GEODUC — which stands for Geoscience Education, Oceanographic Discovery and Undergraduate Collaboration — is a place-based, National Science Foundation-funded program spearheaded by faculty and staff in the College of the Environment. Created to broaden the depth and breadth of perspectives that inform scientific inquiry in marine science fields, GEODUC actively recruits UW transfer students who are interested in STEM fields of any kind.
GEODUC begins with a 10-day residency at Friday Harbor Labs each September, where transfer students experience the geosciences through hands-on exploration, fieldwork and research. Back in Seattle, GEODUC students meet for weekly seminars throughout the academic year beginning in autumn quarter, where they build community, learn important academic skills and prepare for successful careers. The seminars feature speakers from a variety of backgrounds who share how they found their way in the sciences, helping students to see that they, too, belong in the research community.
In this episode, students from the GEODUC program and professors José Guzmán and Mikelle Nuwer speak about how positive this program is for students in finding community and learning about science.
Additionally, the GEODUC teaching team recently was awarded the UW’s Distinguished Teaching Award for Teams, one of the University’s highest teaching recognitions. The team includes:
Jane Dolliver (she/her), Program Manager, College of the Environment
José Guzmán, (he/him), Associate Teaching Professor, School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences and Marine Biology
Kerry Naish (she/her), Professor, School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences and Marine Biology
Mikelle Nuwer (she/her), Associate Teaching Professor, School of Oceanography
LuAnne Thompson (she/her), Professor, School of Oceanography
Full episode transcript
Victoria DeJong
It’s forged by ice, wind and water. Right? And so it looks like you have waves that are coming right up to it, and then it creates it like it curved around.
Sarah Smith
Back in January of 2024, a small group of U-dub students invited me along on their field trip in the northwest corner of Washington state. They’re like kind of raise elevated sand.
00;00;23;03 – 00;00;53;02
Sarah Smtih
I followed the Geo Duck team, which stands for Geoscience Education, Oceanographic Discovery and Undergraduate Collaboration, down a winding path to Dungeness Spit outside of Sequim. I handed the students a microphone.
Maya Rios
Oh, it’s going okay. It’s on. Okay. So we
Sarah Smith
I asked them to tell me about their GEODUC experience.
Maya Rios
And do we have a topic? I don’t know, let’s talk about science.
00;00;53;05 – 00;01;09;20
Sarah Smith
From the University of Washington. College of the environment. This is Field sound
00;01;09;22 – 00;01;36;26
Sarah Smith
GEODUC is a collaborative effort led by U-dub College of the environment faculty and staff, designed to help bridge gaps in education. Good work incorporates evidence based education practices throughout the program with a three phase approach. Exploration. Implementation. Research.
Jose Guzman
And in essence, is a program that uses place based learning to address perceived academic barriers for entry in the marine sciences.
00;01;36;28 – 00;02;10;08
Jose Guzman
My name is Jose Guzman and I am an associate teaching professor at the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences and in the Marine Biology program. And I use he/him or el as my pronouns. Oh, my area of work is diversity in in the geosciences. Which is funny because that’s not really my my background. I did my PhD, postdoc, in purely research institutions, and my research was in fish physiology, and it was not until, I joined the two or so Washington.
00;02;10;08 – 00;02;35;07
Jose Guzman
What is when I started interacting with students and getting more and more interested in in the field of diversity with the, the geosciences and geosciences, this fancy word that we use to describe earth sciences. I, as many of us when we started teaching, we have no idea about teaching, no idea on how how being effective in structures. Right?
00;02;35;09 – 00;03;00;06
Jose Guzman
and that was a reality for me. So when I started teaching, I joined the the center for Teaching and Learning and, and tried to, to learn more about evidence based teaching and active learning. And, and when I started, implementing those strategies in the class, that was a game changer for me. I could start seeing how students were engaging better with the material.
00;03;00;06 – 00;03;30;15
Jose Guzman
They were performing better. They were not only answering more complex questions in the classroom, but also asking more complex questions in the classroom. The percentage of underrepresented students in the classroom was not that great, was not that large. So yeah, especially in the sciences to very importantly in the science and very importantly in the geosciences, which has the, the lowest participation by underrepresented minorities of any, any science.
