NAGT Announces New Collaborations, Big Changes to Member Services

NAGT is expanding its professional development programming in collaboration with the On the Cutting Edge professional development program for geoscience faculty, and the Building Strong Geoscience Departments program. NAGT, On the Cutting Edge, and Building Strong Geoscience Departments share a commitment to ongoing professional development surrounding teaching within the geoscience community and to publishing resources that support effective teaching. These natural collaborations will enhance NAGT programming while supporting valuable community resources initiated with NSF funding. The resulting NAGT program will sustain the high quality face-to-face, virtual, and travelling workshops, as well as the on-line resources valued by so many of our members. Your membership dues will provide a foundation of support for this programming including enabling open access to the on-line resources. You can find information about these programs linked from the front page of the NAGT website including access to on-line resources valued by undergraduate and K-12 educators alike.

In order to respond to this and other changes the executive committee voted to increase 2014 membership dues and to simplify the member categories. The new dues and categories are as follows:

• Regular Membership $65/year
• Reduced Membership $45/year (Adjunct and Retired Faculty, and K-12 Teachers)
• Student Membership $25/year
• Sustaining Membership $100/year

These changes to the dues structure will allow us to expand our professional development programs and reach out to even more geoscientists.

As of September 1, NAGT will contract our membership services through the Science Education Resource Center (SERC). We know that many of you had difficulty renewing your memberships last year and that has led us to make this change with our member services. Your new contact for member services will be Erica Zweifel (ezweifel@carleton.edu).

Much has been going on nationally surrounding the topic of geoscience, from President Obama's recent climate change initiative to the Next Generation Science Standards, which place Earth and space sciences in a prominent position. We share your passion for geoscience and we believe that our mission is more important than ever. Please consider asking your library to subscribe to JGE (Journal of Geoscience Education) and inviting a colleague to join NAGT.

Thank you all for the role that you play in strengthening geosciences education. Whether it is nominating a colleague or student for an award or submitting an article for publication, we appreciate your time and efforts.