Slides from the January 30, 2018 Webinar present information for preparing proposals for the NSF INCLUDES Alliance Solicitation (NSF 18-529). Includes a brief description of NSF INCLUDES, an explanation of Collaborative Change strategies and the NSF INCLUDES 5 elements of collaborative change, proposal recommendations, details on the NSF cooperative agreements and the NSF Merit Review criteria, and provides useful resources.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jolene JessePaige Smith
resourceprojectGames, Simulations, and Interactives
EMERGE in STEM (Education for Minorities to Effectively Raise Graduation and Employment in STEM) is a NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot. This project addresses the broadening participation challenge of increasing participation of women, the at-risk minority population, and the deaf in the STEM workforce. The project incorporates in and out-of-school career awareness activities for grades 4-12 in a high poverty community in Guilford County, North Carolina. EMERGE in STEM brings together a constellation of existing community partners from all three sectors (public, private, government) to leverage and expand mutually reinforcing STEM career awareness and workforce development activities in new ways by using a collective impact approach.
This project builds on a local network to infuse career exposure elements into the existing mutually reinforcing STEM activities and interventions in the community. A STEM education and career exposure software, Learning Blade, will be used to reach approximately 15,000 students. A shared measurement system and assessment process will contribute to the evaluation of the effectiveness of the collective impact strategies, the implementation of mutually reinforcing activities across the partnership and the extent to which project efforts attract students to consider STEM careers.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Gregory MontyMargaret KanipesMalcolm SchugSteven Jiang
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
Many urban universities offer precollege STEM programs aimed at broadening participation in STEM. These programs are designed to increase students' scientific content knowledge and skills, promote STEM engagement, increase self-efficacy, and prepare underserved and underrepresented minority high school students for success in undergraduate programs. However, even after demonstrating significant knowledge gains and success in these programs, students are often unable to authenticate their knowledge gains to receive favorable consideration on college applications. In fact, there is currently no systematic credentialing mechanism to assess and validate the scientific rigor of and competency gains within STEM precollege programs for college admissions purposes. This NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot seeks to address this gap by developing and testing credentialing and badging processes for four STEM precollege programs. Working with College Admissions Officers and project partners, the University of Pittsburgh endeavors to employ a collaborative impact approach to build and document the collaborative infrastructure needed to support STEM precollege program authentication processes. This will seed the development of a networked improvement community that supports all aspects of the work from participant support to the collaborative impact to the greater network of urban education university ecosystems involved in the pilot.
Over a two-year period, this pilot will examine a mechanism to strengthen the STEM pathway for disadvantaged and underrepresented minority students to enter postsecondary STEM programs and eventually STEM careers. Building on two social innovation theories, the technical approach will focus on four specific aims: (1) create a community engagement framework to recruit underserved and underrepresented high school students to STEM precollege programs, (2) develop a STEM Success Matrix that identifies student competencies acquired in precollege programs that prepare students for collegiate success in STEM, (3) credential precollege programs using the STEM Success Matrix, and (4) develop a student badging system for precollege program participants using the STEM Success Matrix. Four University of Pittsburgh STEM precollege programs will serve as the context for development and testing with support from a range of partners representing the broader Pittsburgh STEM ecosystem. Approximately 300 high school students are expected to participate in the pilot, across the four precollege programs. Data will be collected via participant surveys and interviews. Formative and summative evaluations will be conducted by an experienced, external evaluator. Shareable metrics, tools, and processes will be developed and disseminated using various platforms and mechanisms. If successful, this pilot could be transformative - changing admissions considerations by credentialing STEM precollege programs and increasing student interest and motivation in STEM through student badging. It would also transform the STEM ecosystem of underserved and underrepresented minority students by creating an important STEM pathway from precollege to undergraduate admissions and ultimately, STEM Careers. This pilot could serve as a baseline for a more expansive alliance with other urban education ecosystems or assisting others interested in establishing their own collaborative infrastructure and networked improvement community model to achieve similar results.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Alison Slinskey LeggJennifer IritiDavid BooneAlaine AllenLori Delale-O'Connor
Physical science and engineering remain the least diverse of all STEM fields---with regard to women, underrepresented minorities, and persons with disabilities---across all levels of STEM education and training. SCI-STEPS is an NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot that will address this persistent challenge by developing a complete end-to-end pipeline (or system of pathways) from the beginning of college to the PhD, and then into the workforce. Many isolated efforts to broaden participation have shown promise, but they have not produced big enough impact. SCI-STEPS represents a concerted set of coordinated interventions---consciously facilitated, systemically linked, and purposefully disseminated. SCI-STEPS represents a broad regional network among major research universities, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, comprehensive universities, community colleges, national labs, and major scientific organizations. The goal of the network is to ensure that underrepresented individuals in the physical sciences and engineering can get from their starting point in STEM higher education---freshmen at 2-year or 4-year college---through the higher education pathways leading to an appropriate terminal degree and employment in the STEM workforce.
