Supplemental Material: Is Geology Accreditation Needed? It Is Already Here!

In the 2000s, geoscience program accreditation was a regular topic in journal articles, opinion pieces, meeting sessions, and committee reports (e.g., Corbett and Corbett, 2001; GSA Ad Hoc Committee on Accreditation, 2008). Geoscience accreditation discussions subsequently subsided for apparent lack of proactive, interactive interest and with no consensus achieved (GSA Ad Hoc Committee on Accreditation, 2008; Bralower et al., 2008). Simultaneously, an increasing emphasis on continuous improvement in higher education has led to regular, formal assessment of student outcome achievement, efforts to align program outcomes to workforce needs, and expansion of competency-based learning. As a result, calls have been made for professional societies to develop certification, accreditation, or badging programs (Wikle, 2018; Mosher and Keane, 2021; Klyce and Ryker, 2022)