academia are successes and that only research accomplishments are important in graduate school. Faculty may also argue that they aren’t a “trade school” and shouldn’t be expected to train students for specific jobs.

The goal of graduate school is to educate students so they can have successful futures, regardless of their choice of career path. The skills and competencies discussed in this document are equally needed for future faculty as well as those in other segments of the workforce.

The primary drivers for change in graduate education are:

• Graduate students are going into a wide variety of careers and employment that are different than in the past and need additional different skills.
• The need for geoscientists to tackle important societal challenges is growing.
• Geoscience has become interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary requiring collaboration and teamwork.
• Industries are changing rapidly, and new employees lack important skills.
• Graduate enrollments are dropping and making positive changes in the academic environment, student preparation for successful careers, and a focus on societally important problems will lead to increased enrollment and retention.
• The geoscience workforce and graduate enrollments are one of the least diverse of the sciences and a focus on addressing societal and local community issues attracts students from underrepresented groups (see Mosher and Keane, 2021).
• Low enrollments impact institutional decisions on whether to replace faculty when they retire or leave the institution, how much financial support a department or program receives — ​or whether to keep a geoscience program at all.
• Many employers are hiring non-geoscientists to fill positions that require geoscience because there are not enough geoscience applicants.
• An increasing proportion of the private sector are hiring single geoscience employees who must be able to work with non-geoscientists (see Section 3: Graduate Programs and their Interface to Geoscience Work — ​Culture of Hiring and Employing Geoscientists).
• Some employers rely on individual relationships with departments or specific faculty in departments as conduits for hires, so a lot of talent is excluded, discriminating against those not in that pool. These small conduits don’t support the geoscience discipline at large and last only until said faculty retire or move to other institutions.

The COVID‑19 pandemic forced many changes to departmental practices, and the participants at the 2022 workshops recommended that graduate programs take advantage of any momentum for change created because of the pandemic.

There is abundant literature on change management strategies that can be used to educate heads and chairs, faculty, and deans (e.g., Cameron and Green, 2019; Schabracq, 2007). To make change, you need to identify all the stakeholders and design assessment metrics for managing change. Relationships and the organizational structure also need to be considered. The head or chair’s role is critical as they have direct communication with both the faculty and the dean or others in higher administration. When discussing changes to the graduate program, it is beneficial to have a mixture of students, faculty, alumni, and other employers work together with the head/chair and/or graduate program director to identify that which needs changing and possible solutions.

Convincing Faculty and Upper Administration of the Importance of Improving Skills for Graduate Students and Improving Graduate Mentorship

One issue that was the topic of lengthy discussions at the 2018 Geoscience Employers workshop, the 2019 Heads/chairs summit and the two combined academic and employer workshops in 2022 was what would convince faculty and upper administration of the importance of improving the broader skills of graduate students, and improving graduate mentoring by faculty? To make effective and lasting change, those undergoing change and those whose approval for change is needed must see a concrete benefit. People are usually busy, so they must see value for change and have incentives to change.

Student legacy is important to faculty and departments. The departmental surveys (see Section 3: Graduate Programs and their Interface to Geoscience Work — ​The Operational Framework; Figure 3.3) show that the majority (~70%) of departments and graduate programs measure their success based on the employment of their finishing graduate students. The next important measure listed (30–45%) is degree completion. Thus, developing the skills and competencies necessary for future employment success and mentoring students through their degree to completion is the primary motivator for change to graduate geoscience programs. The department’s success depends on it.

The participants recommended leveraging external pressures. Improving the rankings of specific degree programs is important to both faculty and administrators. Although numbers of publications and citations and levels of grant support have a large impact on these rankings, the overall quality and size of the graduate program is also part of the calculation. Student legacy and success outside the academic umbrella help advance program and institutional national rankings. The National Research Council assessment uses the number of doctoral students, the percentage of students completing, times to degrees, academic plans of graduating students, graduate student activities and other student related issues. The US News and World Report Best Graduate Schools ranking is largely based on the opinions of graduate advisors and departmental heads/chairs, and the perceived quality of a graduate program can be influenced by reports from undergraduate alumni who attend other graduate schools on what their experiences were like. This Best Graduate Schools ranking methodology is changing and will in the future include surveys of professionals who hire or work with recent graduates and statistical factors such as job placement success and student/faculty ratios. Thus, there will be an increasing need for programs to focus on student success in future careers.

Increasing one’s rankings helps in recruiting students, and in convincing the upper administration to support the graduate program. Successful alumni with positive experiences during their education also lead to more philanthropy and more willingness to come back and contribute their time as well as money. One possible incentive for faculty to encourage their students to explore non-academic careers is the potential payback from such alumni, or potentially cooperative research funding from them or their employers.

Another external pressure is the need to improve admissions and retention of graduate students. Higher graduation potential and successful graduate student placements post-degree lead to more graduate student interest in admissions to programs. Professional development opportunities are also an incentive for students to apply. Effective mentoring programs contribute to retention and timely completion of degrees. More graduate students also lead to more publications, which impacts rankings.

Universities need tuition dollars, so if a program doesn’t attract students because of a toxic or problematic academic culture, that can lead to a slow-to-fast downwards spiral. The threat of department closures in some geoscience disciplines is real; data supports this happening when enrollments are down significantly. Making faculty aware and cognizant of the American Geoscience Institute (AGI) statistics and trends — ​such as the plummeting graduate enrollment and number of degrees awarded (see Section 3: Graduate Programs and their Interface to Geoscience Work — ​Dynamics of the Labor Supply Chain; Figure 3.14a,b) and examples of program closures is important to do. It is essentially a crisis opportunity, with the pandemic and the existing drop-off trend in enrollments. Growth in enrollments lead to more departmental funding and upper administrative support.

Upper administration needs to be convinced of the long-term importance of these changes, i.e., more students and more successful students, higher rankings, increased philanthropy, increased enrollments, attracting high caliber faculty. Administrative resistance is usually financial, so it is important to show that changes will have positive financial impact through more grants, higher enrollments and increased philanthropy.

Departments may also need to help change their administrators’ perceptions of the geosciences. Administrators may need a clearer understanding of what the discipline does and its importance, and the underpinning skills and competencies that geoscience graduates need for employment. This document and other reports (e.g., National Academies of Science, 2016a & b) explain the skills that employers are seeking in graduate students and can be used to make the case to upper administration that geoscience graduates need a specific suite of skills. Departments have successfully used the call for action in the Vision and Change in the Geosciences: The Future of Undergraduate Geoscience Education document (Mosher and Keane, 2021) to get support from administrators for major change, and this document can be used in the same way.

For programs that have ABET accredited programs, or for others responding to accreditor requirements, as with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), the requirements can be a tipping point to move faculty and administrators towards efforts to revise student learning outcomes and more effectively assess student skills and competencies.

Creating Change

Cultural and structural changes to graduate programs require active participation of heads/chairs and graduate program directors, faculty, students, alumni/employers, professional societies, and funding agencies. Each has an important role to play in making effective change. Heads/chairs and graduate program directors must lead and oversee the change and communicate with upper administration. Department faculty, as a whole, will need to make changes to the overall program, and individually to what and how they teach and mentor students. Students need to advocate for changes and take ownership of their graduate education. Alumni and employers need to be actively involved in graduate programs. Professional societies should work with departments and employers to provide external opportunities for students and disseminate the results of this initiative and the need for transformative change. Funding agencies should make changes to their requirements for graduate student support and provide avenues for funding change and collaboration between academics and employers. Critical to success is collaboration between all these different entities. The sections below summarize the findings of this initiative and discuss the primary roles, responsibilities and advice for each, ways to collaborate and the synergies between the stakeholders and departments and faculty. It is important for everyone to read and consider what the roles are for each other and what the others have to offer that supports them in making successful changes.

Heads/Chairs, Graduate Program Directors

Heads/chairs and graduate program directors must take a leadership role in creating change. It requires convincing faculty and upper administration leadership that there is a need for change and providing a proposed solution to do so. It is best to use concrete examples to convince them of the need for change, such as student numbers, ABET or other accreditor requirements, negative grant funding reviews because of lack of graduate student support in budget requests, and outcomes from this initiative.

Highlight the impacts of changes on student success by using case study examples (see Section 7 : Fostering Change in Academic Communities: Case Studies). Showing faculty that other programs have good results with these types of changes will make them more likely to buy in.

Emphasize that employers value research and that the goal is for finishing graduate students additionally to have a solid integration of technical and non-technical skills. Identify the coalition of the willing — ​those who will engage in the effort, and work around the intransigent ones. In some cases, convincing isn’t an issue, but if it is, one should prioritize smaller and relatively painless changes first. Then work to maintain momentum after the early easy wins.

Change requires champions at all levels, and some of the most persuasive champions are those who were initially against change but were won over by specific cases and examples that demonstrate the value of the changes implemented. One approach is to create a Proof of Concept (POC) “Bungee”, a concept proposal that will test whether one of the desired changes will work. Identify a specific problem and propose a solution, then agree to either continue or discontinue it depending on results. Identifying specific ideas to test makes change less nebulous and overwhelming. Often once you get faculty to change something, they don’t want to make changes again, even if that is reverting to the prior way of doing things.

