Emerging Geoscientists' Conceptualizations and Perspectives Of 'Community'

Research Paper Recommended citation: Sepulveda Guzman, E., Van den Bogaard, M., Salas, K., & Rodriguez, S. (2025). Emerging Geoscientists’ Conceptualizations and Perspectives Of ‘Community’. In Kangaslampi, R., Langie, G., Järvinen, H.-M., & Nagy, B. (Eds.), SEFI 53rd Annual Conference. European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI), Tampere, Finland. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17631905. This Conference Paper is brought to you for open access by the 53rd Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI) at Tampere University in Tampere, Finland. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License. Please contact the conference organizers at [email protected] if you require an accessible file, as the files provided by ConfTool Pro to reviewers are filtered to remove author information, and this filter technique unfortunately cannot preserve screen reader information. However, the filter can easily be disabled by the organizers. For Peer Review Only SEFI 2025 EMERGING GEOSCIENTISTS’ CONCEPTUALIZATIONS AND PERSPECTIVES OF ‘COMMUNITY’ E. Sepúlveda Guzmán a,1, M. Van den Bogaard b, K. Salas c, S. E. Rodriguez d a University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso TX, USA, ORCID 0000-0001-9442-811X b University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso TX, USA, ORCID 0000-0002-2267-3674 c University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso TX, USA, ORCID 0000-0002-6090-3880 d University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso TX, USA, ORCID 0000-0001-5211-8594 Conference Key Areas: Diversity, equity and inclusion in our universities and in our teaching; Curriculum development and emerging curriculum models in engineering. Keywords: Community, Ecosystems, Graduate Students, Mentoring ABSTRACT It is widely recognized that participating in community engagement activities benefits both the community and the individuals involved. This paper explores how Geoscience graduate students conceptualize and experience the notion of ‘community.’ A community is a collection of individuals who reside in the same area or share a specific trait or feature. The study aimed to examine the relationships and dynamics between the various communities in which Geoscience graduate students participate. A semi-structured interview was conducted with nine students at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) who are involved in the Community-Driven Inclusive Excellence and Leadership Opportunities in the Geosciences (CIELO-G) program. The results revealed that students are community-centered; they focus their research on community, which stems from their interests in educating the community, being change-driven, and community-sensible. Furthermore, findings show that students’ understanding of community is influenced by the various communities present in the borderland region, which act as a melting pot that shapes their perceptions of community. Our findings have meaningful implications for higher education institutions in enhancing their support for students and guiding research that benefits local communities. 1 Corresponding Author E. Sepúlveda Guzmán [email protected] For Peer Review Only SEFI 2025 1 INTRODUCTION Communities shape individuals’ thoughts and actions, playing a significant role in the richness and complexity of human life (Tumiel-Berhalter et al., 2023). Therefore, this paper’s seeks to understand how geoscience graduate students conceptualize and experience community. Ferdinand Tönnies distinguished community, marked by close, role-based relationships, from society’s impersonal, contractual ties. McMillan and Chavis (1986) further defined sense of community through membership, influence, integration and fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection. With these definitions, we can explore the complexities of how individuals learn within a community. According to Lave (1991), learning is shaped by lived experiences and active participation in a community. Additionally, Illeris (2003) emphasizes that learning is a complex social phenomenon involving both psychological processes and interactions with the cultural or material environment, such as the communities in which individuals interact. When it comes to understanding the complexities of learning in a community, Bronfenbrenner (2000) recognizes that interconnected and nested systems influence the development of individuals, a notion that White and Nonnamaker (2008) expounded on in the context of graduate education. These systems can represent many things, ranging from immediate environments, such as school or home, to broader cultural and societal contexts that inform the meaning of ‘community.’ Research on graduate students often delineates the importance of social community through interactions with mentors and peers for success (Haeger & Fresquez, 2016; Lechuga, 2011; Lorenzetti et al., 2019). Feeling a sense of belonging is especially a problem for students from underrepresented minority groups (Herrera & Kovats Sánchez, 2022). At the same time, Geosciences is known for its lack of diversity within its ranks, which is often perceived and experienced as ‘unwelcoming’ by many students (Marín-Spiotta et al., 2020). At the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), the Geoscience program is going through a transition to create more welcoming spaces for its graduate students. The program actively encourages collaboration among students and faculty and forges stronger connections with the CITY community. UTEP is a research-intensive, public university on the U.S-Mexico border, and is situated in one of the largest binational and bilingual borderplexes. In conversations with the students and faculty the concept of ‘community’ often surfaces. In this paper we aim to explore how Geoscience graduate students conceptualize and experience the notion of ‘community,’ and to examine the relationships and dynamics between the various communities with which they participate. The research questions that informed this work are: 1) how do the Geoscience graduate students conceptualize and experience ‘community’? 2) how are these communities related? 2 COMMUNITY RESEARCH IN STEM EDUCATION The notion of social support and community in STEM education has received increasing attention in recent years. Teasdale et al. (2020) explored how shifting from teacher-centered to community-oriented practices in STEM colleges promotes reflection and perspective change, especially with community-focused materials. Their study concluded that a community-centered approach that shifted the teachers' role to facilitator supports the emergence of an environment of collaboration. Herrera For Peer Review Only SEFI 2025 and Kovats Sánchez (2022) studied community-based perspectives and found that traditional STEM disciplinary culture lacks the altruistic and collective ‘community’ focus that historically underrepresented students look for in STEM majors. On the other hand, Harris et al. (2021) foster alliances between local communities and scientists to elevate social relevance of the geosciences. Harris et al. (2021) also noted that cultural competency is not only a teachable skill to promote among professionals, but a catalyst for community change. Research on community in STEM education mainly focuses on fostering a community perspective among STEM students (Kricorian et al., 2020; Lechuga, 2011; Lorenzetti et al., 2019; Pfeifer et al., 2021). However, there is a dearth of research focused on how students’ community networks influence the development of a community-centered identity (Herrera & Kovats Sánchez., 2022). To further understand the experiences of our participants, the research team drew from Bronfenbrenner’s (2000) Ecological Systems Theory (EST) which explains human development as being influenced by multiple 'layers' of environmental systems that interact and affect an individual. These 'layers' include a microsystem, mesosystem, and macrosystem (Bronfenbrenner, 2009). Community-based research can be embedded in these layers (Reeb et al., 2017) that function as networks (Neal & Neal, 2013). In the case of our participants their experience of community is distributed in various layers, in an academic department, in a university in a border setting. These interactions are explained in the results and discussion section where we illustrate our findings by placing them in an EST model. 3 RESEARCH CONTEXT: CIELO-G The National Science Foundation supports the Community-Driven Inclusive Excellence and Leadership Opportunities in the Geosciences’ (CIELO-G). Its mission is to reshape the culture of Geoscience by engaging the local community and raising awareness of geosciences while preparing students for careers in geosciences and other STEM-related fields. Based on the Collective Impact Model (Kania & Kramer, 2011), CIELO-G serves as a framework that brings together academia and community-based organizations, such as NGOs and schools, to collaborate in solving problems and reshaping the culture of geoscience. This occurs through community engagement, multi-sector collaboration, and broad-scale commitment to change. The CIELO-G graduate students, or fellows, connect with stakeholders through research projects and community engagement. The fellows participate in multiple communities, some more formal than others, some directly connected to Geosciences, some less so, some are nested, while others are not, etc. These communities are all connected and, as such, could be considered an eco-system in which the graduate students have to find their way. 4 METHODS, TECHNIQUES, OR MODES OF INQUIRY The research team did semi-structured interviews to ensure flexibility and participants’ ease in sharing their feelings, thoughts, and intentions in their experience (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The semi-structured interviews focused on the following topics: how participants got interested in the geosciences and in CIELO-G, how participants’ experiences have been impacted by their social community, networks, and mentors, and what benefits students have reaped from these experiences. The team invited all nine CIELO-G graduate fellows for interviews. The For Peer Review Only SEFI 2025 interviews took place via Zoom or in person and lasted around 1 hour. The interviews were transcribed verbatim using