Increasing reliance of U.S. colleges and universities on student tuition makes recruitment a high priority for geoscience departments. In 2017, ~70% of geoscience graduates did not enter university declaring geology as a major, up by 10% since 2013 (Wilson, 2019). They discovered geology by taking an introductory geoscience course to fulfill general education or a previous major’s requirement (Stokes et al., 2015). Thus, inspiring students to pursue a geoscience career through general education courses is a critical recruitment tool. However, what happens when these courses are taught online because of a pandemic, budget cuts, or to accommodate students’ need for flexibility? It is not easy to be inspired through a computer screen.

This paper aims to describe two innovative pathways to recruit new undergraduate and graduate students at a large public research institution where, rather than focusing recruitment efforts on incoming students, a program recruits students who are already on campus and majoring in high-enrollment programs by offering them a path to earn a geology degree as a secondary major.