Fostering Students' Soft Skills Development Through Explicit Teaching

Round Table Discussion

Leaders

Samuel Nyarko, Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis
Grant Fore, Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis

The Future of Undergraduate Geoscience Education and Geoscience employers have increasingly called for student competency in three sets of skills: technical, field and soft skills. Geoscience teachers already do a good job training technical and field skills, but often do not embrace teaching the "soft" skills such as teamwork, leadership, critical thinking, communication and ethics employers desire. In this roundtable discussion, we seek to bring together researchers, educators and industry players doing work in this area of need to have a focus group discussion that will inform future plans and decisions regarding soft skills training in the geosciences and STEM. We anticipate that through this discussion, we will be able to put together best practices for teaching these skills in geoscience classrooms, laboratories and field settings.