Taking it to the streets: The case for modeling in the geosciences undergraduate curriculum

The United States faces a crisis in education: a dire shortage of students sufficiently prepared in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines to competitively enter the workforce (National Education Technology Plan, 2010). At the same time, there is increasing demand for well-trained geoscientists in a variety of careers related to the environment and natural resources. Many efforts, including the recently released Earth Science and Climate Literacy Principles, seek to promote better Earth science education, as well as to strengthen the Earth science literacy of the entire US population. Yet even those undergraduate students who choose to major in geology or related geoscience disciplines rarely acquire sufficient quantitative skills to be truly competitive graduate students or professionals. Experience with modeling, during their undergraduate careers, could greatly increase the quantitative literacy of geoscience majors and help them appreciate the real world applicability of mathematics and computational methods in their future careers in the geosciences.