Showing how the changes being advocated for students also help faculty, their research groups and programs is a valuable approach. For example, if a graduate program is adopting IDPs, the faculty and students need to be taught how to use them effectively. The department chair/head can set the stage by meeting with each faculty member yearly where they discuss the faculty’s goals for next year, what was accomplished the current year, and their most important accomplishment of the year and career. Faculty at all career stages benefit and start to see the value of these planning exercises. Having them do an IDP of their own will let them see how IDPs work and their value. Another method for change is to gradually introduce IDPs to incoming students and their advisors. In doing this over a period of years, all students will have gone through the process. Current students and their faculty advisors will see the benefits, and many may develop them as well.

Heads/chairs should provide vision, create buy-in, develop strategy, follow through with actions, and provide resources and incentives in support. For success one needs a critical mass of faculty and students who support change. It is important to solicit ideas from all faculty and get feedback on strategic planning for ways to make changes to graduate program at all levels.

Many departments have done retreats for undergraduate education and would benefit from having such an event focused on graduate education. Faculty retreats provide an excellent venue for faculty to discuss and define student learning outcomes and needed programmatic changes, and for the faculty to work together as a team to improve their graduate program.

Faculty need to recognize that the changes discussed will improve and benefit their program, and in the long run make their work easier. Career development will benefit them and their students directly. Remind faculty that the skills we want to teach students also prepare them to be successful in academia, the private sector, and government — ​which is good for their own group’s survival. Pursue grants (i.e., the NSF Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program, or other funding sources) to support the costs of making change. Success in making change should be celebrated, verbally and in writing, and if possible, with some symbolic or substantive recognition, such as awards or bonuses, pay increases, etc.

External leveraging can also have an impact by paying for time and effort towards design and implementation of change. Cultural changes are often driven by access to funding. Many industries and national labs/agencies are interested in cooperative programs with universities and may provide some funding support for them. Additionally, NSF has programs specifically targeting such cooperative programs (e.g., NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers Program (IUCRC); Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI)). At NSF, funding levels in core disciplinary programs are not growing. Most of the new money is going to new technologies and synergistic efforts, and NSF’s new Technology, Innovation and Partnerships Directorate (TIP) **will increase the level of support for collaborative projects that “**advance use-inspired and translational research in all fields of science and engineering”. These cooperative programs require faculty and even departments to work together as teams.

Evaluate your department’s culture. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” (attributed to Peter Drucker): no matter how strong your strategic plan for change, if your organization’s culture doesn’t encourage implementation, it will fail. To change culture, you must move away from how things have always been done (systems), demonstrate through events or decisions what is valued (symbols), and expect and model behavior that matches your goals. Culture is what you allow to happen, so it is important not to tolerate unacceptable behavior. In support of changing behavior, departments can develop expectations for faculty, students, staff, program department, and administration. Make sure to address dispute resolution guidelines, processes for addressing complaints and concerns, and the consequences of negative actions (e.g., https://www.jsg.utexas.edu/people/jsg-community/for-the-jsg-community/workplace-expectations-guidelines/). Don’t tolerate behaviors that don’t meet the guidelines, and where possible, provide positive reinforcement.

Bringing in external input is an effective way of helping faculty understand the need for change. External program reviews every 5 to 10 years can identify systematic changes that may be needed. Alumni Boards or Advisory Councils that meet annually or biannually can provide more immediate outside awareness and help, especially if the members are from diverse backgrounds and professional directions. Another strategy is to broaden the departmental lecture series with talks by speakers from both new and traditional career paths to expose faculty and students to other industries and types of employment. Regular contact with those professional community members makes a variety of career directions more tangible to students and their faculty advisors. Some departments have appointed and support alumni liaisons from among their faculty.

Another way to create change is through hiring new faculty. Departments can seek to recruit and hire faculty with diverse backgrounds, not just the traditional academia track. Newly retired professionals or younger faculty with some prior industry experience could have a positive impact with different perspectives on the graduate program. Non tenure-track visiting professors from industry or hiring permanent Professors of Practice are another option to showcase careers beyond academia.

Hiring decisions are generally tilted towards faculty members who will publish the most papers or bring in the most grant dollars, but hiring plans and candidate evaluations should include questions about graduate supervision and mentoring. In faculty interviews, ask about mentoring plans and views on graduate student supervision. Also strive to hire faculty who give attention to education as well as to their research. When you interview candidates, ask them about their opinions on the department and what motivates them to choose your department over others. Make sure the candidates hired know what is expected of them in terms of teaching, research, grant support, supervision, and mentoring.

Student-centered initiatives should be developed with the goal of better preparing graduate students and diversifying the student cohort. Make these outcomes measurable and specific. Having students on departmental committees provides easy access to their input and educates them on how the department and university work. To shift graduate education to a more student focused enterprise, empower students to propose changes. Survey current students to find out what they want and do exit surveys and alumni surveys 3–5 years out to find out how they think the graduate program is doing currently, and how it served them as students. This information can be very valuable in guiding changes. Students generally know the careers they want to pursue, and/or classes they want to take, especially if those classes aren’t currently offered in the program. Use the student cohort as motivation for making changes to courses and programs, based on student desires and directions for employment. Emphasize that the department intends and expects all graduate students to be successful, and the program is there to allow them to thrive and succeed. Focusing on student centered initiatives will encourage student advocates for change.

To be effective in leading change, heads/chairs and graduate program directors need awareness of and should seek training in change management and leadership studies and courses. Such training is available through self-paced modules, formal short courses, as well as through reading the extensive literature on this subject (Cameron and Green, 2019; Gill, 2002). They need to be guided through key strategies, including how to make small changes that make a big difference: for example, how to roll out and institutionalize Individual Development Plans, or getting faculty to define performance expectations for their research labs, so there are no student surprises (e.g., living documents that outlines meeting times, office hours, authorship practices, turnaround times for manuscript review/revisions, etc.).

Incentivizing Change

Heads, chairs, program directors and deans can incentivize change through a variety of “carrots and sticks”. Positive rather than negative reinforcement works best. Carrots should come from the head/chair, and “sticks” through natural consequences (e.g., university will shut down small programs, rankings will decrease, etc.). The conflict between what professors need from graduate students, including meeting deadlines and funding tied to research, and what employers need students to learn is real. However, the students’ best interests should be a priority. Tailoring programs to match the long-term needs of students by integrating activities or courses that take smaller amounts of time can meet both the faculty and employers’ needs. As an example, moving professional development activities online can be very effective at meeting student needs with customized training and practice rather than having a faculty member offer an in-person course.

Rewarding faculty for excellence in teaching, mentoring, and student professional development and/or for having student-led publications provides a strong incentive for them to excel at these aspects of their job. Yearly faculty reviews and promotion and tenure reviews should take these into account along with traditional research-related criteria, essentially changing the requirements for faculty advancement. To change the focus from individual to team-based achievements, heads/chairs also need to reward faculty for performance on teams, and or supporting or leading team-based initiatives. It is important to recognize and support those faculty who are stepping outside of comfort zones.

Rewards could be performance bonuses or achievement awards. Instituting or increasing such rewards can encourage faculty change and help develop a more student focused program. Review of faculty would need to be across all levels, and could be based on graduate student exit surveys, course reviews, student nominations, and other appropriate measures. Similar awards should be offered to graduate students, to pass on the importance of these elements to the next generation of faculty.

Other possible incentives include teaching release, reduced teaching load, extra TA support, full credit for co-teaching a course, funding for development of new courses or equipment, or summer support for new course development or involvement in graduate program management. Depending on the program, another incentive could be extra teaching credit for courses with expanded professional development elements, for larger enrollment classes, or for those that integrate value-added outcomes (e.g., preparation for the IBA, Reynolds Cup or ROV competitions, etc.). Another would be funding or buy-outs for faculty to build teaching modules based on “big data” resources for others to use. Which of these are feasible will depend on the department, the flexibility given to the department head/chair by the upper administration, and available resources. Demonstrating to the upper administration the benefit to students and the program can help in getting support for these incentives. Also, most likely, such incentives would be offered to a small number of faculty in any given year.

Two areas, coursework and mentoring, were identified by academic participants as issues that required specific incentives for change.

Coursework

While a reasonable solution to developing skills and competencies needed for future success (and in support of graduate student research) is through coursework (see Section 5 : Organizational Framework for Graduate Programs — ​Coursework), departments may face a range of issues in using this approach. For example, working with large sensor datasets requires the kind of skillset that generally gets developed through taking specialized coursework. Yet graduate programs and graduate students can face many issues related to new or additional courses. Some doctoral programs have no specific coursework requirements for the degree, and many graduate programs limit the number of credits that students can take. If a student is pursuing a two-year master’s degree, then it is hard to fit a lot of coursework in and also complete a research-focused thesis. Doctoral students have more time-to-degree, but the depth of the research they must do, and the need to publish that research, put limits on the number of courses they can take.

Other struggles exist between administrative perspectives (e.g., the need to have threshold enrollments to give faculty credit for teaching a course) versus faculty perspectives regarding students needing a course (or faculty wanting to teach a course). Enrollment limitations mean that it may take a while to build up enough student “demand” to reach acceptable class sizes. Another issue is getting faculty buy-in to teaching new courses and ensuring sufficient student demand so that said courses can be offered regularly. These concerns tend to be less of a problem in large programs, but in smaller programs teaching specialized courses may create faculty teaching overloads, particularly if a minimum number of students are required for faculty to get teaching credit for them. Programs with a cohort structure can help avoid these problems if the needed course is a department’s priority, as the students all take the same courses.