Women, underrepresented minorities, and persons with disabilities collectively represent the majority of college-age individuals entering higher education with an expressed interest in physical science and engineering. A growing body of research indicates that academic and social integration may be even more influential than academic abilities for retention of students. Thus, interventions aimed at stemming the losses of these individuals must ultimately be aimed at changing the system---including unwelcoming institutional climates, racial/ethnic/gender stereotyping, a lack of mentors with whom to identify, and evaluation methods that emphasize conformity over individual capabilities---rather than changing the individual. The SCI-STEPS pilot focuses effort on institutional readiness for implementation of best practice interventions at four key junctures: (i) college freshman to sophomore; (ii) undergraduate to graduate; (iii) PhD to postdoc; and (iv) postdoc to workforce.The pilot will proceed in three steps: (1) a planning phase, (2) development of an initial end-to-end pathways model with four Juncture Transition teams, and (3) scale-up of the SCI-STEPS "network of networks" with all initial partners. By addressing these objectives through a collective impact framework and embedded research, this pilot will demonstrate how best-practice interventions at each pathway juncture can be dovetailed and scaled up across a broad range of institutional types and across a large but distinct geographical area. Addressing these objectives will thus also serve to advance Broadening Participation efforts at a national scale, by suggesting the forms of institutional partnerships and best-practices that may inform other alliances in other STEM disciplines and/or different regional areas.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Keivan StassunNicole JosephKelly Holley-BockelmannWilliam RobinsonRoger Chalkley
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This is a project to offer the Forum on Inclusive STEMM Entrepreneurship (FISE), a novel effort to broaden the participation of underrepresented minority women in STEMM entrepreneurship and to enhance the diversity of the science and engineering workforce. Through a convening of educators, entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, industry leaders, investors and policy experts, entrepreneurial education thought leaders, and intersectionality scholars the PI proposes to use this conference as a platform for building capacity in the preparation and development of future entrepreneurs from underrepresented groups. The PI also seeks to contribute to the emerging field of research that bridges tech entrepreneurship and education policy.
The proposed forum has the potential to advance knowledge in the field of entrepreneurship education and engineering education. Given the dearth of research-based interventions to broaden participation in tech entrepreneurship, this conference offers an opportunity for participants to contribute to the leading edge of research and interventions in this field.
The convening and associated activities will leverage the social capital of knowledgeable experts in the academy and industry, investors, entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs to address critical needs of the nation that relate to enhanced global competitiveness, an improved national economy, and the participation of underrepresented cohorts in entrepreneurship and commercialization.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Gilda Barabino
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program assists universities and colleges in diversifying the STEM workforce through their efforts at significantly increasing the numbers of students from historically underrepresented minority populations to successfully complete high quality degree programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The LSAMP Bridge to the Baccalaureate (B2B) funding opportunity provides support for historically underrepresented minority STEM students who begin their instruction at a community college with the intent to transfer into 4-year STEM degree programs in addition to other infrastructure support such as STEM faculty professional development. This project, Educational Network to GAin STEM Graduates and Enhance STEM Education (ENGAGE), broadens participation of underrepresented minority (URM) students and enhances diversity in STEM. Valencia College, on behalf of the Central Florida STEM Alliance (CFSA), seeks to significantly increase the number of URM STEM students transferring from CFSA two-year colleges, Valencia College, Lake-Sumter State College and Polk State College, to STEM baccalaureate degree programs at regional university partners, the Florida Institute of Technology, Florida Polytechnic University, University of Central Florida, University of Florida and University of South Florida.
