The Roads Taken Conference Report provides information and results from the virtual conference held in October and November 2016.
Representatives from ten long-standing youth programs, experts in out-of-school time (OST) youth programming, and researchers participated in the Roads Taken virtual conference in October and November 2016, funded by the National Science Foundation (DRL-1644479). Participants collaboratively developed a Program Profile template with dual purposes: a tool for practitioners and a tool for researchers. As the first phase the three-part plan, Program Profiles will
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
Abstract: We aim to disrupt the multigenerational cycle of poverty in our rural indigenous (18% Native American and 82% Hispanic) community by training our successful college students to serve as role models in our schools. Poverty has led to low educational aspirations and expectations that plague our entire community. As such, its disruption requires a collective effort from our entire community. Our Collective unites two local public colleges, 3 school systems, 2 libraries, 1 museum, 1 national laboratory and four local organizations devoted to youth development. Together we will focus on raising aspirations and expectations in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) topics, for STEM deficiencies among 9th graders place them at risk of dropping out while STEM deficiencies among 11th and 12th graders preclude them from pursuing STEM majors in college and therefore from pursuing well paid STEM careers. We will accomplish this by training, placing, supporting, and assessing the impact of, an indigenous STEM mentor corps of successful undergraduate role models. By changing STEM aspirations and expectations while heightening their own sense of self-efficacy, we expect this corps to replenish itself and so permanently increase the flow of the state's indigenous populations into STEM majors and careers in line with NSF's mission to promote the progress of science while advancing the national health, prosperity and welfare.
Our broader goal is to focus the talents and energies of a diverse collective of community stakeholders on the empowerment of its local college population to address and solve a STEM disparity that bears directly on the community's well-being in a fashion that is generalizable to other marginalized communities. The scope of our project is defined by six tightly coupled new programs: three bringing indigenous STEM mentors to students, one training mentors, one training mentees to value and grow their network of mentors, and one training teachers to partner with us in STEM. The intellectual merit of our project lies not only in its assertion that authentic STEM mentors will exert an outsize influence in their communities while increasing their own sense of self-efficacy, but in the creation and careful application of instruments that assess the factors that determine teens' attitudes, career interests, and behaviors toward a STEM future; and mentors' sense of self development and progress through STEM programs. More precisely, evaluation of the programs has the potential to clarify two important questions about the role of college-age mentors in schools: (1) To what degree is the protege's academic performance and perceived scholastic competence mediated by the mentor's impact on (a) the quality of the protege's parental relationship and (b) the social capital of the allied classroom teacher; (2) To what degree does the quality of the student mentor's relationships with faculty and peers mediate the impact of her serving as mentor on her self-efficacy, academic performance, and leadership skills?
Northern Michigan University's Center for Native American Studies and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion will lead this Design and Development Launch Pilot about culturally inclusive K-16 STEM education for American Indian and Native Alaskan (AIAN) students. This project was created in response to the NSF Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES) program solicitation (NSF 16-544). The INCLUDES program is a comprehensive national initiative designed to enhance U.S. leadership in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) discoveries and innovations focused on NSF's commitment to diversity, inclusion, and broadening participation in these fields. The INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilots represent bold, innovative ways for solving a broadening participation challenge in STEM.
The full participation of all of America's STEM talent is critical to the advancement of science and engineering for national security, health and prosperity. Our nation is advancing knowledge and practices to address the undergraduate STEM achievement and the graduation gap between NAAIs and non-native Americans. This project, the NSF INCLUDES: Indigenous Women Working Within the Sciences (IWWS), has the potential to advance knowledge, instructional pedagogy and practices to improve the performance of NAAI high school students and undergraduate students in STEM.
This project team will work to: (1) pilot activities and coursework to train K-16 STEM educators about American Indian inclusive methods and materials, (2) to provide AIAN high school students with STEM college preparatory experience using inclusive STEM practices, and (3) to provide a cohort of female AIAN high school students additional university experiences and mentors as these students transition to postsecondary education. Activities include a five-day summer educators institute for 40 K-16 STEM educators, an additional weekend workshop for 20 K-16 STEM educators, a summer STEM academy for 96 AIAN high school students, a STEM weekend workshop for female AIAN high school students, and a mentoring program for AIAN high school students.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
April LindalaJessica CruzMartin Reinhardt
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
Auburn University, Alabama State University, Tuskegee University and Vanderbilt University will lead this Design and Development Launch Pilot to form the SouthEast Alliance for Persons with Disabilities in STEM (SEAPD-STEM), eventually creating a network of 21 universities and colleges, as well as additional community colleges and high schools, in the southeastern U.S. and Washington, DC. This project was created in response to the Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES) program solicitation (NSF 16-544). The INCLUDES program is a comprehensive national initiative designed to enhance U.S. leadership in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) discoveries and innovations focused on NSF's commitment to diversity, inclusion, and broadening participation in these fields. The INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilots represent bold, innovative ways for solving a broadening participation challenge in STEM.
