This project supports the Broader Impacts and Outreach Network for Institutional Collaboration (BIONIC), a national Research Coordination Network of Broader Impacts to support professionals who assist researchers to design, implement, and evaluate the Broader Impacts activities for NSF proposals and awards. All NSF proposals are evaluated not only on the Intellectual Merit of the proposed research, but also on the Broader Impacts of the proposed work, such as societal relevance, educational outreach, and community engagement. Many institutions have begun employing Broader Impacts support professionals, but in most cases, these individuals have not worked as a group to identify and share best practices. As a consequence, there has been much duplication of effort. Through coordination, BIONIC is expected to improve efficiency, reduce redundancy, and have significant impact in several areas: 1) Researchers will benefit from an increased understanding of the Broader Impacts merit review criterion and increased access to collaborators who can help them design, implement, and evaluate their Broader Impacts activities; 2) Institutions and research centers will increase their capacity to support Broader Impacts via mentoring for Broader Impacts professionals and consulting on how to build Broader Impacts support infrastructure, with attention to inclusion of non-research-intensive universities, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Hispanic- and Minority-Serving Institutions that may not have the resources to support an institutional Broader Impacts office; and 3) NSF, itself, will benefit from a systematic and consistent approach to Broader Impacts that will lead to better fulfillment of the Broader Impacts criterion by researchers, better evaluation of Broader Impacts activities by reviewers and program officers, and a system for evaluating the effectiveness of Broader Impacts activities in the aggregate, as mandated by Congress and the National Science Board. Through its many planned activities, BIONIC will ultimately help advance the societal aims that the Broader Impacts merit review criterion was meant to achieve.
The main goals of the project will be accomplished through the four specific objectives: 1) Identify and curate promising models, practices, and evaluation methods for the Broader Impacts community; 2) Expand engagement in, and support the development of, high-quality Broader Impacts activities by educating current and future faculty and researchers on effective practices; 3) Develop the human resources necessary for sustained growth and increased diversity of the Broader Impacts community; and 4) Promote cross-institutional collaboration and dissemination for Broader Impacts programs, practices, models, materials, and resources. BIONIC will facilitate collaborative Broader Impacts work across institutions, help leverage previously developed resources, support professional development, and train new colleagues to enter into the Broader Impacts field. This project will improve the quality and sustainability of Broader Impacts investments, as researchers continue to create unique and effective activities that are curated and broadly disseminated. BIONIC will create a network designed to assist NSF-funded researchers at their institutions in achieving the goals of the Broader Impacts Review Criterion. In so doing, BIONIC will promote Broader Impacts activities locally, nationally, and internationally and help to advance the Broader Impacts field.
This award is co-funded by the Divisions of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences and Emerging Frontiers in the Directorate for Biological Sciences and by the Division of Chemistry in the Directorate for Mathematics and Physical Sciences.
This is an "Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science" (INCLUDES) Design and Development Launch Pilot that will implement a plan to assess the feasibility of a strategy designed to ensure high levels of improvement in K-12 grade students' mathematics achievement. The plan will focus on an often-neglected group of students--those who have been performing at the lowest quartile on state tests of mathematics, including African American, Hispanic, Native American, students with disabilities, and those segregated in urban and rural communities across the country. The project will draw on lessons learned from the nation's Civil Rights Movement and a community-organizing strategy learned during the struggle to achieve voting rights for African Americans. The Algebra Project (AP) is a national, nonprofit organization that uses mathematics as an organizing tool to ensure quality public school education for every child in America; it believes that every child has a right to a quality education to succeed in this technology-based society. AP's unique approach to school reform intentionally develops sustainable, student-centered models by building coalitions of stakeholders within the local communities, particularly the historically underserved populations. The AP works to change the deeply rooted social attitudes that encourage the disenfranchisement of a third of the nation's population. It delivers a multi-pronged approach to build demand for and support of quality public schools, including research and development, school development, and community development education reform efforts through K-12 initiatives.
The Algebra Project and the Young People's Project (YPP) will join efforts to bring together over 70 individuals and organizations, including 17 universities of which 8 are Historical Black Colleges and Universities, school districts, mathematics educators, and researchers to examine their experiences, and use collective learning to refine and hone strategies that they have piloted and tested to promote mathematics inclusion. The role of YPP in the proposed project will be to organize and facilitate the youth component, such that project activities reflect the language and culture of students, continuously leveraging and building upon their voice, creative input, and ongoing feedback. YPP will conduct workshops for students organized around math-based games that provide collective experiences in which student learning requires individual reflection, small group work, teamwork and discussion. The proposed work will comprise the design of effective learning opportunities; building and supporting a cadre of teachers who can effectively work with students learning under the proposed approach; using technologies to enhance teaching and learning; and utilizing evaluation and research to drive continuous improvement. Because bringing together an effective network with diverse expertise to collaborate towards national impact requires expert facilitation processes, the project will establish working groups around three major principles: (1) Organizing from the bottom up through students, their teachers, and others in local communities committed to their education, allied with individuals and organizations who have expertise and dedication for achieving the stated goals, can produce significant progress and the conditions for collective impact; (2) Effective learning materials and formal and informal learning opportunities in mathematics can be designed and implemented for students performing in the bottom academic quartile; and (3) Teachers and other educators can become more proficient and more confident in their capacity to produce students who are successful in learning the level of mathematics required for full participation in STEM. The working groups will also be tasked to consider two cross-cutting topics: (a) the communication structures and technologies needed to operate and expand the present network, and to create the "backbone" and other structures needed to operate and expand the network; and (b) the measurements and metrics for major needs, such as assessing students' mathematics literacy, socio-emotional development in specified areas; teachers' competencies; as well as the work of the network. The final product of this plan will be a "Theory of Collective Action and Strategic Plan". The plan will contain recommendations for collective actions needed in order for the current network to coordinate, add appropriate partners, develop the needed backbone structures, and become an NSF Alliance for national impact on the broadening participation challenge of improving the mathematics achievement. An external evaluator will conduct both formative and summative aspects of this process.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Robert MosesNell CobbGregory BudzbanMaisha MosesWilliam Crombie
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This INCLUDES award to the Quality Education for Minorities (QEM) Network will focus on building STEM research and teaching capacity of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs). HBCUs and TCUs share the impact of disparities that affect their communities and are constantly seeking STEM research and education solutions to engage students and prepare them to be fully involved in developing innovative and effective remedies that will address these disparities. The QEM Design & Development Launch Pilot (DDLP) Project is a collaboration that will provide an underpinning for broadening the participation of institutions involved in improving the enrollment and retention of minority students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). To be competitive in a future global economy, the Nation must make a larger investment in the STEM education of its underrepresented groups, including, males and persons with disabilities. Failure to make such an investment can weaken our STEM infrastructure and inhibit the continuity of the Nation as a world leader in STEM.
The project's initial partners consist of five HBCUs (Morehouse College, Morgan State University, Spelman College, Tuskegee University, and University of Maryland Eastern Shore) and two TCUs (Aaniiih Nakoda College and United Tribes Technical College) with the aim of expanding to 12 institutions as well as adding business/industry partners and STEM-focused professional societies. The goals of the DDLP project are to: (1) build and sustain an alliance to increase the participation of African Americans and Native Americans in STEM education, research, and the workforce; (2) strengthen the STEM research, instructional, and mentoring capacities of partner HBCUs and TCUs; and (3) develop and promote broadening participation (BP) practices to address academic and professional career needs of African American and Native American males to significantly increase their representation in STEM. The QEM DDLP will implement evidence-based and data-driven approaches to developing research, education, and mentoring activities that can be tailored to institutional needs and context. The resulting outcome will be an increase in the capacities of HBCUs and TCUs in STEM that will position these institutions for sustained contributions to national broadening participation initiatives.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Shirley McBayLeander McDonaldLaura-Lee DavidsonEugene DeLoatchJuliette Bell
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This collaboration between two Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) will form a networked improvement community located within the Piedmont Region of North Carolina. In close partnership with community colleges and civic organizations, the project will reach families and students that lead to broader participation of underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The overall goal is to build and sustain a scalable, inquiry-based network with the purpose of increasing the academic success of underrepresented ethnic minorities and women in the STEM continuum. By engaging in culturally relevant socio-environmental frameworks, project outcomes will positively impact student retention, knowledge, and quantitative skills in STEM across socio-economic divides and STEM disciplines.
The Launch Pilot phase will focus on evidence-based teaching and learning approaches for middle school students. The core structure of the network will serve as a platform to launch and guide other age- and level-specific educational instruction, research, and assessment initiatives. Student understanding of the nature of science will be enhanced by adapting structure, behavior, and function (SBF) theory and system thinking hierarchical (STH) models. Ultimately, the network will represent a driver for social innovation that positively impacts broadening participation in STEM.