00;03;30;17 – 00;03;58;01
Mikelle Nuwer
And our goal is to recruit and retain diverse scientists into geosciences. My name is Mikel, where I use she her pronouns. And I am teaching faculty in the School of Oceanography. Guzman and Nuer are joined by co-leaders and Thompson from oceanography, Jane Oliver from the U-dub Environment Dean’s office, and Kari Nace for Marine Biology and the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences.
00;03;58;03 – 00;04;28;01
Mikelle Nuwer
We’re interested in recruiting all Stem interested students because we’re hoping that that engineer might find a love for ocean engineering and say in our field in that way. And again, it’s about increasing that diversity pool. So we want the diversity of interest as well. The criteria for Geoduc is pretty easy. You have to be a transfer student.
00;04;28;04 – 00;04;49;26
Mikelle Nuwer
So while we are targeting community college transfer students, we do open it up to any transfer student. So we have running start students who apply because technically they are transfer students from community colleges. And we also have students who are transitioning from another four year institution to U-dub. And because it is an NSF project, you do have to be a U.S. citizen.
00;04;49;26 – 00;05;17;20
Mikelle Nuwer
But we were able to secure some funding from outside of NSF so that we can accept students who are not U.S. citizens. But really, that’s the only eligible criteria has to be a transfer student
Sarah Smith
through GEODUC, Students don’t just learn. They take a hands on approach to science as scientists.
Jose Guzman
So the whole idea of this program is to make them excited about geosciences.
00;05;17;20 – 00;05;44;25
Jose Guzman
That’s it. it has the program has two components. The first one, we do a field experience, a place based learning field experience, Friday Harbor Labs. And that happens in, before the fall quarter, what we call early fall quarter. And students go there. And those are those are students have been accepted that in North Shore, Washington, but not may not necessarily have declared a major yet.
00;05;44;27 – 00;06;09;27
Jose Guzman
So we want to make them excited about about geosciences and what we do. We take them to Friday Harbor for ten days and engage. They get to engage in the marine geosciences as we do as practitioners. So they go to the field, they collect samples, they, curate data, they analyze data.
And there was the eelgrass grant. And then we got to design like mindset said a own experiment.
00;06;09;29 – 00;06;38;15
Victoria DeJong
And that was, yeah, the process of designing it. I know that I’ve done labs and stuff, but I’m doing somebody else’s science project. so having ownership over it was really cool.
Tristan Knoll
But projects and, like, took blades of the eelgrass and had them scanned later and then measured the lesions on them, which was also cool to do both.
00;06;38;15 – 00;07;07;05
Tristan Knoll/ Victoria DeJong
Like those field work and go back and do the data around it getting dirty and falling over. But like, just so visceral.
00;07;07;08 – 00;07;43;00
Sarah Smith
The program’s not just about academic preparation is about building community and empowering students with the confidence and tools to succeed.
Jose Guzman
And and and then once the the field experience finishes, we provide a seminar series and we meet every week with them for three quarters during the fall, winter and spring quarter. And we bring speakers in. We talk about how to start doing twin research, or how to knock on doors and ask for research opportunities.
00;07;43;00 – 00;08;11;06
Jose Guzman
How to succeed. Are you that how to cope with some of the problems the students may have at the same time and during the first year? And and what is interesting is that this seminar actually, was very effective at creating this sense of community that sometimes these transfer students don’t, don’t have.
Mollie Ball
And so I did have the experience where I came into the year not knowing anyone.
00;08;11;08 – 00;08;31;14
Mollie Ball
and it was hard. It was really, really hard. And I definitely like, went into the bathroom and Susilo a couple times and just had to shed a couple tears and regroup because it just was so overwhelming and the school was so big. And finally Friday came around and I had no idea what Geoduc really even was at that point.