Heads/Chairs should find effective ways to foster team teaching, especially by experts in different departments/colleges/schools (e.g., geoscience and business or social science), that could deliver truly transdisciplinary courses. Key in this is finding a way around “bean counting” and workload issues for faculty. Many entering graduate students are missing certain skills or are not up to expected standards, so working for university agreements that allow graduate students to take undergraduate or out-of-college graduate courses will allow them to obtain these missing skillsets. These changes also help take some of the workload off departmental faculty.

In some cases, having students take courses in different departments can help them develop needed skills without adding to the department faculty’s workload. Another alternative is to develop a course that is taught by industry employees and/or alumni as guest instructors. Such courses can help broaden graduate student experiences in applied disciplines. Those going into these areas would benefit, and those going into academia would gain insights for their own future students.

If no courses are required in a degree program or the number is limited, students must be incentivized to take them, and faculty to offer them. One way to make faculty and students aware of curricular needs is to have industry guests and/or partners convey the content areas of importance and needed skills they are expecting to see in freshly graduated new employees. Students can be incentivized through demonstrating the benefits of courses, the progression in their skills development, with the outcomes or motivations clearly emphasized (i.e., employers like to see x-y-z, these skills are transferable, etc.), or through the direct relevance of a course to helping their research quality or progress. Skills are empowering and foster interdisciplinary work. Students will gravitate to courses that help them develop such skills, and enrollments in those courses will grow, which should encourage other faculty with lower enrollment classes to change what they are doing and start incorporating or emphasizing skills in their current courses to attract more students. Faculty with connections to the private sector or government agencies/labs will also see increased interest from students for courses and research projects.

A first step in incentivizing faculty to teach such courses is to not disincentivize them by focusing on adding new courses for teaching core skills. Doing so may make faculty feel as if they are abandoning their core academic ‘mission’ for something new that is not in their wheelhouse. It is more effective to embed key skills-development activities into disciplinary courses that faculty are already teaching. One can build new skills and perspectives into courses through co-teaching, which can be incentivized by increasing support for co-instructors and giving ‘full credit’ for co-teaching. One can also increase teaching assistant support in such courses, using either graduate students or upper-division undergraduates. In some cases, one can have senior-level graduate students take over the running of a course from the faculty who developed it, and with faculty supervision they can then mentor the next ‘generation’ of senior graduate students to take over teaching it. For example, lab techniques courses or programming and database management courses can work well being taught this way. This approach relieves the faculty of continually teaching the same skill-based course and gives graduate students peer to peer training, teaching experience, and the opportunity to better master the skill through teaching it to others.

One can incentivize faculty to allow and encourage their students to take courses that develop skills by emphasizing how the courses will help their students do their research, get published, and reduce their time to degree. Faculty can also be relieved of spending time teaching their students needed skills (e.g., statistics, computer languages and programming, GIS, working with instrumentation etc.) one-on-one with each of their students.

Recognizing that many departments do not have faculty appropriate to teach many of these skill-based courses, participants also discussed ways to share courses across departments and institutions. Recommendations included open-source courses, either delivered by an instructor online, or by sharing the teaching materials (e.g., PowerPoints, labs exercises, etc.) that other instructors could adapt. Another idea is to create sets of curricular modules for key courses or course topics that faculty can adapt for their courses (undergraduate or graduate), with modules that could segue to include spatial visualization and data analyses of statistical data. One example is VHub, a community-managed cyberinfrastructure for volcanology that has a whole suite of modules developed for teaching volcanology and hazard assessment, and more recently sharing and crowd-sourcing modeling codes.

Mentorship

The importance of effective mentoring was identified as crucial to student success. Participants discussed several incentives that could be used to encourage faculty to improve their mentoring practices. It was recognized that without incentives for changing how they advise and mentor students, faculty are not likely to pay attention. Rewards for improving mentoring can be considered in determining merit salary increases, awards, TA support for grad students, bonuses, reduced teaching loads, lower committee service, etc. Departments can make changes in expectations for faculty promotion to include using the faculty efforts towards ensuring their students’ success as a measure in tenure decisions, and in decisions on promotion to full professor. Mentoring quality should become an explicit criterion in faculty annual and promotion evaluations, treating it as a separate category for review in addition to teaching, research, and service. If possible, establish funding or decreased teaching loads to support moving to IDPs and related structured mentoring plans. If money or time is available, then faculty will seek it out and use it.

Awards for excellence in mentoring should become common within departments, graduate schools, universities and externally through professional societies. Mentoring, however, is difficult to measure and quantify. Student and faculty annual reports would need to be read by awards committees and/or university graduate offices, not only by the advisor or graduate student committee. Exit interviews with graduating students can be used to reward faculty mentorship, and students could nominate faculty for mentoring awards. If a dean’s office or a professional society makes these awards, they will carry more prestige.

Perhaps one of the most effective incentives for NSF funded faculty is the new 2023 requirement for graduate mentoring plans — ​i.e., developed IDPs updated annually. At the time of the 2022 workshops, NSF proposals did not explicitly consider the nature of mentoring interactions between graduate students and advisor, and participants recommended all federal funding agencies start requiring graduate student mentoring plans, like what are required for postdoctoral funding. Participants also recommended that departments should require faculty to provide mentoring plans for prospective students before admissions and support decisions are approved.

Many faculty will need training in how to be effective mentors and in how to use IDPs. Greater access and exposure to training opportunities offered from professional societies and other organizations (e.g., online) is needed. As part of effective mentoring, faculty need to be made aware of common student mental health issues, differences in generational priorities, and the importance of emotional intelligence. When possible, empower junior faculty, as they are closest in age to the next generation of students and thus more in touch with student culture, needs, and wants. Junior faculty can influence culture by bringing in new ideas from their past experiences and can help break “generational trauma” — ​just because older faculty had to “suffer” through various challenges, doesn’t mean it continues to be necessary for students today. Also, students need training on how to learn to navigate a problem without it becoming traumatic, or it take far longer than it should and setting them back.

When hiring faculty, mentoring experience, philosophy, and potential should be explicitly considered during the interview process.

Collaboration is the new normal in research — ​we are no longer in a time when one investigator can work alone on a project — ​so graduate students may end up having several potential project mentors. This collaborative model is followed by most employers, including federal and state governments.

To be effective in implementing changes in their courses or mentoring practices, faculty will need to be provided with information and resources, for their students and for themselves. Heads/chairs should identify and highlight for faculty any department, cross-department, or university resources. For issues where the faculty member cannot provide needed support, students will need aid in getting the help they need (e.g., professional development, mental health issues, etc.).

Departments and Graduate Programs

Academic and employer participants at the Summit and all workshops associated with this initiative discussed what departments and graduate programs should do to better prepare students for future success. Many actions can be taken by individual faculty. However, department-wide coordination is needed and many actions require full faculty participation. It is important to build a faculty consensus around common goals and objectives for core skills. Departments should decide where in their programs to introduce different skills, and how many and which skills they intend to emphasize in their various degree paths.

The first step in any efforts toward graduate curricular transformation is defining the critical learning outcomes (in terms of skills and competencies) of graduate programs. One can then follow through on this analysis in making any appropriate programmatic changes, and then through a more detailed review and revision of the educational activities and pathways for different graduate students (those specific to subdisciplines; doctorates versus master’s, etc.).

Defining Learning Outcomes

Geoscience graduate programs need to define the learning outcomes they expect all master’s and all doctoral students to achieve while in their program. Graduate programs may need to take into consideration what type of careers their graduate students generally follow (e.g., weather versus energy); however, most of the skills needed by academia and industry/private sector/government agency/labs are not distinct and are necessary across a wide variety of careers. The skills and competencies recommended by employers in Section 4: Skills Framework can serve as a guide. Individual faculty, research groups or specific sub-disciplines within departments may have additional expected learning outcomes. In defining expected outcomes, it is important to remember that research competencies are critical outcomes for nearly all graduate degrees, and to be realistic as to how much any individual student can accomplish and to what depth. For example, master’s degrees are generally two-years, which puts a time constraint on what expected learning outcomes should be.

Some universities and colleges require departments to state what skills graduate students will leave their program with upon graduation. These requirements are generally driven by accrediting requirements or other mandates. Their graduate programs must define clear learning outcomes for graduating students and provide measures of graduating student competency in these outcomes. ABET accredited programs or those with other accreditation (e.g., SACS) will have proscribed methods for evaluating success, and these can be used by other programs as well. Some accrediting agencies do not clearly recognize the ability to conduct research is a student learning outcome, however, and seem to expect similar types of learning outcomes as for undergraduate or K–12 programs. Thus, listing research as a critical skill and competency for graduate students should be part of any statement of expected learning outcomes. Also, some accreditor-mandated assessment requirements can be tailored to other measures of graduate accomplishment (e.g., comprehensive exams, thesis/dissertation defenses, public presentations, etc.).

