The RASOR project is designed to increase engagement of students from rural Alaska communities in biomedical/STEM careers. Rural Alaskan communities are home to students of intersecting identities underrepresented in biomedical science, including Alaska Native, low-income, first generation college, and rural. Geographic isolation defines these communities and can limit the exposure of students to scientifically-minded peers, professional role models, and science career pathways. However these students also have a particularly strong environmental connection through subsistence and recreational activities, which makes the one-health approach to bio-medicine an intuitive and effective route for introducing scientific research and STEM content. In RASOR, we will implement place-based mentored research projects with students in rural Alaskan communities at the high school level, when most students are beginning to seriously consider career paths. The biomedical one-health approach will build connections between student experiences of village life in rural Alaska and biomedical research. Engaging undergraduate students in research has proved one of the most successful means of increasing the persistence of minority students in science (Kuh 2008). Furthermore, RASOR will integrate high school students into community-based participatory research (Israel et al. 2005). This approach is designed to demonstrate the practicality of scientific research, that science has the ability to support community and cultural priorities and to provide career pathways for individual community members. The one-health approach will provide continuity with BLaST, an NIH-funded BUILD program that provides undergraduate biomedical students with guidance and support. RASOR will work closely with BLaST, implementing among younger (pre-BLaST) students approaches that have been successful for retaining rural Alaska students along STEM pathways and tracking of post-RASOR students. Alaska Native and rural Alaska students are a unique and diverse population underrepresented in biomedical science and STEM fields.
The Sustainability Teams Empower and Amplify Membership in STEM (S-TEAMS), an NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot project, will tackle the problem of persistent underrepresentation by low-income, minority, and women students in STEM disciplines and careers through transdisciplinary teamwork. As science is increasingly done in teams, collaborations bring diversity to research. Diverse interactions can support critical thinking, problem-solving, and is a priority among STEM disciplines. By exploring a set of individual contributors that can be effect change through collective impact, this project will explore alternative approaches to broadly enhance diversity in STEM, such as sense of community and perceived program benefit. The S-TEAMS project relies on the use of sustainability as the organizing frame for the deployment of learning communities (teams) that engage deeply with active learning. Studies on the issue of underrepresentation often cite a feeling of isolation and lack of academically supportive networks with other students like themselves as major reasons for a disinclination to pursue education and careers in STEM, even as the numbers of underrepresented groups are increasing in colleges and universities across the country. The growth of sustainability science provides an excellent opportunity to include students from underrepresented groups in supportive teams working together on problems that require expertise in multiple disciplines. Participating students will develop professional skills and strengthen STEM- and sustainability-specific skills through real-world experience in problem solving and team science. Ultimately this project is expected to help increase the number of qualified professionals in the field of sustainability and the number of minorities in the STEM professions.
While there is certainly a clear need to improve engagement and retention of underrepresented groups across the entire spectrum of STEM education - from K-12 through graduate education, and on through career choices - the explicit focus here is on the undergraduate piece of this critical issue. This approach to teamwork makes STEM socialization integral to the active learning process. Five-member transdisciplinary teams, from disciplines such as biology, chemistry, computer and information sciences, geography, geology, mathematics, physics, and sustainability science, will work together for ten weeks in summer 2018 on real-world projects with corporations, government organizations, and nongovernment organizations. Sustainability teams with low participation by underrepresented groups will be compared to those with high representation to gather insights regarding individual and collective engagement, productivity, and ongoing interest in STEM. Such insights will be used to scale up the effort through partnership with New Jersey Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability (NJHEPS).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Amy TuiningaAshwani VasishthPankaj Lai
The Broadening Experience for Scientific Training: Beginning Enhancement Track ("BEST-BET"), an NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot project, draws upon the expertise of five research-intensive institutions that have developed innovative programing in career and professional development for doctoral and postdoctoral trainees in biomedical research. The goal of the project is to expand the scope and leverage the work so as to engage students earlier in their career exploration. Specifically, the project will target undergraduates who may not be aware of the multitude of career options available to them. These include opportunities in academia, the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, science communication, science policy, and technology transfer/patent law. The effort will focus on undergraduates who come from populations generally underrepresented in STEM fields, including but not limited to ethnically, racially and socioeconomically underserved communities. The grant will support educational opportunities for students at minority-serving institutions and will assess the impact of providing new opportunities to this community. The critical contributions of a diverse and inclusive community are essential to progress in all STEM fields. By promoting diversity in education, this project aims to engage undergraduate students at a point in their professional development that could enable participation in a wide range of workforce opportunities so as to advance the progress of science and national health.
The focus of BEST BET will be to use a collective impact framework to connect the "BEST network" of institutions to partners engaged in undergraduate education of students from underrepresented communities who are interested in the life sciences. The underlying premise is that career exploration focused on opportunities that go beyond physician training will enable engagement of this community of learners in the life science workforce beyond the pre-med track and keep them engaged in degree completion. Multiple strategies will be used to attain the goals of BEST BET. They are organized in the context of two major objectives roughly divided into the scope of planned activities. The first objective focuses on "career exploration" and offers strategies to assist partner institutions to build career and skill development capacities. The second is grounded in an enhanced experience of BEST site visits whereby undergraduates will have the opportunity to envision life as a graduate student and beyond. These strategies will likely enhance persistence to complete the baccalaureate degree and move onto doctoral programs.
