Kristen St John

and 2 more

Investigations of both short-term natural climate variability, and long-term, large-scale changes in climate state are advanced by scientific ocean drilling at globally-distributed locations. Despite its global importance as both a contributor to climate change and a region that is most affected by global warming, the Arctic Ocean is the last major region on Earth where the long-term climate history remains poorly known. While many major advances in understanding were achieved in 2004 with the successful completion of IODP Expedition 302: Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX), the record was hampered by generally poor recovery and by a 26-myr hiatus (or condensed interval depending on the age model) spanning the global transition from the Greenhouse to Icehouse climate states. In August-September 2022, IODP Expedition 377: Arctic Ocean Paleoceanography (ArcOP) will enable another step in reconstructing the detailed history of climate change in the Arctic over the last 50+ million years. The overall goal of the ArcOP drilling campaign is the recovery of a complete stratigraphic sedimentary record on the southern Lomonosov Ridge to meet the highest priority paleoceanographic objective: the continuous long-term Cenozoic climate history of the central Arctic Ocean. Key scientific themes to be addressed by ArcOP are represented in Figure 1. The expedition goals can be achieved through 1) careful site selection, 2) the use of appropriate drilling technology and ice management supported by two ice breakers, and 3) applying multi-proxy approaches to paleoceanographic, paleoclimatic, and age-model reconstructions. The expedition will complete one primary deep drill hole (LR-11B) to 900 meters below seafloor (mbsf; twice as deep as the ACEX core depth). This will be supplemented by a short drill site (LR-10B) to 50 mbsf, to recover an undisturbed Quaternary sedimentary section to ensure complete recovery for construction of a composite section spanning the full age range through the Cenozoic. Expected sedimentation rates two to four times higher than those of ACEX will permit higher-resolution studies of Arctic climate change. More information on ArcOP can be found at the expedition website: https://www.ecord.org/expedition377/.

Shandy Hauk

and 2 more

Geoscience education is, itself, a dynamical sub-system in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning ecosystem. Both the larger STEM environment and the geoscience ecosystem are shaped by the ever-changing relationships among people, places, science content (and its communication), teaching practices, and shifting roles for each of these. In answer to calls in the literature for research on professional learning in which the faculty member is central to the process of change, the study reported here addressed the question: What is the nature of college science faculty readiness for change in instructional practices? The setting was a professional development experience in oceanography/marine science and paleoclimatology among 32 faculty from 2- and 4-year colleges. Ten of the 32 participated in interviews and all provided survey responses and documents used in analysis. Qualitative research methods resulted in three example cases to illustrate a new framework for exploring faculty readiness for professional change in teaching. This framework blends the Clarke and Hollingsworth (2002) model of a professional change environment with research from health sciences on readiness for behavioral change (Dalton & Gottlieb, 2003). From the first model came the multi-part foundation of personal, external, professional, and consequence domains of experience and from the second came how an instructor draws on those domains to: (a) see an instructional challenge as requiring intentional action to be resolved; (b) notice new significance (for the instructor) in some aspect of instructional practice; (c) feel able to manage instructional stressors/challenges; (d) have commitment to initiate/sustain change; (e) perceive adequate support in undertaking change. Three profiles of readiness for change are represented by three composite instructor cases named Lee, Pat, and Chris. In the case of Lee, factor c drove change efforts, for Pat, factors a and b were in the forefront, and for Chris it was factors d and e. Building a healthy learning ecosystem includes attention to faculty as learners. The three cases are valuable both as illustrations of the framework in use and as touchstones for future research and development related to post-secondary professional learning for teaching.