Bringing a Lens of Equity to Geoscience Qualifying Examinations

Qualifying examinations are an important milestone in geoscience graduate programs, but students with marginalized identities are disproportionately lost from graduate programs around the time of these exams. Inequity in qualifying exams can enter at multiple stages throughout the exam design, student mentorship experience, exam administration, and post exam feedback. Therefore, robust assessment is necessary when building an equitable examination. We provide concrete suggestions for graduate programs to evaluate and modify their qualifying examinations. The data-driven and iterative process encourages graduate programs to outline specific expectations for success, employ best-practice pedagogy, proactively support students, and use data to measure progress and inform changes in the examination.