Counterspaces in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are often considered “safe spaces” at the margins for groups outside the mainstream of STEM education. The prevailing culture and structural manifestations in STEM have traditionally privileged norms of success that favor competitive, individualistic, and solitary practices—norms associated with White male scientists. This privilege extends to structures that govern learning and mark progress in STEM education that have marginalized groups that do not reflect the gender, race, or ethnicity conventionally associated with
This project, an NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot, managed by the University of Nevada, Reno, addresses the grand challenge of increasing underrepresentation regionally in the advanced manufacturing sector. Using the state's Learn and Earn Program Advanced Career Pathway (LEAP) as the foundation, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) activities will support and prepare Hispanic students for the region's workforce in advanced manufacturing which includes partnerships with Truckee Meadows Community College (TMCC), the state's Governor's Office of Economic Development, Charles River Laboratories, Nevada Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (Nevada EPSCoR) and the K-12 community.
The expected outcomes from the project will inform the feasibility, expandability and transferability of the LEAP framework in diversifying the state's workforce locally and the STEM workforce nationally. Formative and summative evaluation will be conducted with a well-matched comparison group. Dissemination of project results will be disseminated through the Association for Public Land-Grant Universities (APLU), STEM conferences and scholarly journals.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
David ShintaniJulie EllsworthKarsten HeiseRobert StachlewitzRegina Tempel
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The goal of FLIP (Diversifying Future Leadership in the Professoriate), an NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot, is to address the broadening participation challenge of increasing the diversity of the future leadership in the professoriate in computing at research universities as a way to achieve diversity across the field. According to the 2016 CRA Taulbee Survey, only 4.3% of the tenure-track faculty at PhD-granting universities are from underrepresented minorities. This challenge is important to address because diverse faculty contributes to academia in the following critical ways: serve as excellent role models for a diverse study body, bring diverse backgrounds to the student programs and policies developed by the department, and bring diverse perspectives to the research projects and programs. Further, the focus is on research universities, because in practice, key national leadership roles, such as serving on national committees that impact thefield of computing, often come from research universities.
The shared purpose and broad vision of the FLIP launch pilot is to increase faculty diversity in computing at research universities by increasing the diversity of PhD graduates from the top producers of computing faculty. The focus is on four underrepresented groups in computing: African Americans; Hispanics; Native Americans and indigenous peoples; and Persons with Disabilities. The long-term goal is to pursue this vision through strategic partnerships with those institutions that are the top producers of computing faculty and organizations that focus on diverse students in STEM, as well as partnerships that collectively adopt proven strategies for recruiting, graduating, and preparing a diverse set of doctoral students for academic careers. The purpose of the pilot is to establish a unified approach across the different partners that will build upon proven strategies to develop novel practices for increasing the diversity of the PhD graduates from key institutions, thereby increasing the faculty diversity in computing at research universities. For the pilot, FLIP will focus on recruitment and admissions and professional development for current PhD students.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Valerie TaylorCharles IsbellJeffrey ForbesUniversity of Chicago
To reach its full potential in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the United States must continue to recruit, prepare and maintain a diverse STEM workforce. Much work has been done in this regard. Yet, underrepresentation in STEM fields persists and is especially pronounced for Hispanic STEM professionals. The Hispanic community is the youngest and fastest growing racial/ethnic group in the United States but comprises only seven percent of the STEM workforce. More evidence-based solutions and innovative approaches are required. This project endeavors to address the challenges of underrepresentation in STEM, especially among individuals of Hispanic descent, through an innovative approach. The University of San Diego will design, develop, implement, and test a multilayered STEM learning approach specific to STEM learning and workforce development in STEM fields targeting Hispanic youth. The STEM World of Work project will explore youth STEM identity through three mechanisms: (1) an assessment of their individual interests, strengths, and values, (2) exposure to an array of viable STEM careers, and (3) engagement in rigorous hands-on STEM activities. The project centers on a youth summer STEM enrichment program and a series of follow-up booster sessions delivered during the academic year in informal contexts to promote family engagement. Paramount to this work is the core focus on San Diego's Five Priority Workforce Sectors: Advanced Manufacturing, Information and Communications Technology, Clean Energy, Healthcare, and Biotech. Few, if any, existing projects in the Advancing Informal STEM learning portfolio have explored the potential connections between these five priority workforce sectors, informal STEM learning, and identity among predominately Hispanic youth and families engaged in a year-long, culturally responsive STEM learning and workforce focused program. If successful, the model could provide a template for the facilitation of similar efforts in the future.