The full participation of all of America's STEM talent is critical to the advancement of science and engineering for national security, health and prosperity. Our nation is advancing knowledge and practices to address the STEM education practices for recruiting, better educating, retaining and graduating STEM secondary and postsecondary students with disabilities (SWDs) at our nation's high schools, colleges and universities. However SWDs historically underperform in STEM at the secondary and postsecondary levels. This project, NSF INCLUDES: SEAPD-STEM, has the potential to significantly advance a collaborative approach by a group of organizations to improve the success of SWDs in STEM disciplines.
The project builds on the existing Alabama Alliance for Students with Disabilities in STEM (AASD-STEM), a NSF-funded model, and includes a plan to form a larger regional alliance focused on training STEM SWDs across the academic pathway from high school through postdoctoral training and entry into faculty positions. The collaboration addresses five goals: (1) To increase the quality and quantity of SWDs completing associate, undergraduate, and graduate degrees in STEM disciplines and entering the STEM workforce, (2) To increase the quality and quantity of post-doctoral fellows and junior faculty with disabilities in STEM fields, (3) To improve academic performance of students with disabilities in secondary level science and mathematics courses, (4) To enhance communication and collaboration among post-secondary institutions in addressing the education of SWDs in STEM disciplines, and (5) To assess project activities to understand what works to support the matriculation and retention of STEM SWDs in science followed by broad dissemination through workshops, conference presentations, webinars, and peer-reviewed publications. The team proposes the following project activities in the pilot: (1) Implementing a Bridge Model at 13 partner institutions, including Alabama State University, Auburn University, Auburn University Montgomery, Gallaudet University, Jackson State University, Middle Tennessee State University, Southern Union State Community College, Troy University, Tuskegee University, the University of Alabama Birmingham, the University of Tennessee, the University of West Georgia and Xavier University of Louisiana (2) Implementing SEAPD-STEM training workshops, (3) Implementing NSF INCLUDES Alliances planning workshops in each participating state, at Kennesaw State University, Tougaloo College, the University of Alabama in Hunstville, Vanderbilt University and Xavier University of Louisiana, (4) Gathering enrollment, retention, and graduation baseline data for STEM SWDs by race, ethnicity, and gender at 21 colleges and universities institutions, (5) Identifying high schools and school districts for each of the participating institutions for outreach activities, (6) Adding at least one community college to partner with SEAPD-STEM college or university, (7) Engaging additional partners including national and local labs, non-profits, federal agencies, industry, foundations, and state governments for additional funding and/or internships for participating SEAPD-STEM students. The project team will implement a plan to scale approaches and develop an alliance of institutions to maximize potential project outcomes now and in the future.
This project will coordinate and focus existing educational elements with the common goal of increasing the participation of underrepresented minorities in STEM degree programs and the STEM workforce. This goal will help the US maintain its leadership in science and engineering innovation while supporting the expansion of the talent pool needed to fuel economic growth in technical areas. The program will feature an assessment system that addresses both social influence factors and the transfer of STEM skills with the aim of identifying the reasons that underrepresented minorities leave the STEM pipeline. By including both curricular and extracurricular elements of the STEM pipeline, ranging from middle school through college, the program will be able to respond quickly to findings from the assessment component and take proactive steps to retain STEM students and maintain their self perception as future scientists or engineers.
The program proposes to assess, unite and coordinate elements in the New Mexico STEM pipeline with the ultimate goal of increasing the participation of underrepresented groups in the STEM workforce. The need to grow a diverse science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce is recognized throughout the State of New Mexico, and beyond, by both the public and private sectors. The project develops a crosscutting assessment system that addresses both social influence factors and the skills component of STEM education. The project develops a collective impact framework aimed at increasing the participation of underrepresented minorities in the STEM workforce and implements a common assessment system for students in the 6-20+ STEM pipeline. This assessment system will address both social influence factors and the transfer of STEM related skills with the aim of building a research base to investigate why students from underrepresented minorities leave the STEM pipeline. The output from this research will drive the development of a set of best practices for increasing retention and a scheme for improving the integration of minority students into the STEM community. The retention model developed as part of the program will be shared with the STEM partners through a series of workshops with the goal of developing a more coordinated approach to the retention of underrepresented minorities. The program focuses on a small set of STEM programs with existing connections to the College of Engineering.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Steven StochajPatricia SullivanLuis Vazquez
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
Because of the siloed nature of formal educational curricula, students who opt out of STEM coursework, for whatever reason, lose the opportunity to engage with the domain of science almost entirely, thereby closing the door to the STEM workforce pipeline. This disproportionately impacts students of color and women. This project advances an alliance that consists of a consortium of community-engaged partners, including university and k-12 educational agencies, community colleges, community organizations, cultural institutions and local businesses. The project built around this alliance will leverage interdisciplinary spaces in the curriculum, particularly the humanities and social sciences, across academic levels, as a forum for integrating and applying STEM to bear on the practical, social, economic and political issues of modern life. The PIs establish a physical Community STEM Center as an anchoring institution for STEM engagement. This Center will be situated within the community that the alliance serves, bringing STEM opportunities and engagement to students instead of asking them to come where STEM education is currently provided. The activities enacted through the Community STEM Center will focus on enduring problems experienced by the communities, where students, community residents, teachers, and experts from higher education, industry and other community-based entities can come together to work on understanding them and developing evidenced centered advocacy as a means for addressing them. To facilitate the work at the Community STEM Center, the project creates a Community Ambassadors Program (CAP), leveraging participation across alliance members in partnership with the community. This Design and Development Launch Pilot will cultivate the necessary knowledgebase to develop a scalable model for implementation across diverse urban communities.
Technical Summary
This Design and Development Launch Pilot focuses on shifting the narrative of STEM education away from a solitary focus on formalized educational experiences and targets STEM content. This project develops and facilitates a parallel set of activities designed to engage under-represented students in learning how and why STEM is relevant to their lives, and approached through new and non-traditional educational dimensions. The five main objectives of this proposed pilot are to: (1) Develop a pilot alliance of community-engaged partners, including university and k-12 educational agencies, community colleges, community organizations, cultural institutions and industry;(2)Establish a physical Community STEM Advocacy Center as an anchoring institution for change embedded within the community that the pilot alliance serves; (3) Leverage interdisciplinary spaces in curricula, across academic levels, particularly the humanities and social sciences, as a forum for integrating and applying STEM to bear on the practical, social, economic and political issues of modern life; (4) Create a Community Ambassadors Program (CAP), leveraging participation across higher education pilot alliance members in partnership with the community; and (5)Conduct an evaluation of project initiatives and research regarding the usability and feasibility of a systemic approach to developing community-based, interdisciplinary pathways to broaden STEM participation pathways. Efforts to examine the impact of this community-based, interdisciplinary approach concentrates on the proximal outcomes related to STEM interest, self-efficacy and identity. Data will be collected in pre/post format across our three constituent samples: 1) Community STEM Advocacy Center participants; 2) k-12 students; and, 3) postsecondary students. Analysis of data will be conducted through MANCOVAs to account for potential co-variation among construct scores. Qualitative data will also be collected to contextualize findings and enable the development of a rich case study. At least two observations will be conducted in the Community STEM Advocacy Center and the two classroom implementations to document engagement, participant interactions and level of STEM content.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kimberly LawlessDonald WinkLudwig Carlos NitscheAixa AlfonsoJeremiah Abiade
Finding inclusive approaches to broaden the participation of underrepresented communities in the sciences is the focus of this project. The team will create pathways for Native American students from the development of new partnerships between tribal communities and STEM institutions that promote the participation and inclusion of Native American scientists in the geosciences. Each partner brings a successful program, based on good practices from the research literature in improving outcomes for underrepresented students and scientists. Together, the researchers will create scientific collaborations that support a pipeline for Native American students from middle school through to graduate school and beyond. In addition, the project will work on building welcoming workplace climates for indigenous researchers within ?traditional Western? organizations. The approach will integrate indigenous and Western knowledge in research collaborations to create more creative, innovative, and culturally relevant science research programs.