Lack of diversity in science and engineering education has contributed to significant inequality in a workforce that is responsible for addressing today's grand challenges. Broadening participation in these fields will promote the progress of science and advance national health, prosperity and welfare, as well as secure the national defense; however, students from underrepresented groups, including women, report different experiences than the majority of students, even within the same fields. These distinctions are not caused by the students' ability, but rather by insufficient aspiration, confidence, mentorship, instructional methods, and connection and relevance to their cultural identity. The long-term vision of this project is to amplify the impact of a successful broadening participation model at the University of Maine, the Stormwater Research Management Team (SMART). This program trains students and mentors in using science and engineering skills and technology to research water quality in their local watershed. Students engage in numerous science and technology fields: engineering design, data acquisition, analysis and visualization, chemistry, environmental science, biology, and information technology. Students also connect with a diversity of professionals in water and engineering in government, private firms and non-profits. SMART has augmented the traditional science and engineering classroom by engaging students in guided mentored apprenticeships that address community problems.
Technical
This pilot project will form a collaborative and define a strategic plan for scale-up to a national alliance to increase the long-term success rate of underrepresented minority students in science, engineering, and related fields. The collaborative of multiple and varied organizations will align to collectively contribute time and resources to a pre-college educational pathway. There are countless isolated programs that offer short-term interventions for underrepresented and minority students; however, there is lack of organizational coordination for aligning current program offerings, sharing best practices, research results or program outcomes along the education to workforce pathway. The collaborative activities will focus on the transition grades (e.g., 4-5, 8, and high school) and emphasize relationships among skills, confidence, culture and future careers. Collaborative partners will establish a centralized infrastructure in each location to coordinate recruiting of invested community leaders, educators, and parents, around a common agenda by designing, deploying and continually assessing a stormwater-themed project that addresses their location and demographic specific needs. This collaborative community will consist of higher education faculty and students, K-12 students, their caregivers, mentors, educators, stormwater districts, state and national environmental protection agencies, departments of education, and other for-profit and non-profit organizations. The collaborative will address the need for research on mechanisms for change, collaboration, and negotiation regarding the greater participation of under-represented groups in the science and technology workforce.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mohamed MusaviVenkat BhethanabotlaCary JamesVemitra WhiteLola Brown
A non-technical description of the project test explains its significance and importance.
The goal of this project is to help students easily identify themselves as science or engineering professionals and increase the proportion of the local population, dominantly minorities, who pursue science and technology careers. Experience has demonstrated that students are most engaged in technical fields when they can participate in active, hands-on learning around problems with application to their local community. The focus of the effort is in marine science, which has local relevance to both the environment and the economy of the U.S. Virgin Islands. The project will use interventions at three crucial stages: middle school, high-school-college transition, and master-PhD transition, to engage students with specific active-learning and research-oriented programs. Community partners comprise a wide-ranging local organization that leverages the resources of other successful collaborations.
A technical description of the project
This project will create a transferable model that uses innovative partnerships among universities, governmental and non-governmental organizations, a professional society, and businesses, to create a local backbone organization with a shared vision for change and common success metrics broaden participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This project addresses the critical challenge of building scientific identity to increase interest and engagement of underrepresented minorities in STEM fields in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The plan includes targeted interventions at three significant times in the student career pathway (middle/high school, early college, and graduate school) that comprise: (1) field experiences in the marine sciences for middle/high school students, (2) early field research experiences for college freshmen and sophomore students, (3) bridge programming to a Ph.D. partnership with Pennsylvania State University, and (4) an intensive mentoring program. The model is grounded in social innovation theory through a framework that meets the five conditions for collective impact: common agenda, shared measurement of data and results, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and backbone support.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kristin Wilson GrimesMarilyn BrandtNastassia JonesCarrie BucklinMonica Medina
Genetics was developed by The Tech staff in collaboration with Stanford University and was funded by the National Institutes of Health Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) program. The evaluation documents the impact and effectiveness of the exhibition using timing and tracking observations and exit interviews. It also examines the partnership between The Tech and Stanford University through interviews with graduate students, who conduct programs in the exhibition, and their supervisor (results are not included in this summary).
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Randi KornThe Tech Museum of Innovation
The Self-Reliance Foundation (SRF) Conociendo Tu Cuerpo (Know Your Body) Hispanic Community Health Sciences Education project is an initiative designed to introduce Hispanic students and families to biomedical science and health education resources, and increase their participation levels in these fields. The educational goals of the project are to: (1) Encourage Hispanic undergraduate students to pursue careers in biomedicine and science through a mentoring program at the university level; (2) Inspire an interest in biomedical science among Hispanic elementary-age students and parents through community outreach activities; (3) Inform Hispanic parents about biomedical science education standards and academic requirements for pursuing biomedical and science related careers; and (4) Inform and inspire Hispanic students and their families about the biomedical sciences and related careers through a series of daily nationally broadcast Spanish-language radio capsules, and a nationally syndicated Spanish newspaper column. Conociendo Tu Cuerpo (Know Your Body) includes several key components: A model, Washington, D.C., area coalition of informal science, health, community, education, and media organizations that will publicize and provide hands-on health science activities at community festivals and other community settings; Hispanic undergraduate student health-science fellows to be trained and provided experience in facilitating health science activities; and nationally broadcast Spanish-language radio capsules that will cover topics in areas of biomedicine, research, education, and health-science careers. Parents and students will be able to access additional information about biomedical science opportunities and Hispanic role models in the biomedical sciences through the project's Conociendo Tu Cuerpo website and the bilingual 800 telephone help line promoted by 147 participating radio stations and 102 newspapers nationwide. The project will be supported at the national level through collaboration with the Hispanic Radio Network and the Pacific Science Center. The Washington, D.C., collaborative will include the Capital Children's Museum, local Spanish language radio stations, area universities, and health and community organizations. Development Associates, the largest American education and evaluation consulting corporation, will evaluate the project.