The Mississippi Alliance for Women in Computing (MAWC) project will identify factors that influence and motivate female students and female African American students in Mississippi to enroll and persist in an undergraduate engineering- or science-based computing major. There is a particular need for programming that is inclusive of women and women of color who are from the southern region of the United States. These students typically have less access to extracurricular activities that encourage computing, and are less likely to visualize themselves in a computing major or career. This proposed research is to help girls to know that computer science exists and what jobs in computer science are available with a degree in computer science. A rich environment exists in Mississippi for an alliance focused on building co-curricular and mentorship opportunities. A scalable pipeline model, expandable to a Southern Alliance for Women in Computing (SAWC), will be developed with three major objectives: to attract women and women of color to computing, to improve retention rates of women in undergraduate computing majors, and to help postsecondary women make the transition to the computing workforce. Activities to support these objectives include: scaling the National Center for Women and Information Technology Aspirations in Computing award program in Mississippi, expanding scholarships for Aspirations winners, expanding student-led computing outreach programs, establishing a Mississippi Black Girls Code chapter, informing and collaborating with the Computer Science for Mississippi initiative, creating a summer bridge and living-learning community for women in computing majors, and increasing professional development opportunities for women in computing through conferences, lunch and learn meetings, job shadowing, and internships.
The project will analyze whether the co-curricular activities of MAWC lead to computing self-efficacy and ultimately female students selecting to pursue and persist in computing majors and careers. In order to understand student participation and efficacy changes, data collection for this research will be through demographic and background surveys administered to women entering an undergraduate engineering- or science-based computing major at a university in Mississippi and student surveys and evaluations in MAWC-sponsored programs. Using discriminate analysis methods, specific research questions to be addressed are: 1) Which pre-collegiate experiences influenced them to enroll, 2) Which stakeholders influenced these girls in their decision-making process, and 3) What programs are effective in impacting their persistence in the major. Predictor variables for each respective research question are: pre-collegiate experiences, stakeholders, and programs. Outcome variables are: (a) a female undergraduate student with no involvement with MAWC programming, (b) MAWC activity participant, or (c) a MAWC participant having graduated with a bachelor?s degree in a STEM major. Results will complement published longitudinal research on the gendered and raced dimensions of computing literacy acquisition in Mississippi as well as research on effective CS role model programming.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sarah LeeVemitra White
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Jobs are growing most rapidly in areas that require STEM knowledge, causing business leaders to seek skilled American workers now and in the near future. Increase in the number of students pursuing engineering degrees is taking place but the percentages of underrepresented students in the engineering pipeline remains low. To address the challenge of increasing the participation of underrepresented groups in engineering, the National Society of Black Engineers, the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, and the Society of Women Engineers have formed the 50K Coalition, a collaborative of over 40 organizations committed to increasing the number of bachelors degrees awarded to women and minorities from 30,000 annually to 50,000 by 2025, a 66% increase. The 50K Coalition is using the Collective Impact framework to develop an evidence-based approach that drives management decision-making, improvements, sharing of information, and collective action to achieve success. The first convening of the 50K Coalition in April, 2016, brought together 83 leaders of the engineering community representing 13 professional societies with over 700,000 members, deans of engineering, minority engineering and women in engineering administrators from 11 leading colleges of engineering, and corporate partners representing six global industries. Consensus was reached on the following Common Agenda items: 1.) Undergraduate support and retention; 2.) Public awareness and marketing; 3.) K-12 support; 4.) Community College linkages; 5.) Culture and climate. The Coalition will encourage member organizations to develop new programs and scale existing programs to reach the goal.