ENGAGE creates a network between secondary education, community colleges, four-year institutions and graduate programs to offer viable pathways to STEM degree achievement. ENGAGE supports URM students' access and early exposure to STEM disciplines through comprehensive support services with linkages to university LSAMP partners including the Florida-Georgia LSAMP Bridges to the Doctorate program. ENGAGE advances research on effective practices in engaging URM students through the academic, social, and professional integration of STEM that aligns with the LSAMP model. ENGAGE informs the STEM community on institutional practices that impact recruitment, retention, and transfer-readiness strategies specific to URM STEM student success at two-year colleges. Through this LSAMP B2B partnership, ENGAGE seeks to achieve significant gains in the development of a diverse, globally-competitive workforce and create new STEM pathways for URM students leading to an increase of URM graduates with STEM baccalaureate and graduate degrees.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kathleen PlinskeCory BlackwellReginal WebbEugene Jones
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The NSF INCLUDES program supports models, networks, partnerships and research to ensure the broadening participation in STEM of women, members of racial and ethnic groups that have been historically underrepresented, persons of low socio-economic status, and people with disabilities.
The Algebra Project, in partnership with the Young People's Project, will convene a conference on inclusion in science, technology, engineering and mathematics(STEM) higher education in support of the National Science Foundation's Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES) initiative. The conference will examine a critical question: What roles and structures are needed for a mini-backbone organization in order to scale a "bottom up" model of social change into an organized, full scale collective impact model? Additionally, the conference will develop participants' capacity to link action on the various design challenges, and backbone structures, to future actions that meet the needs of a potential Alliance on this Broadening Participation Challenge and others facing similar challenges.
Five pre-conference design teams will focus on key components to improve education of students from underrepresented and disadvantaged populations over a four-month period prior to the convening of the stakeholders in St. Louis, Missouri in 2017.
This article explores science communication from the perspective of those most at risk of exclusion, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork. I conducted five focus groups and 32 interviews with participants from low-income, minority ethnic backgrounds. Using theories of social reproduction and social justice, I argue that participation in science communication is marked by structural inequalities (particularly ethnicity and class) in two ways. First, participants’ involvement in science communication practices was narrow (limited to science media consumption). Second, their experiences of exclusion
A collaboration of TERC, MIT, The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and community-based dance centers in Boston, this exploratory project seeks to address two main issues in informal science learning: 1) broadening participation in science by exploring how to expand science access to African-American and Latino youth and 2) augmenting science learning in informal contexts, specifically learning physics in community-based dance sites. Building on the growing field of "embodied learning," the project is an outgrowth in part of activities over the past decade at TERC and MIT that have investigated approaches to linking science, human movement and dance. Research in embodied learning investigates how the whole body, not just the brain, contributes to learning. Such research is exploring the potential impacts on learning in school settings and, in this case, in out of school environments. This project is comprised of two parts, the first being an exploration of how African-American and Latino high school students experience learning in the context of robust informal arts-based learning environments such as community dance studios. In the second phase, the collaborative team will then identify and pilot an intervention that includes principles for embodied learning of science, specifically in physics. This phase will begin with MIT undergraduate and graduate students developing the course before transitioning to the community dance studios. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) 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.
