CorGGLE opens minds to geosciences

What’s a CorGGLE?

Some people know exactly what they want to do with their lives from a very young age. Many of us have that one friend who, as a child, caught bugs or built elaborate Lego structures or took the family VCR apart and then grew up to be an entomologist, contractor, or electrical engineer.

If you are that person, you are lucky.

Far more frequently, the path people take to their chosen field can be meandering, dotted with what feel like wrong turns, blind alleyways, and pitstops.

A program in Cornell’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences is designed to meet the needs of this second group of people. Known officially as the Cornell Geopaths Geoscience Learning Ecosystem, (and known affectionately as CorGGLE), the program aims to attract students and recent graduates from non-geoscience fields and give them a chance to explore opportunities for geoscience graduate studies.

EAS Professor Matthew Pritchard was awarded a grant from the National  Science Foundation to support CorGGLE in November of 2021 and the program saw its first cohort of interns on campus in the summer of 2022. In the summer of 2024, Cornell and EAS hosted the third group of CorGGLE scholars.

A CorGGLE summer program at Cornell lasts nine weeks. Students live on campus, conduct research alongside Cornell faculty, staff scientists, and graduate students, present their work, learn about geoscience careers, take field trips, receive training in professional skills, and network with others at weekly lunches and talks. Cohorts are small—generally between five and ten students—and a strong community feeling develops among the group. Interns receive a stipend, housing, and travel accommodations.

Helping students find a place

“It has been a great success, and it's been a lot of fun,” Pritchard said. “The real highlight is working with the interns. Sometimes they come in without any research experience or any previous exposure to the Geosciences. And by the end of the summer they have gained a new appreciation and a different perspective they didn't have before.”

2022 CorGGLE alumni Chloe Crothers agrees. “I decided to partake in CorGGLE to use it as a stepping-stone to expand my research experience and gain insight into whether I wanted to pursue graduate studies,” Crothers said. “This program came into my life at the right time as I had just discovered my innate interest in disaster resilience. I was aware of my interest in natural disasters and climate change, but I was unaware that I was able to study something that connected them.”

Crothers, who earned an undergraduate degree in Environmental Sustainability at SUNY Oneonta, is now in a two-year master’s program at Lund University in Sweden, studying Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change Adaptation. “On reflection, the biggest impact that I can credit CorGGLE with was helping me find my place as a graduate student,” Crothers said. “This program gave me the confidence I needed to carry me through applications and to apply with ambition to programs worldwide.”

Andie Gomez-Patron is a doctoral student in Matt Pritchard’s group at Cornell. When she was in her first year at EAS she heard Pritchard talk about this new program called CorGGLE and she immediately knew she wanted to be a part of the program as a graduate coordinator. “As a grad coordinator I take care of a lot of the logistics,” Gomez-Patron said. “I work with the other grad coordinator, Olivia Paschall, to order food, drive the vans to field trips, and answer any questions the interns have.”

But it is not just about logistics; Gomez-Patron has also served as a research mentor to four of the CorGGLE interns so far in the three years of the program’s existence.

Paschall, who is a doctoral student in Professor Rowena Lohman’s group at Cornell, has also worked with the CorGGLE interns for three years. “When I learned about the program, I liked that its purpose is to enact change on the individual level by exposing diverse students to geoscience research and future career paths,” Paschall said. “I really value an inclusive environment both at Cornell and in the geosciences in general, and this program contributes to that in a concrete way.”

Both Gomez-Patron and Paschall are proud of the effects of the program on the interns. “I’ve mentored two interns and I have enjoyed seeing a spark of understanding when I discuss research topics with them, especially because the method we study is very complicated,” Paschall said. “I admire the ingenuity and curiosity the interns express throughout the summer, and I’m always impressed by their detailed final symposium presentations.”

Partners in the program

One vital ingredient in the success of the program has been the enthusiastic response from EAS faculty. Many of them have gladly raised their hands to say they would like to work with  CorGGLE interns for the summer on challenging and relevant research projects. A small sampling of past projects includes “Correlations Between Stratospheric Polar Vortex Waves and Cold Air Outbreaks Over North America with Applications to a Simple Coupled Dynamical Model” with Professors Peter Hitchcock and Art DeGaetano; “Short-term monitoring of Cascadilla Creek’s response to Canadian wildfire smoke” with Professor Nicole Fernandez and doctoral student Hunter Jamison; and “Experimental Petrology of A Martian Meteorite Yamato 980459” with Professor Megan Holycross and Staff Scientist Brian Balta.

Another important factor in the program’s success is the fact that CorGGLE has partnered with five institutions in the mid-Atlantic region that have diverse undergraduate student populations with strong backgrounds in science, technology, engineering and mathematics: Hunter College of CUNY; State University of New York at Oneonta; Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey; Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina; and Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. These five institutions provide a deep pool of potential CorGGLE applicants.

In addition to the connections CorGGLE has fostered with the five partner institutions, Pritchard has enjoyed working closely with Cornell Engineering’s Office of Inclusive Excellence. “Through CorGGLE, I've been able to work with them a lot more closely and it's been a great experience,” Pritchard said. “It has opened my eyes to all of the valuable work they do.”

CorGGLE students were able to connect with students who were on campus for internships at Cornell for a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU)  opportunity. “We found out there's this whole consortium of REU programs at Cornell that coordinate their summer activities,” Pritchard said. “There were weekend trips to Niagara Falls, NYC, and the Corning Museum of Glass and  seminars on topics like Scientific ethics or how to give a scientific presentation. It makes for a really great and valuable experience for our interns.”

“CorGGLE set me up to achieve my goals.”

2023 CorGGLE intern Zoë Gold says that the program changed her life. “CorGGLE was the perfect next step for me. During the senior year of my bachelor’s degree I worked on an honors thesis that concerned biology and climate change. This was my original introduction to geoscience. Through completing this thesis, I realized I was interested in pursuing a career at the intersection of biology and geology,” Gold said.

“I was too far into my bachelor’s degree to add on a geology major/minor so I looked into other opportunities. CorGGLE stood out to me because it felt like it was made for people in my exact situation. There I was, less than a year away from graduating with a biology degree having recently determined new career goals for myself – career goals that required a formal education in the geological sciences. CorGGLE was one of the few opportunities I saw for recent graduates.”

Gold is now a doctoral student in Geological Sciences working with Professor Nicole Fernandez at—you guessed it!—Cornell. “This internship set a lot in motion for me academically. It gave me direction, confirmed my interest in geoscience, and set me up to achieve my goals of pursuing a career in geoscience.”

Program specifics and a link to apply are here.