The Coalition will use shared metrics to track progress: AP® Calculus completion and high school graduation rates; undergraduate freshmen retention rates; community college transfer rates and number of engineering degrees awarded. The 50K Coalition will develop the other elements of the Collective Impact framework: Infrastructure and effective decision-making processes that will become the backbone organization with a focus on data management, communications and dissemination; a system of continuous communication including Basecamp, website, the annual Engineering Scorecard, WebEx hosted meetings and convenings; and mutually reinforcing activities such as programs, courses, seminars, webinars, workshops, promotional campaigns, policy initiatives, and institutional capacity building efforts. The National Academy of Sciences study, Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America's Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads recommended that professional associations make recruitment and retention of underrepresented groups an organizational goal and implement programs designed to reach that goal by working with their membership, academic institutions and funding agencies on new initiatives. While these types of organizations work together now in a variety of ways, the relationships are one-on-one. The 50K Coalition brings together, for the first time professional societies, engineering schools, and industry to consider what mutually reinforcing activities can most effectively encourage students from underrepresented groups to complete calculus and graduate from 4-year engineering programs.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Karl ReidBarry CorderoSarah EcohawkKaren Horting
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
The Morgan State University INCLUDES project will build on an existing regional partnership of four Historically Black Colleges and Universities that are working together to improve STEM outcomes for middle school minority male students that are local to Morgan State in Baltimore, North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, Jackson State in Mississippi, and Kentucky State in Frankfort. Additional partners include SRI International, the National CARES Mentoring Network, and the Verizon Foundation. Using the collective impact-style approaches such as planning and implementing a Network Improvement Community (NIC), developing a shared agenda and implementing mutually reinforcing activities, these partners will address two common goals: (1) Broaden the participation of underrepresented minority males in science and engineering through educational experiences that prepare them for careers in STEM fields; and (2) Create a Network Improvement Community focused on STEM achievement in minority males. Program elements include high-quality instruction in STEM content, mentoring, and professional development. The project will expand to include eight additional partners (six HBCUs and two Hispanic-Serving Institutions) and schools and districts in communities local to their campuses. The INCLUDES pilot will help scale innovations that target impacting minorities in STEM.
The project will develop STEM learning pathways for middle school minority males by harnessing the collective impact of 12 university partners, local K-12 schools and districts with which they partner, and surrounding community organizations and businesses with a vested interest in achieving common goals. Products will include a roadmap for addressing the problem through a Network Improvement Community, a website that will contribute to the knowledge base regarding effective strategies for enhancing STEM educational opportunities for minority males, and common metrics, assessments, and shared measurement systems that will be used to measure the collective impact of the Network Improvement Community.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jumoke Ladeji-OsiasCindy ZikerGeneva HaertelKamal AliAyanna GillDerrick GilmoreClay Gloster
Currently, many young people - especially girls and youth of color - lose confidence and interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) pathways due to a perceived disconnect between their own identity and STEM fields. To address this challenge, Twin Cities PBS (TPT) is implementing SciGirls CONNECT2. This three-year Research in Service to Practice award examines how gender equitable and culturally responsive teaching strategies influence middle school girls' confidence, interest and motivation around STEM studies, and their choices around STEM careers. A set of research-based strategies, called the SciGirls Seven, are currently employed in SciGirls, an NSF-funded informal STEM educational outreach program serving 125+ educational partner organizations nationwide. The goal is to update and enrich the SciGirls Seven, providing educators with a critical, current, and more effective resource to motivate girls in STEM studies and careers. It 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.
Florida State University will conduct a formal research study investigating the hypothesis that STEM programs that use gender equitable and culturally responsive strategies contribute to girls' positive STEM identity development, including their sense of self-efficacy, persistence and aspirations around future STEM careers. This research will include a literature review and a study of girls' STEM identity creation. The mixed methods study will include quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis measuring changes in students' STEM identity and teachers' confidence in STEM teaching. The quantitative data will come from the student, parent and teacher pre/post surveys. The qualitative research will be conducted via case studies at four sites and the qualitative data will include observations, focus groups and interviews. Girls at all partner sites will create videos that will allow the research team to gather additional insight. The independent firm Knight Williams, Inc. will conduct the project's external evaluation.
The project will work with a subset of 16 current SciGirls partners. These geographically diverse partners will reach youth in all-girls and co-ed informal STEM education programs in a variety of settings. More than half serve Hispanic or other minority populations. The updated strategies will be disseminated to the 2,500 educators within the SciGirls partner network and the 18,800 STEM education organizations of the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) network. Dissemination of the strategies and literature review will focus on the informal STEM education field through publications and presentations, posts at PBS LearningMedia, a free online space reaching 1.5 million teachers and educators.
Young people learn about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in a variety of ways and from many sources, including school, the media, personal experiences, and friends and family. Yet STEM participation and identification by youth are not equal across social, economic, and cultural communities. This project will study a long-term, out-of-school program for high school-age youth, who are from groups under-represented in STEM academics and careers: girls, youth from low-income households, and youth of color. Located in the urban context of the Science Museum of Minnesota, the Kitty Andersen Youth Science Center (KAYSC) engages youth in applying culturally rich STEM content to work toward social justice and community building. Specifically, this project will examine how the learning practices of the KAYSC model support youth in identifying with, engaging in, and participating in STEM. Through studying the KAYSC's STEM Justice model, which centers youth as learners, teachers, and leaders who address critical community issues through STEM, this project will develop resources that informal science educators in a variety of contexts and programs can use to promote positive social change, equity, inclusion, and applied STEM learning.