The STEM World of Work project will use a mixed-methods, exploratory research design to better understand the variables influencing STEM learning and academic and career choices within the proposed context. The research questions will explore: (1) the impacts of the project on students' engagement, STEM identity, STEM motivation, and academic outcomes, (2) factors that moderate these outcomes, and (3) the impact the model has on influencing youths' personal goals and career choices. Data will be garnered through cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys and reflective focus groups with the students and their parents/guardians. Multivariate analysis of variance, longitudinal modeling, and qualitative analysis will be conducted to analyze and report the data. The findings will be disseminated using a variety of methods and platforms. The broader impacts of the findings and work are expected to extend well beyond the project team, graduate student mentors, project partners, and the estimated 120 middle school students and their families from the predominately Hispanic Chula Vista Community of San Diego who will be directly impacted by the project.
This exploratory pathways project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Perla MyersVitaliy PopovOdesma DalrympleYaoran LiJoi Spencer
Designing for Diversity will establish a national Networked Improvement Community (NIC) of maker spaces and fab labs serving Black and Latino high school students and specializing in computational making programs. The project will be led by the New York Hall of Science, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and a national leadership team representing universities, cultural organizations, corporations, foundations and leaders in the Maker Movement. Using a NIC methodology, the partners will identify the most promising mechanisms for ensuring that participation in computational making programs has a significant impact on participants' choices to pursue STEM focused internships, post-secondary education, and career paths. The project will extend the NIC methodology into the informal learning community, which is in need of research methods that are both rigorous and accommodating of the institutional complexities of building and sustaining high-quality informal learning environments, and it will contribute to the literature on the impact of maker spaces and fab labs in underserved communities on the diversification of the STEM pipeline. The project will also pave the way for the development of a more fully-developed network of computational making programs across the country and a more comprehensive research initiative that will influence best practices in maker spaces and fab labs and foster perceptions of the value and impact of maker experiences on young people's readiness for future educational experiences and careers.
The project builds on research indicating that computational making - programs that combine the making of artifacts with computational tools and techniques - is a powerful strategy for engaging underrepresented students in STEM learning. However, participation in such programs will not necessarily lead students to take concrete steps toward computationally-rich STEM careers in which they are currently under-represented. A range of research suggests that computational making programs need to explicitly design for and address the socio-emotional dimensions of these learning experiences in order for them to become stepping stones into these careers. Designing for Diversity will work with a network of maker programs serving high needs Black and Latino high school students to address these learning factors. During this pilot, the leadership team will accomplish three tasks: (1) establish a common framework, shared measurement objectives and guidelines that will be used to identify, recruit and support participant maker programs and their local partners; (2) develop and coordinate the NIC's capacity for scaling and disseminating its work by connecting the research efforts to broader national initiatives; and (3) recruit, train, and collect baseline data on the Designing for Diversity NIC.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Margaret HoneyKatherine McMillanPaul LeMahieuAndres Henriquez
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
A partnership of institutions and organizations from public and private sectors, all with an established record in advancing Hispanics in higher education, will form a networked community across regions of the United States with significant Hispanic populations to collectively adapt and adopt proven practices and apply them throughout the higher education system of two-year colleges and baccalaureate-, master's-, and doctorate-granting universities. The partnership builds on the successful NSF-funded Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI) that has emerged as a significant pipeline of new recruits into computing graduate studies, industry, and the professoriate throughout the nation. Even through the Hispanic population has reached 17% nationally, a mere 4% STEM Master's and 3% STEM doctorate degrees are awarded nationwide to Hispanics in 2012-2013. The desperate need to reach parity is clear. The shared purpose and bold vision of the effort is to achieve parity in the number of Hispanics who complete computation-based graduate studies. The focus will be on targeting the pool of talented students at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) who, for various reasons, do not choose to continue on STEM educational and career pathways. The efforts will focus on transitioning Hispanic students from associate degree programs to baccalaureate programs, and from baccalaureate programs (regardless of where they began their studies) to completion of graduate degrees.