This project, Integrating Indigenous and Western Knowledge to Transform Learning and Discovery in the Geosciences, uses the principles of collective impact to create new partnerships between tribal communities and STEM institutions that promote the participation and inclusion of Native American scientists in the geosciences. The project collaborators will more strongly integrate indigenous and Western knowledge into collectively-developed research projects. The project partners the Rising Voices: Collaborative Science for Climate Solutions (Rising Voices) and member tribal colleges and communities with Haskell Indian Nations University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the University of Arizona?s Biosphere 2, and National Center for Atmospheric Research?s Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science (SOARS) internship and Global Learning and Observation to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) citizen science programs. Together, they will build research partnerships between Native American and traditional Western scientists, provide professional development for NCAR and Biosphere 2 scientists on how to engage appropriately with tribal communities, and provide pathways for NA students from middle school through college, to grad school and beyond. The project will connect community-based citizen science programs for middle- and high school youth with undergraduate programs at Haskell Indian Nations University and University of Arizona, and with summer research internship experiences for undergraduates and graduate students that address topics of interest across tribal communities, tribal college faculty, traditional science institutions, and community-based citizen science. This project also enhances the research capacity of all partners, and brings together diverse perspectives, which have been shown to lead to greater innovation, creativity, and higher impact research. The project has the potential to provide a tried and tested model for building similar partnerships at other institutions, including content and methods for professional development for mainstream scientists, ways to create more welcoming spaces for Native American students and scientists, promising practices for improving how research in the geosciences carried out, and an increase in the representation of Native American students and scientists in that vital research enterprise.
This is a two-year "Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science" (INCLUDES) Design and Development Launch Pilot targeting high school students in the Hudson Valley, including the New York Metropolitan Area. It will support a network of institutional partners that are committed to providing internship and mentoring opportunities to youths interested in authentic research projects. The proposed work will build on a current research immersion program--the Secondary School Field Research Program (SSFRP) at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. SSFRP serves high school students, mainly from underrepresented and underserved communities, who work with college students, science teachers, and researchers around a specific science problem. Over the past decade, the program has had demonstrable impact, including attendance to college, and students' selection of STEM majors. Tracking data indicates that retention rates of its alumni in four-year colleges are well above the norm, and a significant fraction of early participants are now in graduate programs in science or engineering. The program has surpassed all expectations in its effectiveness at engaging underserved populations in science and promoting entry into college, recruitment into STEM majors, and retention through undergraduate and into graduate studies. Hence, the project's overall goal will be to extend and adapt the research-immersive summer internship model through an alliance with peer research institutions, school districts and networks, public land and resource management agencies, private funding agencies, informal educational institutions, and experts in pedagogical modeling, metrics, and evaluation. Focused on earth and environmental sciences, the summer and year-round mentoring model will allow high school students to work in research teams led by college students and teachers under the direction of research scientists. The mentoring model will be multilayered, with peer, near-peer, and researcher-student relationships interweaving throughout the learning process.
The project has formulated a set of testable explanatory hypotheses: (1) Beyond specific subject knowledge, success rests on increased student engagement in a community of practice, with near-peer mentors, teachers, and scientists in the context of scientific research; (2) The intensity of engagement also shifts the students' vision of their future to include higher education, and specifically to imagine and move toward a STEM career; and (3) Early engagement, before students attend college, is critical because high school is where students form patterns of engagement and capacities related to science learning. Thus, the immediate goal of the two-year plan will be to create approximately 11 research internship programs focused on earth and environmental sciences, and to build the networks for growth through engagement with a wider community of educational partners. The main focus of this approach will be removing barriers between high school students and STEM organizations, and adapting the current mentoring model at Columbia University to the specific cultures of other research groups and internship programs throughout the lower Hudson Valley. The team has already assembled a diverse set of partners committed to broadening participation in STEM using a collective impact approach to early engagement in project-based learning. Research partners will provide the mentors, research projects, and laboratory facilities. The educational network partners will provide access for students, particularly those from under-resourced communities to participate, as well as participation opportunities for interested teachers. Informal learning organizations will provide access to field and research sites, along with research dissemination opportunities. In Year 1, the project will conduct a series of development workshops for partners already in place and foster the formation of new partnership clusters according to shared interest, complementary resources and geographic proximity. The workshops will provide a forum for partners to learn about each other's visions, values, challenges, and existing structures, while working through theoretical and practical issues related to STEM engagement for young investigators. In Year 2, the project will target the implementation of the internship programs at various sites according to the agreed-upon goals, program model, research projects, recruitment and retention strategy, staff training, data collection, and evaluation plans. An external evaluator will address both the formative and summative evaluation of the effort directed toward examining the three project's hypotheses concerning the educational impacts of scientific research on student engagement, extent of the immersion, and overall effectiveness of the programs.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Robert NewtonLuo Cassie XuMargie TurrinEinat LevMatthew Palmer
A skilled workforce is critical in high-quality out-of-school time (OST) programs (Smith, Devaney, Akiva & Sugar, 2009). However, the workshops commonly used to train OST staff are not adequately preparing practitioners to deliver quality programs that can benefit youth(Durlak & Weissberg, 2007; Smith et al, 2009).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Femi VanceEmily SalvaterraJocelyn Atkins MichelsenCorey Newhouse