Some universities require clear learning outcomes for both undergraduate and graduate courses. These outcomes are usually assessed through exams, presentations, written work, or other student products (e.g., computer programs or models, simulations, etc.). How well these are developed and aligned with the course is generally assessed through student evaluations of courses and professors. One suggested recommendation by participants was to put NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) competencies on course syllabi (https://www.naceweb.org/career-readiness/competencies/career-readiness-defined/) to provide a standard explanation of learning outcomes (see example in Box 6.1).

Documenting graduate student achievement of a programs’ learning outcomes can be done in many ways. As the primary goal of most graduate programs is competency in research, the common outcomes of research should be recognized as documentation, such as theses, dissertations, publications, presentations at regional, national, and international meetings, and letters of reference (or verbal references). Other kinds of documentation can include other student products, certificates, and in-person or online courses (e.g., Coursera, edX). Additional metrics can include undergraduate mentoring, being active in professional societies, or leadership in local or regional community efforts. Programs can assess these outcomes using surveys of students at degree completion, surveys of faculty (including external committee members) at degree completion, post-graduation surveys of alumni, and feedback from employers of recent alumni.

Graduate students need to know the expected learning outcomes of their programs, and get guidance on how to achieve them, whether it will be from within their program or through external sources. While learning outcomes will vary between programs, the specific learning outcomes that are strongly recommended by both the employers and academics involved in this initiative are presented in Section 4: Skills Framework. Many of these recommended skills and competencies can be developed during research activities (Section 5: Organizational Framework for Graduate Programs — ​Research). Students can use these expected outcomes to guide their graduate education and for their self-assessments, coupled with developing and using individual development plans (IDPs). It is important for students to find a balance between learning to do (and doing) research and core- and non-core skill development, and graduate programs need to structure their programs to provide a good balance and solid integration of both. As discussed previously, there are subtle differences and commonalities between skills and research.

Evaluation of academic program goals should be an ongoing endeavor, and qualitative and quantitative achievements should be assessed and celebrated. Both traditional disciplinary skills and transdisciplinary skills should be evaluated. Annual graduate student expectation assessments should reflect these goals.

Meeting Learning Outcomes

Graduate programs should deliberately plan and coordinate their graduate coursework to meet their student learning outcomes, include needed skills, and build competencies. A self-assessment matrix of what skills are or are not developed within graduate courses will help identify which courses to revise, and whether new courses are needed (Mogk, 2013; https://serc.carleton.edu/earthandmind/posts/curriculum_desi.html). Once done, faculty need to clarify course learning outcomes, so students know which courses provide introductions to specific skills, and which provide practice in those skills. Possible suggested approaches to implementing such curricular changes included having faculty choose which skills they are comfortable teaching and/or could incorporate into their classes, working with on-campus teaching and learning centers programs on revising curricula to incorporate training in professional skills, or hiring an education consultant or specialist who can work directly with faculty to help them adapt their teaching approaches. Many geoscience graduate programs have no “core” curriculum, and their courses are “siloed”. When recommended skills are covered in appropriate courses and identified in course learning outcomes and in a skills-course matrix, students can navigate through the available coursework to develop the skills they need.

To be more student focused, departments should endeavor to offer courses that serve student needs (e.g., developing marketable skills) and impact student placement post-graduation. Classes that mirror fields important to industry may also lead to graduate student research funding, which also can drive change. Electives or special topics courses either within geoscience departments or from other departments are one approach, such as stand-alone courses on science communication, data analytics, coding and computer programming, GIS, and/or geospatial statistics and reasoning. For some of these skills (e.g., GIS, data analytics, coding, etc.) to be incorporated into discipline specific classes, prior student familiarity is needed. Other skills, such as written and oral communication, problem solving and critical thinking, teamwork, systems thinking, etc., can readily be embedded into discipline specific classes (see Section 5: Organizational Framework for Graduate Programs — ​Coursework), though again, it is important for the students to know that they are developing these skills in those courses. Team-taught, case study, and highly engaged “seminar” classes can be very effective, and many employers are willing to provide practical problems to be addressed. Coordination with faculty in different departments can help to expand course offerings. To ensure geoscience content, co-teaching with faculty from other departments (e.g., statistics or computer science) will allow students to work on real world geoscience problems and can be cross-listed for both programs.

Other possibilities for developing key skills are team-based, cross-disciplinary, longer-term projects for student groups to work on together (e.g., the Reynolds Cup, the Imperial Barrel Award, Google’s coding or ROV competitions, SEG’s Challenge Bowl, etc.), as part of a course or co-curricular activity. Success at these also brings prestige and attention to graduate programs and may increase enrollment interest. Entrepreneurial activities are another way to build useful skills, and some universities allow students the flexibility to engage in such enterprises. In such cases the student’s committee should provide oversight in terms of student commitments to ensure continued progress in their graduate work.

Graduate programs can develop certificate programs in conjunction with other departments to support students’ needs for additional skill sets. Departments should also provide their graduate students with information on available certificate programs and/or badging opportunities on their campuses and encourage them to take part in those that are appropriate to meet their educational goals. Certificates can cover the gamut, from data analytics, machine learning and AI, computer programming (Python, R, etc.), program or business management, science communication, leadership, and more. When institutions don’t offer appropriate certificate opportunities, another option is for graduate programs to identify and encourage Open Badge opportunities that students can accumulate from external sources. Students also need to be made aware of pertinent external training opportunities and certificates (e.g., OSHA 40 hr. HAZWOPER course) needed for specific employment directions.

It is also important for programs to remember that academia is a major employer, especially for their doctoral graduates. Departments should review what they find valuable in faculty colleagues — ​not just their research productivity — ​and strive to educate their own students accordingly.

Another programmatic change to consider re-evaluating is qualifying/comprehensive examination requirements within the context of the broader expectations for graduate education. Programs could require students to write press releases, give 3-minute presentations on their research, and/or develop project plans and proposed budgets. Some departments or universities also hold contests (e.g., best 3-minute thesis talk competitions), annual graduate forums, and interdisciplinary poster symposia, similar in form to those at many professional society conferences, where students present their ongoing research, receive feedback and gain practice. In such cases, programs can encourage alumni, employers, or faculty from other departments to participate as reviewers of student work. Giving prizes for best in different categories incentivizes participation and putting their best effort into it.

One disturbing observation made by participating employers was that currently graduating geoscience students have difficulty defining problems and identifying how to apply a solution, although they can readily solve problems that are given to them. As many students end up having their thesis topic and work largely defined by the already funded projects of their faculty mentors, these students need their own independent opportunities to define problems. One approach is to orient students to the overall research project and then have them define problem(s) within that frame that they wish to pursue. Students who develop their own research can also use additional practice. As part of the qualifying exam some departments require students to prepare more than one research proposal, with one or more in areas outside their chosen project or even their primary field. An important additional component to include in qualifying exams is having them discuss the significance of the project and how their results could be used. Project-based classes are another option, where students need to define problems and try to solve them. In this case they also can be required to identify solutions.

Department websites should include a list of the universal skills needed by graduate students presented in Section 4: Skills Framework, with a link to this report and relevant sections. Graduate programs should also provide information, resources and guidance for co-curricular activities that can help build student competencies in important skills (See Section 5: Organizational Framework for Graduate Programs — ​Co-curricular Activities). It is often unclear to students which skills they are developing in such activities, or what activities are available, or how to access them and/or become involved. Programs should develop checklists of student career development activities beyond their classes (e.g., project management, research ethics, leadership, certificates, etc.), and post it prominently on their departmental webpages, along with information about online courses, professional society activities and short courses, public policy opportunities, externships, co-op programs, and other external co-curricular activities where students can learn or practice each skill. These kinds of resources are also useful if student mentors know their student’s career goals (which can get identified and refined through an IDP) so they can help the students identify the specific skills they need to gain, and which co-curricular activities might support that. When possible, make funds available for student professional development resources (short-courses, certificates, drone licenses, etc.).

Programmatic Needs

Participants at the Summit and all workshops associated with this initiative recognized that to shift the focus of graduate education, effective mentoring is needed. One recommendation was for departments to require faculty provide a mentorship plan to admit students into the graduate program, and for all graduate students to have a mentoring plan. Students and advisors would need to identify student interests and potential directions (most effectively via IDP process) early in the students’ degree programs. Mentoring plans should be tailored to the student’s career path and tied to student learning outcomes. Program websites should include a description of IDPs and how they are developed, with links either to sample IDP forms or their department template (see Appendices A & B). Another suggestion was to consider programmatic mentors who are not advisors (formalized or informal).

Some departments admit students to graduate programs with a mentor or faculty advisory team, not an individual advisor, so students and faculty members can get to know each other and their expectations before committing to a specific project. Other departments are cohort-based programs or may have incorporated group rotations in the first year. Students are assigned to a student cohort, not a faculty advisor. For example, students work with three faculty members as a group for three-month periods or meet with 3–5 faculty, and as a group generate a prioritization and wish list for placement. These kinds of approaches, however, require flexible graduate student funding and won’t work in many departments.

Participants also recommended that discussion around mental health be normalized, establishing the “state of things” in the department — ​e.g., what is the mental health status of our students? If it’s not good, then maybe talking about that will help faculty, chairs/heads, and deans recognize the need for changes. Participants noted that we need to grow students, not robots, and recognize their needs for mental health support and work/life balance.