The project will establish a common agenda that guides the vision and strategy for collective impact, conduct data collection to longitudinally track student movement across campuses, and launch a multi-site pilot to test feasibility of the full-scale plan and process for change. While prior research has identified strategies for increasing graduate program completion rates for underrepresented minorities, little attention has been paid to the role of HSIs in reducing attrition. Attention to HSIs is a critical element in developing successful pathways to STEM careers. The networked community will involve social scientists across the different regions in research on Hispanic graduate program completion, to complement existing research on undergraduate completion. Developing a comprehensive, scalable model for cross-institutional advancement of students, in particular the combination of a bilingual and bicultural student body with unique needs, is critical to grow the STEM pipeline. Through a pilot, the project will engage two-year colleges and universities to begin the initial investigation on the impact of building strong student identity, student belonging, advocacy, and preparation on accelerating the number of students entering, persisting in the major, and considering, entering, and ultimately completing graduate studies in computational areas.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Ann GatesMarjorie ZatzMohsen BeheshtiEnrico PontelliAaron Velasco
Although major growth in engineering and computing jobs is expected in the next 10 years, students are not majoring in sufficient numbers to meet this demand. These impending workforce demands cannot be met without developing the skills of racial and ethnic minorities: however, Hispanics and Black/African Americans make up only a small percentage of doctoral students in the United States. The goal of the Consortium of Minority Doctoral Scholars (CMDS) Design and Development Launch Pilot is to broaden the participation of minorities in these fields. This pilot project will create a data portal that will allow the research team to study and understand the efficacy of various mentoring strategies that might be piloted across institutions and minority doctoral scholars programs.
Part II
The Consortium of Minority Doctoral Scholars (CMDS) will unite three of the nation's oldest and most prominent minority doctoral scholars programs (GEM, SREB and McKnight); organizations with a long history of impact in increasing the numbers of minorities obtaining advanced degrees. The CMDS Design and Development Launch Pilot will conduct extensive studies using data from these three programs. The research team will conduct a mixed method analysis of the data to discover commonalities and distinctions about the three programs' mentoring efforts as compared to students not involved in the three programs. This will result in a data-driven strategy for researching the efficacy of mentoring programs that can be applied across the three CMSD member and other minority doctoral scholars programs. By utilizing data from successful programs to pinpoint effective mentoring strategies, the project will create opportunities for larger numbers of minorities to be successful. This approach has implications not only with respect to equity and access, but also the development of a workforce that will drive future advances.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Juan GilbertShaundra DailyJerlando Jackson
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This one-year Collaborative Planning project seeks to bring together an interdisciplinary planning team of informal and formal STEM educators, researchers, scientists, community, and policy experts to identify the elements, activities, and community relationships necessary to cultivate and sustain a thriving regional early childhood (ages 3-6) STEM ecosystem. Based in Southeast San Diego, planning and research will focus on understanding the needs and interests of young Latino dual language learners from low income homes, as well as identify regional assets (e.g., museums, afterschool programs, universities, schools) that could coalesce efforts to systematically increase access to developmentally appropriate informal STEM activities and resources, particularly those focused on engineering and computational thinking. This project has the potential to enhance the infrastructure of early STEM education by providing a model for the planning and development of early childhood focused coalitions around the topic of STEM learning and engagement. In addition, identifying how to bridge STEM learning experiences between home, pre-k learning environments, and formal school addresses a longstanding challenge of sustaining STEM skills as young children transition between environments.
The planning process will use an iterative mixed-methods approach to develop both qualitative and quantitative and data. Specific planning strategies include the use of group facilitation techniques such as World Café, graphic recording, and live polling. Planning outcomes include: 1) a literature review on STEM ecosystems; 2) an Early Childhood STEM Community Asset Map of southeast San Diego; 3) a set of proposed design principles for identifying and creating early childhood STEM ecosystems in low income communities; and 4) a theory of action that could guide future design and research. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments.