Providing field experiences within introductory courses has been shown to aid in the recruitment and retention of geoscience students. However, field experiences can be expensive, time-consuming, and physically challenging/risky.  The goal of this project is for the investigators to improve retention and recruitment of students within the geosciences by providing undergraduates with mentored research projects and to develop a series of virtual field trips (VFT's) of the geology of Southeastern United States (specifically North and South Carolina).  These VFT's will then be used in introductory courses to increase critical thinking and spatial skills and to provide field experiences to students who cannot usually do field activities. Traditionally our university serves a high proportion of minorities that are usually 1st generation students who come from economically deprived localities.  In addition, the location and economic status of our university make it very difficult to take students on traditional field trips. The media for the virtual field guides will be acquired through various types of sources such as video (drone and handheld), Gigapan technologies, and Google Earth/ArcGIS.  In addition to virtual data the researchers will be trying to increase student interaction and add more depth to the experiences by the students compiling a range of supplemental material (i.e. rock / hand samples, thin sections, photographs, GPS readings, rock orientations, and GPR transects) from the field sites that can be incorporated with the multimedia.