Graduate Student Recruitment and Retention, with Emphasis on Students Underrepresented in the Geosciences

Geoscience departments need to effectively recruit students to their graduate programs and increase the diversity of their student body. As enrollments in graduate programs decrease, all fields of science are competing for a smaller pool of students. Geoscience graduate programs need to retool their programs to recruit from a broader enrollment base. Advice for recruiting and retaining students from underrepresented groups into undergraduate programs (summarized in Mosher and Keane, 2021) is also valid for graduate school. For example, a major attraction to the geosciences for students from underrepresented groups and other sciences is the opportunity to solve problems of societal importance and to address more heavily impacted underserved community issues (e.g., environmental degradation, climate change, water quality and availability, toxic wastes, geohazards, etc.). All students, especially those from underrepresented groups, need strong mentoring to navigate graduate school and develop the skills and competencies they need for future success. By making needed changes to improve the graduate program and making it more student focused, departments will be more successful, both in attracting more, and more diverse students and in student degree completion.

Departments should endeavor to market geoscience graduate degrees as a means of developing the knowledge, skills and competencies needed to solve societal issues. Such marketing can be through active participation at conferences such as Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics & Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), National Association of Black Geologists and Geophysicists (NABGG), and other professional scientific and/or engineering societies with membership focused on underrepresented populations and/or visiting and collaborating with departments at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). Within one’s own institution, cross-institution collaboration and partnerships with other STEM departments, such as being part of certificate programs or through collaborative research, gives other science students an insight into what geoscientists do. The increase in transdisciplinary research helps facilitate reaching out to non-STEM students for involvement in geoscience graduate programs. Giving research talks or presentations in other departments helps market the geosciences as well. Many undergraduate students in other STEM and non-STEM fields want to make a difference in the world, but their field doesn’t readily lend itself to this desire, whereas the geosciences provide many opportunities.

Additionally, undergraduate students need to know that they can be more effective at addressing problems of interest if they have a graduate degree, that there are well-paying jobs for geoscientists, and that more geoscientists are needed now and in the future. Making these known factors known within your institution and community will make a difference.

As the geosciences takes on a larger role in addressing societal challenges, focusing on real world issues will attract today’s students, who overall want to make a difference. This focus requires greater acceptance of different, non-academic career paths, and better alignment between future employment needs and graduate programs. Mobilizing alumni and/or the employers of students, funding agencies, and professional societies will help departments develop this new generation of students.

Faculty

Employers and academic participants in the Summit and workshops recommended further training and support for faculty in effective teaching, mentoring, and supervising their graduate students to provide an education that results in successful students. Faculty need to become aware of the need to change and improve and be provided with the resources to do so. It was noted that the preparation of doctoral students for faculty roles is also limited, as evidenced by NSF early career workshops. Many faculty do not recognize the skills they are (and are not) developing in their current curriculum and courses, which skills are (or can be) developed through doing research, or what kinds of external co-curricular activities and resources are available. Faculty should review Section 4: Skills Framework to become familiar with the recommended skills and Section 5: Organizational Framework for Graduate Programs, which outlines the skills that can be developed in each of these categories, and evaluate what their current courses and research offers now, and how they can incorporate the teaching and practice of more of these skills into their graduate students’ education and research.

Most faculty teaching in geoscience programs are strong in terms of content but the pedagogies they use in their graduate classrooms need to evolve. The focus of improved instruction should be on results and enhancing the experiential base for graduate students — ​critical evaluation and seeking positive and genuine critique. Many external resources for improving pedagogy are available, and although these are generally geared towards undergraduate education, they still provide excellent strategies that are useful in graduate courses (Manduca et al., 2010; McConnell, 2019; Mosher and Keane, 2021). Additionally, by using reformed teaching methods, faculty are setting excellent examples for their graduate students, many of whom will become faculty themselves.

The Science Education Resource Center (SERC) provides numerous online resources and hosts valuable workshops for honing various teaching skills. NAGT has long offered a traveling workshops program in which recognized experts in geoscience education visit academic institutions to address a wide variety of topics from pedagogy to curriculum to strengthening departments and programs. The Earth Educators Rendezvous (EER), held every summer, also offers workshops and short courses on a variety of different topics, and provides the opportunity to network with other educators. Departments should encourage and financially support faculty attendance at these workshops. Two ongoing offerings that are particularly important for junior faculty are the Early Career Geoscience Faculty Workshop, which occurs as a standalone event annually, targeting faculty starting their first academic positions; and the Preparing for an Academic Career workshop, now occurring annually as part of the EER, which targets senior graduate students and postdoctoral scholars.

Many advisors would benefit from additional professional development opportunities in mentoring to provide more effective guidance to their students regarding nontechnical and professional skills. Many universities, professional societies and private firms offer professional development courses on these topics (in-person or online; e.g., edX, LinkedIn, Coursera, etc.), and faculty should be encouraged and supported financially to take them. NSF’s new requirement for faculty and other senior personnel to take mentor training and mentorship as part of each institutional RECR training may help address this need. Professional development courses can also help both students and faculty build characteristics such as leadership, time management, and budgeting. Also important is emotional intelligence (EQ skills) — ​self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management and collective competency of a team. Finishing students will need these abilities to be successful, but unless they are exposed to them during their education, they will find it difficult to develop them.

Faculty mentors have significant influence over the opportunities that their graduate students take advantage of. Mentors should encourage graduate students to seek out experiences in professional environments other than academia, and promote awareness of industry and government internship programs, externships, importance of professional society participation, and international opportunities. It is important to encourage students to keep doors open, and to be thoughtfully aware of the skills and competencies they have obtained through these experiences.

To mentor and provide good advice through the IDP process, faculty should know which skills that are needed in different professional settings and how their students can develop them or should direct their students to mentors or resources that can provide that information. Individual faculty, particularly research faculty, may tend to offer one-dimensional guidance related to career development and non-technical/professional skills. Having multiple faculty mentors will provide students with a more diverse perspective, though only if the faculty themselves have diverse experiences and/or training.

Employers in our various workshops and events noted that the level of achievement of many skills and competencies among students seems very dependent on the advisor. Many advisors may discourage their students from spending time learning professional skills, thinking students should focus on their research. Department heads/chairs tend to get pushback from faculty advisors on courses that are not directly related to the student’s research. Lack of training in how to teach and mentor (and/or conduct other academic responsibilities) perpetuates through the graduate education process under the guise of developing “independent problem-solving skills.” Unfortunately, this hurts the students going into academia (and ultimately their student advisees) as much if not more than those taking non-academic positions. Traditional aspects of geoscience graduate education are especially advisor-centric, with less advisory committee (or department) involvement than is desirable. Graduate programs need to find ways to break this mold and have better advising of students at the program level (see Section 5: Organizational Framework for Graduate Programs — ​Mentors).

The world has changed in a great number of ways, so faculty need to accept that what was acceptable mentoring and support during their graduate education and early career is not sufficient for the current generation of geoscience graduates. Department heads/chairs need to provide leadership in getting faculty to realize that things are not as they were when they were in school.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that faculty are already overloaded with responsibilities and requirements and have limited bandwidth to take on the additional work recommended in this section. Add in the COVID-related recognition of the importance of work/life balance, and departments will need to offer substantial incentives to get faculty to participate. Those who will take on additional duties need to be compensated, either with release time or other incentives. Heads/Chairs also need to make sure that these additional duties are distributed across the faculty and not consistently handled by the same few faculty members, especially new faculty, or those from diverse backgrounds as a form of cultural taxation. One way to share some of this load is to have faculty who attend workshops or professional development courses give seminars for their colleagues, where they communicate what they have learned.

The COVID‑19 pandemic impacted faculty as well as students. A problematic fallout from the pandemic is that many faculty struggled (and are still struggling) to find joy in teaching because of the loss of interaction with their students. This isolation is changing, but how fast it recovers depends on geographic location and institution. The lack of motivation to teach, coupled with heavy workloads, stress over university finances, low enrollments, delayed research, a loss of work/life balance, and other factors has led to faculty burnout. Solving this may require structural changes within the department to reengage them (Imad et al., 2022; Pautz and Diede, 2022). Both faculty and students need to find new ways to connect and recapture the advantages of interpersonal educational interactions. Cultivating strong relationships or partnerships with organizations that are addressing societal challenges, community issues, or developing new fields, technologies and research directions may give these faculty new interests to pursue and lead to new ways to connect with students.

For faculty, the post-COVID culture shift has created a new emphasis on work/life balance, and a resistance to overburdened workloads. Universities and departments may need to adjust tenure expectations to account for this shift or they may find an increasing number of faculty leaving for other types of employment. Providing professional development for faculty to develop new skills and emphasizing that helping students be successful is doing something important — ​that these actions can make a difference in the world.

Students

Graduate students need to take ownership of their graduate education. Many of the skills that are essential to the students’ research and future career success have become very widely recognized, with programs starting to address them in a number of ways, such as the universal need for effective verbal and written communication, quantitative and computational skills, data analytics, collaboration and teamwork skills, project and time management skills, and sophisticated analytical techniques. If a graduate program does not offer the opportunity to develop these skills, students should advocate for changes to the program and should seek out avenues within the institution or externally to acquire them.