Zoom’s transcription tool and checked by members of the research team. The transcripts were anonymized and cleared of details that could identify participants and those around them. Participants consisted of the nine CIELO-G graduate fellows, three females, and six males; five of the fellows identified as Hispanic, two as White, one as Black, and one as Asian. This paper presents an early stage of a grounded theory analysis of graduate students' perceptions of community, as there are few existing frameworks that would help study graduate students’ conceptualization of ‘community’. Drawing from Charmaz (2008), we started with inductive, indeterminate, and open-ended coding, resulting in emergent categories followed by an exploration of the literature to position emerging code patterns. ESG created a preliminary codebook with deductive and inductive codes and identified common themes. To ensure reliability, KS coded interviews simultaneously to compare code books later in research team meeting where the research team looked at the code book and coded segments to ensure consensus. Next the remaining transcripts were coded by ESG, KS, or SR. When all nine interview transcripts were coded, the team revisited the code book to check for redundancies and similarities that called for merging or eliminating codes, resulting in the final code book which was applied to the nine transcripts. 5 RESULTS AND DISSCUSSION Three major themes emerged from the analysis: Fellows’ community definition, community responsibility, and CIELO-G's role in fellows’ perception of community. Table 1. Fellows’ Community Definitions and Characteristics Who is community? What is community? “They look like me ... [they] didn't have these opportunities coming up” (SF3, Pos. 18). “Create that opportunity for other people that they might not have it” (SF3, Pos. 89). “Be without having to go through what I already went through” (SF2, Pos. 183). “Help my roots in Hispanic culture” (SF4, Pos. 6). “[W]ho you associate yourself with, and who you surround yourself with” (SF5, Pos. 23). “Underrepresented and lower socioeconomic communities” (SF9, Pos. 17). Fellows define their community as a diverse group, including peers in CIELO-G, students in local schools, NGO collaborators, and residents of the borderlands. Fellows understand community as the people around them, so when they were asked to describe this community, they emphasize characteristics like a lack of opportunities, underrepresentation, and Hispanic culture within this community, which reflects shared challenges and experiences (see Table 1). This drives them to educate others on overcoming struggles and raise awareness of the geosciences among their community members, aiming to uplift their community, often lacking in research resources. Their community includes family, neighbors, teachers, and mentors, aligning with Tönnies' (1957) definition of community. The fellows recognize their community's underrepresentation in science and lower socioeconomic status, motivating their efforts to improve lives through geosciences. The second trend to emerge was Community Responsibility, that centers on work fellows do through CIELO-G as emerging geoscientists. This is closely connected to how fellows define community. The strong commitment to the community can be observed when fellows discuss ‘giving back to the community’, which includes For Peer Review Only SEFI 2025 educating their peers, including other CIELO-G fellows, UTEP students in general, members of their community, and ensuring their community members do not struggle as they did in the past. Some fellows talked about the language barrier in the community, “…most of these kids were really shy, but then I spoke Spanish to them…they were just so excited that someone was willing to speak Spanish to them” (SF3, Pos. 102). Fellows spoke of giving their community the information it deserves to understand its surroundings, be it the water shortage in their border region, heating, education resources, environmental issues, and the community’s role in the environment. Herrera and Kovats Sánchez (2022) underscore how historically underrepresented communities highly value the notion of giving back to their communities as professionals. Hence, Fellows are interested in community-centered research that aligns with their interests in the local region. Table 2 shows how fellows’ community responsibility, interests, and goals directly relate to community research. Table 2 Fellows' Community Responsibility Community research “…focusing on how to improve our local region” (SF2, Pos. 5). “Something that would impact the community… how we view it locally, how we interact with it” (SF3, Pos. 14). “specific stuff that affects…people in Mexico, people like the Latin America…earthquakes” (SF4, Pos. 90). “everything where…they don't get that much research” (SF4, Pos. 90). “they're studying this because of a bigger reason, because of certain problems that we're going through” (SF5, Pos. 25). “I can use, like my knowledge, to apply, to solve the issues like the people facing every day” (SF8, Pos. 46). “the values of the project align with my values as a student and as to a person who wants to give back, but at the same time keep