About the InTeGrate Project

By the time today's undergraduates send their children to college, there will be more than eight billion people on Earth. Our climate will be punctuated by extreme weather events. One or more major metropolitan areas may have experienced a devastating earthquake or volcanic eruption. Energy resources will be strained and more expensive. This world requires both an Earth literate public and a workforce that can bring geoscience to bear on tough societal issues. Developing widespread Earth literacy and this workforce are the objectives of the InTeGrate project.

InTeGrate, the NSF-funded STEP Center in the geosciences, ran from 2012 through 2019. The STEP (STEM Talent Expansion Program) Center program enabled "a group of faculty representing a cross section of institutions of higher education to identify a national challenge or opportunity in undergraduate education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and to propose a comprehensive and coordinated set of activities that will be carried out to address that challenge or opportunity within a national context."

InTeGrate sought to improve Earth literacy and build a workforce prepared to tackle urgent environmental and resource issues facing humanity. To this end, we supported interdisciplinary teaching about Earth and environmental issues across the undergraduate curriculum. The project collected and synthesized existing work into an extensive website; developed, tested and published 26 curriculum modules, 6 courses, and 16 program models; implemented large professional development programs involving more than 1500 educators; and created a national scale community which continues to work toward these goals.

Learn more about the project team, including the leadership team, assessment team, planning committees and advisory board.

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In aggregate, InTeGrate programming created a large, diverse community of practice that is poised to continue into the future. At the core of this community are the 1678 project participants in materials development, implementation programs, workshops, webinars and project leadership. More than 4600 individuals have engaged with the project in some way including those that have expressed interest in using the materials. During the course of the project this community developed a shared goals, values and philosophy, interacted regularly, improved its practices, and created products of value to the community. This community continues to interact, learn together, and grow through the NAGT On the Cutting Edge Professional Development Program.  Leadership developed during the project is carrying forward the goals, values, philosophy and strategies that are signatures of the project.

See the NSF STEP Center Solicitation

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Sponsoring Organizations
American Meteorological Society, American Geological Institute, American Geophysical Union, Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence, Geological Society of America, Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, National Association of Geoscience Teachers, National Council for Science and the Environment, Ocean Leadership and Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, On the Cutting Edge.
This work is sponsored by the following organizations:
AMS Logo AGU Logo AGI Logo COSEE Logo GSA Logo
IRIS Logo NAGT Logo Ocean Leadership Logo Cutting Edge Logo

This work is supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) collaboration between the Directorates for Education and Human Resources (EHR) and Geosciences (GEO) under grant DUE - 1125331.

Disclaimer: Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.


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