00;08;31;16 – 00;08;55;16
Mollie Ball
But I went and it just totally, like, changed my experience. Like, I met Lula, who is now my best friend there, and it was just really nice to have someone to really connect with. And then I finally, like, threw out the first quarter. I feel like I finally like, like bloomed into being a student at U-dub and feeling like I belong there.
00;08;55;17 – 00;09;22;16
Maya Rios
Yeah, it’s been really wonderful meeting so many people that come from like, so many different types of backgrounds and like hearing about their journeys to U-dub and it like, you know, especially because it’s such a big campus, like I was so nervous about, like not being able to like, meet people just because of the sheer number of people and like having difficulty finding people that I had stuff in common with.
00;09;22;18 – 00;09;52;16
Maya Rios
and Geoduc has really just like, just completely erased that issue because it just introduced me immediately to just this, like pretty big group of people that I can connect with and like, can be resources for me and also friends. Yeah. yeah. It’s been really great using that.
Jose Guzman
Many of them come from nontraditional backgrounds, and sometimes you’re older, sometimes they have family responsibilities, and sometimes they have kids and they are going to be hanging out with with students.
00;09;52;18 – 00;10;16;25
Jose Guzman
They’re much younger than them sometimes. Right. So creating that context for them to stay together, to come every week to talk about what’s going on in their lives with their classes they are taking, whether things are going great, things that are not going that great. Right. And just that the sense of community, which we saw actually, by using a bunch of assessments, to be very effective and very impactful for them.
00;10;16;27 – 00;10;39;03
Mollie Ball
And I don’t know what I would do without Gooey Duck, I would be and u-dub still, I probably would have made friends, but I don’t think I would be having the same like full experience without it.
Sarah Smith
Building on success of going back and seeing an opportunity to further engage students, the identity belonging and Inquiry and Science program was born.
00;10;39;06 – 00;11;04;28
Sarah Smith
Also known as IBIS, undergraduate students are paired one on one with a graduate student in a mutually beneficial and long term mentoring partnership.
Jose Guzman
This model has clear benefits for everybody. For the graduate student, that is very important because, now they get during the research experience, they get to, apply or the knowledge that quiet down there during the training.
00;11;05;01 – 00;11;31;08
Jose Guzman
And, and very importantly, they start thinking about their mentoring philosophy. And, and that is very interesting because they are about to transition to the next, career level to become professors. So become postdocs have become, practitioners. We have these really fantastic group of undergraduates that come from underrepresented backgrounds again, and they are part of that research lab.
00;11;31;08 – 00;11;59;21
Jose Guzman
Breathe in on live in science and see how science really, really work. We get to retain these huge talent of the undergraduates, and we get to train the next generation of of mentors for the IBIS program. We are collaborating with folks from faculty, from UW psychology, because we wanted to go beyond the idea of you know, we do these mentoring training, we do this mentoring and matching that do the research.
00;11;59;21 – 00;12;35;16
Jose Guzman
Okay. By we wanted to really dive into it is really changing anything beyond the research experience itself. It is really enhancing the retention or how this affecting the psychology really of of both mentors, but ultimately mentees, which we are very interested in those undergraduate. This idea of being part of it is just so, so meaningful and powerful. We have a lot of nontraditional students who get to join the college through the grant program, and then they become part of IBIS, and they get to do a second year of research without.
00;12;35;16 – 00;12;55;18
Jose Guzman
So, and, and those students that get to be exposed in the long time to research, to community are those that are consistently staying with us and doing great. And now is started wondering, am I going to go to grad school? What grad school? I’m going to go and you know, this, that that is a reality for them.
00;12;55;18 – 00;13;23;13
Maya Rios
Now, I probably would not have applied to Ibis if not for GEODUC? Yeah, I wouldn’t, I don’t think I would have heard about Ibis and if I have, then I still think I would have applied because I would have been like, well, that’s not for me. I’m not good enough to do that. But but yeah, being and geoduc really made me feel like, no, I am, I can do that and I can and I can handle both my course load and doing this. And it’s such a great opportunity that, like, I can make it work.
00;13;23;13 – 00;13;45;10
Maya Rios
My mentor is in the air sciences, and we’re like looking at like earthquakes and like landslides and stuff and like, I’m really excited to learn more about that. And I’m like, maybe I should double major. Yeah. We’ll see. Just see.
