About NewGeo
The Newark Geoscience Ecosystem (NewGeo) is a transformative learning geo-ecosystem model uniting Newark-based institutions and organizations in the growth of a geoscience workforce prepared to solve urban environmental challenges through cross-sectoral collaboration.
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Through experiential learning opportunities, NewGeo graduate students will build partnerships with Newark’s government, industry and education sectors, teach and mentor K-16 students, and collaborate with non-profits and community-based organizations. This instills a sense of civic responsibility in graduate students and the aspiring geoscientists they mentor. This project cultivates a geoscience workforce that is representative of and prepared to engage with the local citizenry to tackle environmental and climate stresses and injustices. NewGeo faculty and administrators promote inclusive, collaborative, and positive environments in the geo-ecosystem; implement and become practitioners of strategies to encourage and support students, individuals, and communities from marginalized and minoritized groups; and formalize relationships and institutionalize best practices for effective partnerships and whole system change. All NewGeo participants influence and inspire their professional and social networks, share within their communities of practice, and disseminate outcomes to the broader geoscience community for adaptation and adoption of the NewGeo model for cultural transformation at multiple levels.
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- Goal 1: Cultivate a diverse, multi-skilled NewGeo workforce prepared to tackle urban environmental challenges through community-centered, equitable and inclusive collaboration with non-academic stakeholders.
- Goal 2: Foster, support, and sustain a NewGeo ecosystem that promotes inclusive and collaborative exchanges and synergy between institutions and individuals.
- Goal 3: Establish NewGeo as a model for anchor institution university-community partnerships and expand locally and replicate nationally for whole system transformation.
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- Environment-Community-Outreach Graduate Assistants or ECO GAs
- Ecosystem-embedded place-based experiential learning (PBEL)
- Leverage academic skills and training to address urban environmental and geo-challenges locally and globally.
- Prepare them to collaborate and communicate with non-academics
- Mentor and recruit new scientists from K-12 institutions to the geosciences