The need for emotional intelligence, appropriate behavior, interpersonal skills, and ethics are generally more difficult to address within a graduate curriculum, but students should strive to develop them. Additionally, the growing importance of broader impacts and diversity-equity-inclusion considerations in the geosciences add yet another dimension of needs to graduate student education. Development of an IDP early in the student’s career allows students to take control of their education and allows for reflection on the competencies they seek to or have developed. Students should also consider how to sell or market these competencies effectively when looking for employment.

Graduate students face similar issues as faculty. Mental health among students has become increasingly problematic (e.g., Forrester, 2021; Council of Graduate Schools & The Jed Foundation, 2021), and was strongly exacerbated by the COVID‑19 pandemic (e.g., Liu et al., 2022). Graduate school has long been a stressful environment and can be overwhelming. Qualifying exams, thesis and dissertation defenses, negative reviews of papers, writers block, etc. put pressure on students who depend on success in these activities to achieve their degree and sought-after career. Many students do not finish their degrees, even if almost completed (STEM: 10–23% masters, Council of Graduate Schools, 2013; doctorate 36–51%, Young et al, 2019). Fear of failure is a large problem. Also, many of the geoscience issues we study (i.e., natural disasters, environmental degradation, etc.) can lead to or reinforce depression. With the long list of skills and competencies outlined in Section 4: Skills Framework, it will be important for faculty to help students develop an IDP that will allow them to gain the skills they need for their own career goals while completing their research.

Students need to develop positive survival instincts and learn resilience to trauma or negative outcomes. Faculty mentors need to find a balance between sheltering their students and exposing them to negative outcomes. Students need to learn to overcome the fear of failure, as without taking risks or moving beyond what has been done before, true creativity doesn’t occur. Graduate students need to learn to deal with disappointment or roadblocks and be persistent. Helping them accept criticism of their work and use it to constructively to improve its quality is important. Students also need to be able to offer answers without fear of being wrong, avoiding chastisement or relying only on developing a thick skin. It’s important for faculty mentors to have discussions with their students about the need for a healthy, balanced lifestyle, including being able to unplug and be refreshed, how to work optimally with mental breaks, external activities, etc., and learning to say “no”.

Students need mentors who they can turn to when they are feeling overwhelmed, and unfortunately this is usually not their advisor. In some cases, they don’t want to disappoint their advisor or don’t think that they can live up to their advisor’s standards, or that their advisor is their harshest critic. Solutions include having multiple mentors, a “care counselor” or access to mental health help without a stigma.

Professional development courses for graduate students usually focus on obtaining employment — ​everything from applying, interviewing, networking, virtual brands, etc. These skills can be handled by a university career center or by knowledgeable faculty members or external speakers. The types of professional skills discussed for faculty (e.g., leadership, emotional intelligence, collective competency of a team, time management, budgeting) are best learned by example and experience. Having faculty with these skills to learn from is critically important. Some of these less tangible skills, however, can be developed by getting involved in mentoring younger students, volunteering and engaging in organizations or community efforts, and communicating the societal or global relevance of research to the public. Students interviewing for any employment (academia, industry, government agencies/labs, business, NGOs or other private sector positions) will have their skills in these areas assessed, whether directly or indirectly. Having examples of where they have demonstrated these skills through actions, rather than just words, has become increasingly important.

Roles of External Stakeholders and Department/Faculty Collaboration

Many groups external to the university have a role and responsibility for improving graduate education and benefit from improved the skills, competencies, and success of graduate students. The subsections below discuss what these different stakeholders (e.g., alumni, employers, professional societies, funding agencies) can contribute and how collaboration of departments and faculty with them will advance graduate education. Each group should review these to assess what they are willing and able to do, and department heads/chairs and graduate faculty should review these to discover resources that can help them improve their graduate programs. Collaboration and working together as a team are essential for making transformative change.

Developing Collaboration Through Communication

At the 2022 combined academic and employer workshops there was general agreement that more collaboration between employers and academia was needed and could be facilitated with better communication. Many of the employer participants indicate that they and their colleagues would love to become more involved in graduate programs as described below, but simply haven’t been asked. Thus, department heads/chairs or a designated faculty liaison should reach out to alumni and employers of their graduate students. Some faculty have private sector or industry experience, and/or work with consortiums involving industry and/or government agencies/labs and can help facilitate interactions. Some younger faculty may also have been exposed to a wider range of experiences than their more established colleagues. Departments should draw on this expertise in their faculty when it is available.

On the flip side, many academic participants say they have no idea how to contact alumni. Unfortunately, development offices at many universities are hesitant to share contact information for their alumni. Sometimes, discipline-specific alumni societies or interest groups gather and maintain such information themselves and are willing to share. Departments should request graduates to provide them with contact information and keep it current so they may be contacted in the future. Also, alumni can themselves be proactive and contact department heads/chairs, faculty, or student organizations to volunteer to come talk to students or be involved in the graduate programs in other ways. Alumni need to recognize that keeping contact information up to date with the department after graduation makes it possible for heads/chairs and faculty to reach out for help and advice.

Academic and employer participants at the Summit and all the workshops associated with this initiative discussed what employers could do to assist graduate programs through formal education, co-curricular opportunities, professional development activities, or other means. Engaging members of the private and government employment sectors in graduate degree programs will foster discussion and advice about what they see as needed in successful geoscientists and can provide additional resources and other valuable contributions. Most faculty are only familiar with academic endeavors and as such find providing advice to graduate students pursuing different careers difficult. There are many ways to broaden the exposure of faculty and graduate students to different professional opportunities, skill sets, and careers.

Stakeholder and Department Interaction

Departments should consider establishing external advisory councils or boards that meet annually or biannually to provide advice on their graduate programs. Employers should help programs by supporting alumni engagement with advisory councils/boards, allowing them time off (covered leave) to participate; or allowing other employees to serve as a company representative. Such interactions can provide departments with more immediate outside awareness and help, especially if the members are from diverse backgrounds and professional areas, and can provide employers insight into potential research collaborations. Doing so has several positive outcomes — ​it helps keep graduate programs current with what is being done in other academic or non-academic organizations, and it provides fresh-eyes insight into ways to improve the program.

For employers, it gives them the opportunity to provide advice on the skills and competencies they wish future employees to develop and to become acquainted with faculty and graduate students (potential employees). Advisory councils/boards can provide important input to the university administration and regents or trustees, as well as to the department. This help can include marketing the geosciences and geoscience professions to decision makers and the public. Administrators at many universities and colleges are unaware of the important contributions made by the geosciences, or of the wealth of geoscience career opportunities. Advisory council members can also help market graduate programs to their employers and colleagues, which can lead to increased philanthropy, increased institutional investments, higher rankings, and more employment for graduating students.

Departments can broaden their lecture series with talks by speakers from both new and traditional career paths to expose faculty and students to other industries and types of employment. The invited speakers should represent the private sector, government, NGOs, 4YC and if possible 2YC colleges, so graduate students see geoscientists in other careers and faculty will be able to provide better advice when working with their students on IDPs. For invited speakers, regardless of whether they are in academic or non-academic positions, it is worth asking them to record five career-related questions and answers. Departments can also bring in employers to give seminars or presentations in classes and to student groups on career opportunities, or to serve as panelists for presentations about geoscience careers. These activities expose students to what employers think are the most important skills to have walking in the door to a geoscience job, and what they are looking for in a graduate job application. Having speakers talk in classes about what they do and what they found to be required skills or competencies is effective. When permitted, it is good to record these talks for asynchronous teaching and for future review by students.

Alumni are exemplars of the variety of careers available to geoscience students from that institution’s graduate program and can communicate the relevance of what they learned in graduate school. They can show how their work impacts others, and what success looks like in these professions. Graduate programs should encourage their alumni to come back and talk to students about their careers, the kinds of things they do, what skills have been (or are) the most important to them professionally, and what they are looking for in new employees. Both faculty and graduate students can be incentivized to broaden their knowledge by listening to past students and those in industries, consulting, government labs/agencies, NGOs and other parts of the private sector. Such presentations can be individual talks or several alumni presenting as part of a panel discussion on geoscience careers or professional practice. Improved capabilities for virtual meetings mean that talk formats can be tailored to the commitments and needs of one’s alumni partners, be that in-person, hybrid, or virtual.

Alumni can also serve as mentors to students, help with the development of IDPs in defining goals, skills needed, reviewing plans, etc. Career paths are not a straight line, and advice from the perspectives of alumni who have followed varied career paths can be very valuable. Many graduates from any university typically work within 30 miles of the university, so there is likely to be a large group of professionals ready to help if graduate programs seek them out for this kind of aid. Many departments have developed strong alumni networks, in which alumni help teach courses, give lectures, and run workshops to help with interviewing skills, career searches, and networking. Many graduate programs hold alumni events at professional society conferences, or on campus where students can network with alumni.

Career and recruitment fairs with nonacademic employers can showcase different employment options. Also having any visiting recruiters discuss with students more generally the different types of jobs available in their organizations, and the specific professional and technical skills required for these jobs. Faculty as well as students should attend such events. Changing the culture and expectations of students without doing the same for faculty will exacerbate any current disconnects between student and faculty goals that currently exist.