00;13;45;14 – 00;13;55;19
Jose Guzman
We just are seeing that change in their mindset you think man we are doing a good job here.
00;13;55;22 – 00;14;29;26
Sarah Smith
Can lead I can ibis can change how students approach their futures by offering a small stipend doing it in ibis reversing the script on how we attract, develop and retain a more diverse pool of future scientists.
Jose Guzman
Can we, you know, can we compensate for that ten days, you know, going to be working whatever. and the same for, for Ibis, they’re going to be working two, three, four hours a week in a lab that’s very likely are going to prevent them to work in the other job or jobs that they have.
00;14;30;02 – 00;14;59;15
Jose Guzman
So it’s a way to be to be fair and a way to say, you know, you’re part of this. I we recognize your work, your effort. We didn’t want them to to put in a position where they have to decide between making money or doing this research experience, or making money or joining a lab. So for both opportunities, we give them, and a stipend and it to be rewarded
00;14;59;15 – 00;15;21;16
Sarah Smith
by meeting students where they’re at the Geoduc and ibis programs are actively changing the way students think about themselves and what college success looks like, which can have ripple effects well beyond the classroom.
Victoria DeJong
We’re also different, but there are like common themes that kind of weave the group together and being able to, like, have these activities. It really feels like an important community to be a part of.
00;15;21;18 – 00;15;48;04
Maya Rios
And and not just our like peers, but like the instructors or it as well have been just really wonderful and I feel extremely supported by all of them.
Jose Guzman
We have up many of those, grad students in, you can see their evolution in their behavior from barely wanted to talk to anyone and now they go to conferences and they present their research.
00;15;48;08 – 00;16;12;20
Jose Guzman
Or you can see really it changes sometimes like these subtle changes or stays. What am I doing here to I belong here or you see them in the classroom now asking questions all the time. It is so, interesting to see the questions that they ask, the approaches that they have. Yeah, the angles that they take to answer questions.
00;16;12;22 – 00;16;50;13
Jose Guzman
And we are missing all of that. We’re missing so much. So definitely a better world in which everybody has, has a voice and, and has an input on how science, is constructed and developed and the direction and, and the questions that need to be addressed and answered.
Mikelle Nuwer
I do have to believe that it comes into this, seeing yourself as a scientist, and it really helps in being successful in these degree programs, when you can see the outcome, when you can see that you fit, that you see that you can do this with being, you know,
00;16;50;13 – 00;17;11;09
Jose Guzman
We’ve been nominated to a bunch of awards. And we got an awards, which is amazing. Right? And it’s it’s like a right big recognition of your peers. It’s it’s awesome. But at the end of the day is the change that we see in our own students. What what is our, again, our driving force to to keep moving forward. And I got to say that it works.
00;17;11;09 – 00;17;38;11
Jose Guzman
So, more people should join the, the board of, of engaging with these neo traditionalist talon’s because, man, he works.
Mollie Ball/ Maya Rios
I want everyone to have a geoduc me tell so I feel like it like gives like good confidence to make more friends, to like. Yeah, I feel definitely more confident because I get to talk to other people and to make sure other people are feeling included, because I know how that felt.
00;17;38;11 – 00;18;01;15
Mollie Ball/ Victoria DeJong
And then I know how it feels to have someone like, reach out their hand and be like, no, you do belong here. So now I want to be that person for other people. Yeah. Everybody belongs, everybody belongs, everybody belongs. If you want to go, then it’s for you. Exactly. And applied to any opportunity. But if you think it’s a stretch and even if they say no, you still might belong there.
00;18;01;17 – 00;18;08;15
Geoduc students
In there. Yeah.
00;18;08;17 – 00;18;43;13
Sarah Smith
And to learn more about GEODUC and IBIS programs, visit our website at environment.uw.edu. A big thank you to our guest today. Jose Guzman, Mikell Nuer and the incredible Geoduc students who shared their experiences from all of us at Field Sound. Thanks for listening. See you next time.