contributing through research” (SF6, Pos. 13). “[T]he one that I just proposed last week or two weeks ago about working with the urban heat island effect in some of these communities” (SF9, Pos. 22). To examine the relationships and dynamics between the various communities with which fellows participate, the team analyzed fellows’ insights around their perceptions or definitions of community, sense of responsibility, and drive to make a difference emerge from constant interactions between the self and their immediate surroundings. Herrera and Kovats Sánchez (2022) add that minoritized groups’ aspirations are grounded in a concern for helping others, and that their definition of community is frequently place-based, with an awareness of the geographical, historical, political, and economic contexts that shape their home communities. As seen in Table 2 fellows seek to impact those who are part of their community: the lower-income communities in their region, those who speak Spanish, or communities that do not have access to this type of research that address issues they face. As in many scholars' definition of community, geographical location (Cobigo et al., 2016) is key to understanding how fellows define community. In our study we see fellows, mostly Latinx, in the U.S.-México border trying to improve their community. Casellas Connors (2023) posits that minoritized students see community as kinship networks. This notion emphasizes bonds that are experienced as family bonds, mutual support, and a sense of collective responsibility (Casellas Connors, 2023; Herrera & Kovats Sánchez, 2022). A third theme that emerged is CIELO-G’s role in fellows’ perception of community. The team considered this as a nested theme (or ‘networked’ as in Neal & Neal, For Peer Review Only SEFI 2025 2013) that is composed of three main layers that supports fellows’ perceptions of community; these layers are their university, their department and CIELO-G, see Appendix 1 for examples on CIELO-G's role in fellows’ perception of community by layer. CIELO-G is recognized as a space for building community, with fellows expressing their feelings about having their voices welcomed. Overall, the institution, department, and program foster a sense of community among members. Pfiefer et al. (2021), state that those institutions that recognize and value a broader spectrum of "knowing and doing" see an increase in student engagement in communityoriented research. We observe this in how CIELO-G fosters fellows’ interests in community-oriented research valuing fellows’ voices. As a result, fellows' research goals align closely with CIELO-G's mission, as seen in Tables 1-2 and earlier sections. Before joining CIELO-G, they journeyed through their communities, universities, and departments, eventually finding a connection to their past experiences within the program's community. An essential component in CIELO-G's role in fellows' perception of community is mentoring. Through these relationships, fellows are introduced to the science community, sometimes leading to a decision to pursue a career in geosciences. Mentors help students gain insights into the expectations of future geoscientists while sharing similar interests and goals, which supports the fellows' career aspirations. Ultimately, these mentoring connections foster a sense of community among fellows, as mentors aim to enhance the community through their work in geosciences. Here, mentoring serves as a space for sharing goals, a key aspect of community (Wenger, 1999). Through interactions with mentors and peers, mentees gain a deeper understanding of the community (Haeger & Fresquez, 2016; Lechuga, 2011; Lorenzetti et al., 2019) and develop a sense of belonging (Kricorian et al., 2020). However, it's important to note that institutions can sometimes create obstacles to this community-building. The nested theme includes a subcategory focused on obstacles to building community, closely tied to CIELO-G's impact on fellows' perceptions and participation. The fellows noted a division among the colleges, indicating a lack of unity within the university, and pointed out that policies and administration hinder community building among students. Additionally, they expressed concerns that people in their communities seemed indifferent to local issues. For example, a participant mentions “I felt like people didn't like [to] take things serious when it came to like future generations that like someone else is gonna figure it out” (SF7, Pos. 9); “... here [...] I don't see they are kind of like more independent and they honestly they don't care. Anything happened to the environment. So they are like, telling like, it's not my fault” (SF8, Pos. 70). Both students feel that some community members in the borderlands are less committed to improving their community, leaving that responsibility to future generations. As a result, fellows feel a greater commitment to making a difference in their community; educating and conducting impactful research for their community. 