Departments can ask their alumni and their local employers to help with student professional development, including advice on key skills needed for different careers. Visiting professionals can help students with interviewing skills for in-person and virtual interviews, what belongs in a resume, doing professional presentations, and broader career awareness. In some programs, visiting professionals do mock interviews to help prepare students and give them practice interviewing. They can provide valuable information to students on the dos and don’ts of social media and/or networking events.

Having geoscience professionals, alumni or otherwise, visit departments and spend time with students at department functions is important for building student’s networks and honing their informal communication skills. These professionals can also participate further, serving as evaluators for student presentations and reports, which provides an opportunity for more intensive, but still informal interactions. In some programs, geoscience professionals serve as external members on graduate committees, bringing their professional perspective to the students’ mentoring and professional development. Our participants recommended that master’s and doctoral committee participation should be encouraged, and that programs find ways to facilitate it happening, so that working professionals could become part of the student’s cohort of mentors. Having them as an external member of graduate student committees also provides a professional perspective. Graduate programs can also encourage alumni and employers to serve as additional mentors for graduate students, either in person or virtually.

Employers can provide valuable help with graduate courses in several ways. Some employers provide datasets for real-world cost/benefit/risk projects, either for use in graduate research or for classes. Frequently, additional help in the form of specialized training, personal insights, or other employer participation in support of the research is provided along with the datasets. Many of the faculty participants in our different Summit and workshop events expressed interest in these kinds of datasets becoming more widely available and, when possible, accessible online. Some employers work closely with faculty to provide real-problem case studies, for students to work on in classes. Generally, in such cases someone from the company evaluates the results and gives feedback to the students. Classes may be built around such projects, and student teams can compete to come up with the best solutions. Poster and/or oral presentations of student results are commonly part of the evaluation. All types of practicum courses, where students apply what they have learned in class to a real environment are valuable.

Other kinds of involvement from employers range from currently employed or retired individuals coming into a department to teach courses, give lectures in courses, or do standalone talks in seminars or as part of student organization meetings. Some employers will sponsor one of their employees to teach a course or short course on a technical subject, or on professional development, or topics such as field and lab safety. Online and blended delivery options help facilitate the offering of these courses so that the participating employee requires less time away from work. Graduate programs should encourage members of the private sector to co-teach courses and seminars as adjunct faculty when appropriate. Experiential learning opportunities are also valuable; some companies will support employees leading or co-leading field trips, or to participate in field camps. Others will sponsor field trips for a department or invite students to attend company-run field trips.

At the 2022 combined workshops, faculty and employers also discussed issues and barriers to some of these interactions and ways to overcome them. One issue that came up repeatedly was the lack of knowledge by many faculty of the types of skills that are needed for various types of geoscience employment. The participants recommended that employers consider providing information pages on their websites for students that describe career paths within their companies or organizations, and a guide to advancement in that field and/or career. Descriptions of specific types of jobs, the skills that are needed and/or required, and job expectations were seen as potentially very beneficial to graduate students and their faculty mentors when developing IDPs. The faculty also noted that help from employers and alumni in developing student mentoring programs was extremely valuable, as it provides students with external and highly credible input during their educational careers.

Employer and Alumni Support

Internships

Internships are the major source for career experience and development for geoscience students. Many employers help students develop the knowledge and skills they need for employment as interns. These opportunities also allow students to find out whether that type of employment (or at least at that company) is something they wish to pursue. These internships often occur in the summer but can also be part of a cooperative program during the school year, where students may also receive course credits.

Overall, there was general agreement among employers and academics that internship opportunities are very beneficial, and more employers should be encouraged to find ways to offer them across a broader spectrum of employment sectors. Currently about 60% of geoscience graduate students have done some kind of internship during their degree and 25% had two or more internships (Keane et al., 2021). Internships can give exposure to careers that match students’ goals. Unfortunately, many graduate programs find it difficult to make these kinds of connections with companies and/or across a range of industries. As discussed below, professional societies could fill an important role here by setting up a clearinghouse for internships and connecting industry opportunities to students directly.

Although most faculty were aware of internships with various industries, many other possibilities exist. National labs (e.g., Sandia, Los Alamos, etc.) and Federal agencies (e.g., NOAA, NASA, USGS, etc.) have internship programs. In these, the university typically pays the student’s tuition, and the facility pays for their research and/or work-related expenses. The NSF Graduate Traineeship program is designed to fund the development of the skills, knowledge and competencies that research-based graduate students need to pursue a range of STEM careers. Graduate programs are strongly encouraged to form partnerships with the private sector, with NGOs, and with government labs and agencies. These types of internships and partnerships allow students to complete an internship as a part of their degree, often with financial support.

Additionally, NSF’s INTERN program supports graduate students to engage in non-academic internships during the course of their study if they are currently supported by either an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship or a faculty member who is a PI on an NSF grant. In this case, NSF supports the students release time from their research program to build the experience. Internships cannot be directly related to their ongoing research project and are thus ideal opportunities for students to expand their professional development and to explore intellectually adjacent topics.

Participants at the combined employer and academic workshops in 2022 discussed the timing of internships, and their availability across different industries. Research-focused partnerships or internships are best for doctoral students and can become part of their research program. Master’s students (and undergraduates) generally do applied internships, and may be away from school for a few months. Being able to cross-list the internship as a course for credit can be advantageous for students.

Participants discussed whether internships should be prioritized for undergraduates, so that graduate students could concentrate on research activities and developing those related skills. Doing so would give undergraduate students experience and insight into different careers before embarking on a graduate program. Some geoscience fields, such as meteorology, do offer such internships for undergraduates, and these are actively promoted.

Participants also recommended more mentoring during internships, and some form of assessment at the end. They also recommended more feedback between the departments and employers. The departments need information about what the students accomplished and learned, and the employer needs feedback on the students’ experiences and any suggested changes. Having returning interns give a talk to the department about their experiences helps their peers get a better idea of what that type of employment is like and gives them insights into corporate cultures and values.

Several issues related to internships were also discussed. Companies typically want to hire students in the summer, but advisors may often be against this, because it takes time away from the work that needs to be done for the student’s research, particularly if there is a need to do fieldwork. Also, master’s students are the most likely graduate students to do internship with companies, but because of the short timeframe for master’s degrees, it is difficult to embed this external opportunity without extending the length of the program. This extension can disrupt the master’s project timeline, which may cause problems with funding. Co-op programs, where students get course credit, or internships that are directly related to the student’s thesis topic can help mitigate such issues. Advisors and students will need to balance the value of an internship with the need to graduate on time or before funding ends. Another issue is that international students are often not eligible for many internship opportunities. It was also mentioned that some companies can’t afford to train temporary employees (interns) to work in their field; for example, work that requires HAZWOPR training generally can’t be done by interns.

Another issue discussed was that the current general business model of how geoscience graduate students are funded is inherently a barrier to enabling release time from research to take an internship. Many programs in other disciplines, such as chemistry, have structured their graduate support with consistent, department-based funding; grant funds are used to help reimburse the departmental costs. With this a lighter coupling between the students’ support and the active research, release time can be better managed. How to evolve the fundamental funding strategy for geoscience graduate students is likely far larger than the scope of an individual department chair, but rather a dialogue between employers and institutions. Employers are well placed to help lead this dialogue with benefits of more stable graduate programs and opportunities to engage with graduate students in internships.

Internships are great experiences for students, and those students with internship experiences are often more likely to be hired. In fact, many companies won’t hire someone as a permanent employee unless they have done an internship, preferably one with that company. Some internships offered to already-completed graduate students are essentially a very long-format interview. Given the need for such pre-employment experience/training, participants wondered if it could be done in smaller pieces: as an example, instead of a 3- or 6-month internship, do the same kind of work in an evening or weekend short course format. If such experiences were managed by and/or promoted through professional societies, such expertise could be offered to broader audiences.

Externships

Participants discussed other employer/academia interactions that are beneficial to students and encouraged graduate programs to allow and seek them out, and employers to offer them. One example is externships, where students get short-term professional learning experiences ranging from one to several days visiting an employer to learn more about the work environment and get a better understanding of what the employees do. Another similar approach is job shadowing, where a student follows and observes an employee throughout their day.

Financial Support

Employers can also help graduate programs through financial support. Traditionally many companies have offered graduate scholarships or financial aid, but over time these have decreased significantly in number. One reason given is the lack of a clear return on investment, as the students supported by these scholarships commonly did not end up working for that company. Also, mergers have decreased the number of companies (especially those in the petroleum industry), and the overall state of the economy has led to other less expensive types of investments. Many companies now fund short courses or workshops, poster symposia, tailgates, fieldtrips or even field camps, the goal being to get their names known to more of their prospective employees. The benefit here to departments is in the sponsoring of activities that are costly either to programs or to students.

Direct funding of students is usually related to the student’s or faculty supervisor’s research. If students’ internships created opportunities to generate more research funding or better corporate connections for the advisor, it would help overcome faculty resistance to internships. Another avenue for financial support is for industry or government labs/agencies to provide money and expertise for short projects.