The goal of this pilot feasibility study is to build resources for science learning environments in which African-American and Latino students can develop identities as people who practice and are engaged in scientific inquiry. Youth will work with choreographers, physicists and educators to embody carefully selected physics topics. The guiding hypothesis is that authentic inquiries into scientific topics and methods through embodied learning approaches can provide rich opportunities for African-American and Latino high school-aged youth to learn key ideas in physics and to strengthen confidence in their ability to become scientists. A design- based research approach will be used, with data being derived from surveys, interviews, observational field notes, video documentation, a case study, and physical artifacts produced by participants. The study will provide the groundwork for producing a set of potential design principles for future projects relating to informal learning contexts, art and science education with African American and Latino youth.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Folashade Cromwell SolomonTracey WrightLawrence Pratt
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
One of the core values of the National Science Foundation is ensuring inclusiveness among all segments of the broader scientific community. This Life STEM project will provide a mechanism for strengthening minority serving institutions' capacity to help the nation meet the growing demand for a more diverse future STEM workforce. The workshop will provide opportunities for these institutions to increase their capacity to inspire, prepare, and retain underrepresented K-12 and undergraduate students in life science and bioscience fields through innovative models of interventions. To enhance the capacity of these institutions to participate in this endeavor, the workshop will focus on cutting edge research designs and review models of intervention shown to be effective in helping retain underrepresented students in the STEM pipeline.
Working in concert with the Quality Education for Minority Network and MER Associates, Spelman College will host a workshop for 100-125 key university administrators, education and STEM researchers, and sponsored research office representatives. The workshop attendees will participate in teams of 4-5 members to learn more about the Foundation's mission and goals for STEM education and for broadening participation in STEM. Teams will be provided support to attend the workshop where representatives can also share best practices about individual successes in helping underrepresented students complete courses of study in STEM fields.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This Change Makers project will establish Food Justice Ambassador corps across three cities in Massachusetts where youth will install, manage and learn the science and technology underlying hydroponics. The project takes a near-peer mentoring approach that empowers high school youth to take the lead in improving ethnic minority and low-income residents' access to healthy produce and to help educate middle school youth regarding the value of fresh produce in one's diet by learning the science of hydroponics. Youth will create story maps to visualize food accessibility in their communities. High school youth will work with their communities to establish hydroponic farms in middle school after-school settings. The food that is grown will be provided to the community through farmers' markets. Youth will share their work with a larger community of urban farmers at the Massachusetts Urban Farming Conference. This project seeks to understand the contribution on youth development by the model's three components: (1) STEM learning embedded in a social justice framework, (2) near-peer mentoring, and (3) youth purpose and career development. This will enable researchers to better understand how the project enables youth to learn STEM skills; apply them to a real life problem; learn the relevance of STEM skills for addressing personal, career aspiration, and social justice issues; develop a sense of purpose and aspirations related to STEM fields; and mentor other youth through the same process. The project will use a mixed-method, multi-site longitudinal study utilizing quantitative surveys, structural equation modeling, and qualitative interviews to study the intersections of the components of the project. As such, the study will address three key questions: 1) How do youth and mentors perceive and experience their roles as participants in the pedagogy? 2) What is the impact of the intervention on youth' sense of purpose, identity, career adaptability, work volition, critical consciousness, school engagement, STEM interests, and STEM intentionality? 3) What is the contribution of relational/mentoring and psychosocial/career adaptability aspects of the youths' contexts on their capacity to benefit from this program and to develop and sustain purpose and engagement in school and STEM? Most urban youth (and adults) have little knowledge of where their food comes from and have limited opportunities to learn how to grow produce as well as develop related skills that can lead to a career in a STEM field. This is particularly disconcerting as 55% of African Americans live inside central cities (90% in metropolitan areas) and over half of all Latino/as live in central cities (United States Census Bureau, 2011). This project entails the recruitment of low-income youth from populations underrepresented in science into a program where social justice concerns (food justice, food security) are illuminated, analyzed, and acted upon through the development of STEM knowledge and skills. Specifically, this project recognizes the potential for urban youth to become deeply knowledgeable citizens who can mobilize their STEM knowledge and skills to resolve social injustices such as food deserts. If successful, this project will provide a model that should be transferable to similar contexts to help broaden participation in STEM.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
George BarnettBelle LiangDavid Blustein