5.1 Community as an ecosystem of communities Fellows' community experiences operate on various levels, interconnected within different settings that influence their perceptions of community. In this section, we will position fellows’ ideas and experiences in a model to further examine the interactions and dynamics among these communities (see Fig. 1). Our data suggest For Peer Review Only SEFI 2025 that the boundaries between the communities in which fellows engage represent an ecosystem. The team found Bronfenbrenner’s (2009) Ecological Systems Theory (EST) model to effectively represent our findings. The fellows’ experiences are situated in the borderlands, a macrosystem which influences all other experiences and gives meaning: it is the place where fellows reside and work as future geoscientists. Fellows participate in their community through their university, their department, and CIELO-G, which according to Bronfenbrenner (2009) could be seen as a mesosystem. The microsystem consists of fellows’ closest surrounding communities, which is where fellows forge their identity through active participation. Fig. 1. Adaptation of Bronfenbrenner’s (2000) Ecological Systems Theory model to our research study. A microsystem “is a pattern of activities, roles, and interpersonal relations experienced by the developing person in a given setting with particular physical and material characteristics” (Bronfenbrenner, 2009, p. 22). Participants’ microsystem comprises activities that forged fellows’ identity centered on community and mentoring relationships in and outside the geosciences (e.g., community volunteering, K-12 and undergraduate experiences, summer camps, and CIELO-G). Mentoring relationships played an essential role in strengthening fellows’ STEM identity, fostering their sense of belonging to a scientific community (Kricorian et al., 2020). Additionally, students spoke of Spanish use in their communities (see previous section) and community participation, reflecting that their work is on the Mexico-U.S. border. From these descriptions, the team identified fellows’ microsystems as fostering community-oriented perspectives. Furthermore, the microsystem is influenced by a mesosystem, which Bronfenbrenner (2009) defines as “a set of interrelations between two or more settings in which the For Peer Review Only SEFI 2025 developing person becomes an active participant” (p. 209). In our study the larger setting in which the microsystem is set is the CIELO-G program, the department, the scholarly community, and the community partners. These communities all bring their own perspectives, interests, and culture (McMillan & Chavis, 1986); these perspectives, interests, and cultures resonate with the microsystem. Bronfenbrenner (1979) postulates that a macrosystem refers to the consistency observed within a culture, which adheres to the description of the borderlands provided by the fellows. Overall, the results fit Bronfenbrenner’s (2000) EST model. What the reader observes in Fig. 1 is, in most cases, a representation of our findings arranged in the form of a model. The macrosystem corresponds to the location where fellows experience community. In the case of the mesosystem, it pertains to the interrelations among different settings (university, department, CIELO-G, local community) in which fellows actively participate. The microsystem comprises only the relations of fellows' activities, roles, and experiences. Lastly, in the center of our proposed model, we located the characteristics that described fellows' community focus. 6 CONCLUSIONS AND LIMITATIONS Through an early-stage grounded theory analysis, the team explored how Geoscience graduate students conceptualize and experience the notion of ‘community’ and examined the relationships and dynamics between the various communities in which they participate. Findings are centered in fellows’ definition of community, reasons behind community research which stems from their interests of educating the community, being change driven, community sensible, and community centered. Through Bronfenbrenner’s (2000) EST we identified the diverse layers that make up participants’ understanding and conceptualizations of community, and how their setting plays a major role in their perception of community. The fellows’ sense of community is shaped by the relationships and dynamics within the communities they interact within the borderland region, making the borderlands a macrosystem that influences all systems present in the region. Understanding the dynamics and relationships of the communities present in the academic ecosystem informs universities of the perceptions students have of their community. In the case of our study’s context, understanding graduate students’ views of community helps higher education institutions better support marginalized students and guides research that benefits local communities. The present qualitative paper offered rich and in depth-insights around Geoscience graduate students’ perceptions of community in the borderlands. However, this poses several limitations since participants might not represent the broader population in STEM higher education and their responses might be subject to societal norms or expectations. 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Acknowledgement: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number 2228180. Disclaimer: Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.