Consortiums and Other Types of Partnerships

Consortiums and other types of partnerships between industry or government agencies/laboratories and universities can foster deeper engagement with faculty and students to create more awareness of future careers. NSF’s Grant Opportunities for the Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) program offers supplemental support to existing NSF grants or in conjunction with a regular grant proposal for research university-industry collaborations (also possibly with National laboratories or NGOs). These collaborations involve a continuum of employer activities, from giving seminars, having sit-down chats with students, participating in career days, externships (with or without academic credit) and internships (paid or unpaid). Students may be able to shadow an employee, be directly funded or have their research funded, be provided with data needed to conduct their research, or be able to do the research using the organization’s facilities or labs. Another option is to support faculty/employee exchanges, where faculty take sabbaticals and an employee takes their place, or for corporations to offer sabbaticals to faculty individually. Participants discussed the pros and cons to these various nurturing relationships: it helps prepare students for employment with a specific employer or type of employer, but at the same time it is critical that they don’t become less broadly employable. Participants also pointed out that contractors for federal agencies may legally or contractually have to spend a certain amount of their budget on engaging with academic institutions. Participants recommended universities develop processes to take better advantage of such opportunities.

Additional Support

Participants recommended more employer-facilitated modular training and certificate opportunities. One example mentioned hosting skills workshops or short courses at conferences or via webinars that teach student niche software and similar skills. These kinds of offerings would open participation up to a broader cohort of students. If connected to meetings students are attending related to their research, travel costs are minimized. Making resources easily available online will provide access to a broader group of students and faculty. A key challenge to overcome will be making students and faculty aware of these resources. Additionally, interacting with programs in more “remote” areas, either virtually or in person, will broaden the opportunities for more and more diverse students.

Many private-sector geoscience careers in 32 states require professional geoscientist licensure, requiring it for non-petroleum geoscientists tasked with preparing plans, reports, or documents of a geological nature. ASBOG (the Association of State Boards of Geology) administers the Fundamentals of Geology exam, which is the first test required for a person to become a licensed Professional Geologist (PG). Students and faculty need to be aware of this requirement, and if the students express an interest in a career that requires a PG license, it is important for them to know the requirements early in their education and to take courses that will prepare them for the exam. Additionally, those departments should have a list of courses that cover the topics on the exam and should also highlight any available alumni/university networks for professional geoscientists.

Many industries or professional societies host and/or sponsor competitions to create opportunities for students. Some sponsor research symposia, with either posters or oral presentations with alumni judges. Other technology and research competitions have broad participation, such as the Reynolds Cup, the Imperial Barrel Award, Google’s coding or ROV competitions, SEG’s Challenge Bowl, etc. These activities engage a lot of students and help build important skills and confidence outside of faculty labs or courses and may lead to collaborative investments. Expos are also important for showcasing different types of professions.

Participants at the Summit and all the workshops strongly encouraged more collaborative connections between industry, funding agencies, and departments to help graduate students develop key skills. Doing so will require better and expanded linkages among the employers, funding agencies and academic programs, as well as buy-in from existing faculty and academic institutions. They agreed that more discussion was needed on how these opportunities work together to develop the future workforce.

Responsibilities of the Employer Post‑graduation

In discussions about the skills and competencies needed for graduate students to be successful in the workforce, academic participants noted the push back they hear from many faculty that graduate education is not training for employment and that graduate programs are not “trade schools”. This prompted the question - what is the responsibility or role of the employer after graduate students are hired, starting from when they are first hired and throughout their early career?

Employers stressed that they expected graduate students to have developed a menu of broad core skills during their education that could be applied in multiple directions. So, the necessary post-graduate school government or corporate training was less about core science knowledge and skills and more about organizational specifics and culture. Employers agreed that they were responsible for any higher-level, job specific training. Because industry-specific technical and business skills, ethics, compliance and regulations, time accounting and interacting with stakeholders or clients vary between employers, new employees will require training specific to their position. This need is particularly true for those skills that wouldn’t be widely used in other employment, proprietary training, company licensure requirements and baseline training.

It was agreed that when hiring, employers need to do proper onboarding for recently finished graduate students. These new or prospective employees need clear communication by employers about their corporate culture and expectations. This onboarding is most effective when the student has done an internship with the company or there is already a strong university-industry connection. If employment is international or the prospective employee is from a different country, collaboration on managing any cultural or language differences is a must.

Both academics and employers recognized that few finishing graduate students come in fully prepared for the workforce, even including positions in academia or research labs. Finishing graduate students have learned how to do research at a university and have strong technical skills and knowledge related to their research area. However, they need professional training in other aspects of their work. The biggest issue for new graduates to learn is how corporate, consulting, industry, national labs and agencies, and universities and colleges work financially, in terms of research and development, time commitments, policies, standards, etc. Learning some of these things during doctoral degree programs would be helpful, such as occurs within industry consortia or partnerships, but is not common.

All companies, organizations and institutions need to provide continuing education for new and early career employees, both internal training and one-on-one mentoring. Continuing education is also needed throughout careers, as essentially all employment takes on new directions over time. Recent examples include the major emphasis on data analytics and machine learning, and on Earth observation for environmental and climate purposes. The needs of employers vary with projects, financial incentives, and changing interests.

Professional Societies

Professional societies reach a wide audience of academics, students, and employers. They should be proactive in disseminating the results of this initiative and make their members aware of this report. They should also have information on recommended necessary skills on their websites for students, faculty, and graduate programs to use, along with a list (with links) of the resources the society offers to support preparation of graduate students.

Professional societies should partner with universities and industry to offer a variety of external opportunities for graduate students. Many geoscientific societies currently offer short courses on a variety of subjects, including the use of new technologies and analytical or computational methods. Making use of the list of needed skills discussed in Section 4: Skills Framework, professional societies can work with academics and employers to develop curricula for a series of short courses and/or workshops focused on the desired skills, either online or as summer offerings. They can also set up certification, badging and/or accreditation programs for these skills so that students can demonstrate to others that they have attained these competencies. Pricing for graduate students at such courses or workshops should be free or minimal to make the opportunities as equitable as possible. Departments can offer credits and/or funding to support students attending these courses. The societies will benefit from increased attendance and will develop a growing student membership who will be more likely to retain their memberships and give back to the society after finishing graduate school.

Many professional societies hold student research forums in different disciplinary or sub-disciplinary areas, either as stand-alone events or as part of their larger conferences. These events allow students practice at presenting their science as well as a chance to see what other students are doing and develop professional networks. Some societies include graduate student members on their committees, which provides those student members the ability to develop important future skills in areas like how to run a meeting, set an agenda, or depending on committee, how publishing, convention planning, or managing organizations, etc., is done.

Professional societies from all fields in the geosciences offer online resources and videos that include interviews with geoscientists about their careers. More such content, with a greater diversity of possible careers and pathways, is needed. Some societies also run sessions at meetings on career related information, including poster sessions with companies and other networking opportunities. For example, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) holds a one-day student conference session just before their annual meeting, so that students can meet with different industries and graduate schools. The Association of Environmental and Engineering Geologists (AEG) hosts webinars with practicing professionals answering questions about careers, preparing for the ASBOG Fundamentals of Geology Exam, and addressing a wide variety of applications. The National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT), in conjunction with SERC, offers a variety of workshops, conferences and online resources for graduate students interested in an academic career. Several GSA sectional meetings offer free lunches to meet with professionals.

Closer collaborations between graduate students, industry, and professional societies could create more opportunities for student career development and facilitate closer engagement between industries and academia. One possibility would be the promotion of internship opportunities, where professional societies can act as a clearinghouse collecting information on internship opportunities and providing contact information and links for applying.

Professional societies should continue to expand their mentoring programs, including virtual mentoring. The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is partnering with other societies in the successful Mentoring365 program to provide mentors from outside of academia. GSA’s “On to the Future” program provides mentoring and other support to diverse communities at their annual conference (GSA Connects).

As noted previously in Section 4: Skills Framework, participation in professional scientific societies is important for graduate students in providing networking opportunities, experience in communicating science, and keeping them up to date on their science, as well as in career advancement. Societies should keep the cost of membership and meeting registrations low so all students can afford to attend and access these resources. Faculty influence whether a student becomes a member of a professional society and which ones they join. It is important for faculty to stress the importance of professional society membership, participation, and attendance. Students should also interact with professional nonacademic societies (e.g., American Water Resources Association* — ​AWRA,* American Institute of Professional Geologists* — ​AIPG*).

Funding Agencies

Funding agencies can influence the direction of graduate training by providing explicit requirements for the granting of graduate student support, such as requiring that plans for mentorship and career development using IDPs be reported as part of the proposal, or as a condition of award (as recently instituted by NSF). They should encourage and support modifying graduate curriculum for our changing field. For example, agencies can provide grant support for departments implementing changes to graduate programs, including “proof of concept” or pilot studies, and for faculty developing shared large databases for data analytics.

NSF and federal government agencies provide opportunities for supplemental funding which can be used to fund internships through currently funded awards. These opportunities are under-subscribed, partly because PIs and faculty are unaware of them but also because there is no obvious incentive for a faculty member PI to do so. These programs should be well advertised; notifying new PIs of this opportunity (e.g., Non-academic Research Internships for Graduate Students (INTERN) Supplemental Funding Opportunity) and others like it, when a grant is awarded may increase the number of applications. The broader impacts part of proposals should also include developing links to the private sector for training students and fostering interactions.