The Science Museum of Minnesota will use design-based implementation research to study this model. This research will draw on and further the emerging theoretical framework of science capital. Science capital attempts to capture multiple aspects of science learning and application, including science knowledge, social and cultural resources, and science-related behaviors and practices. Empirically developing the theory of science capital has the potential to build concrete understanding of how to address inequalities in science participation. Four teams will work independently and collaboratively to do so: an adult research team, a high school youth research team, a practitioner team, and a co-design team composed of representatives from the other three teams. Research teams will collect data in the form of observations, semi-structured interviews, practitioner activity reports, artifacts, and the experience sampling method. Initial cycles of design will occur at the Science Museum of Minnesota as researchers and practitioners document, analyze, and iteratively design learning practices within the STEM Justice model. In the second half of the grant, the team will work with an external out-of-school time youth leadership site to implement the redesigned model. Participatory research and design methods involving both youth and adults can advance understanding of what makes out-of-school time STEM learning meaningful, relevant, and successful for marginalized youth and their communities. Grounded in culturally and socially relevant, community-based resources and programming, this project will study how leveraging STEM out-of-school time learning connected to social justice can broaden access to STEM as well as develop workforce, and leadership, and STEM skills by under-represented youth. The project also builds staff capacity for promoting equity and access in informal learning settings.
This project is being 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.
Techbridge has proposed a broad implementation project that will scale up a tested multi-faceted model that increases girls' interest in STEM careers. The objectives of this project are to increase girls' engineering, technology, and science skills and career interests; build STEM capacity and sustainability across communities; enhance STEM and career exploration for underrepresented girls and their families; and advance research on the scale-up, sustainability, and impact of the model with career exploration. The Techbridge approach is grounded in Eccles' expectancy value model, and helps bridge critical junctures as girls transition from elementary to middle school and middle school to high school, immersing participants in a network of peers and supportive adults. Techbridge targets girls in grades 5-12 with a model that includes five components: a previously tested and evaluated curriculum, career exploration, professional development for staff and teachers, family engagement, and dissemination. The inquiry-based curriculum introduces electrical engineering and computer science through engaging, hands-on units on Cars and Engines, Green Design, and Electrical Engineering. The Techbridge model will be enhanced to include a central repository for curriculum and support materials, electronic girl-driven career exploration resources, an online learning community and video tools for staff, and customized family guides. Project deliverables include the dissemination of the enhanced model to three cities, 24 school sites and teachers, 2,000 girls, and over 600 role models. A supplementary research component will study the broad implementation of the Techbridge model by examining the fidelity of implementation and the program's impact on girls' STEM engagement and learning. The research questions are as follows: (1) To what extent and how do new program sites demonstrate adherence to the Techbridge program model? (2) Do new sites experience similar or increased participant responsiveness to Techbridge programming with regard to scientific learning outcomes, career awareness, attitude and interest in engineering? (3)How are changes experienced by girls sustained over time, if at all? (4) To what extent and how do new sites balance instilling the Techbridge essentials, those critical components Techbridge identifies as essential for success, with the need for local adaptation and ownership of the program? and (5) Given the potential for customization in local communities, do new sites maintain programmatic quality of delivery experienced at the original site? If so, what are elements essential to success regarding quality delivery? The mixed-methods study will include document analysis, embedded assessments, participant survey scales, and observations. Qualitative data methods include interviews with teachers, role models, staff and focus groups with girls. A project evaluation will also be conducted which investigates project outcomes for participants (girls, teachers, role models, and families) and fidelity of the implementation and enhancements at expansion sites, using a quasi-experimental approach. Career and learning outcomes for girls will be determined using embedded assessments, portfolios, surveys, school data, and previously validated instruments such as the Career Interest Questionnaire and the Modified Attitudes towards Science Inventory. The Managing Complex Change model is used as a framework for the project evaluation for the purpose of examining factors related to the effectiveness of scaling. The dissemination of research and evaluation findings will be achieved through the use of publications, blogs, social media, and conferences. It is anticipated that this project will broaden the participation of Hispanic, African-American, and English language learner girls, build capacity for STEM programming and sustainability at the dissemination sites, and disseminate findings to over 1 million educators, researchers, and community members. Broader impacts include contributing to the field's understanding of how virtual role models and field trips can engage young women, increase corporate advocacy, and engage participants in research and dissemination efforts.