A partnership of institutions and organizations from public and private sectors, all with an established record in advancing Hispanics in higher education, will form a networked community across regions of the United States with significant Hispanic populations to collectively adapt and adopt proven practices and apply them throughout the higher education system of two-year colleges and baccalaureate-, master's-, and doctorate-granting universities. The partnership builds on the successful NSF-funded Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI) that has emerged as a significant pipeline of new recruits into computing graduate studies, industry, and the professoriate throughout the nation. Even through the Hispanic population has reached 17% nationally, a mere 4% STEM Master's and 3% STEM doctorate degrees are awarded nationwide to Hispanics in 2012-2013. The desperate need to reach parity is clear. The shared purpose and bold vision of the effort is to achieve parity in the number of Hispanics who complete computation-based graduate studies. The focus will be on targeting the pool of talented students at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) who, for various reasons, do not choose to continue on STEM educational and career pathways. The efforts will focus on transitioning Hispanic students from associate degree programs to baccalaureate programs, and from baccalaureate programs (regardless of where they began their studies) to completion of graduate degrees.
The project will establish a common agenda that guides the vision and strategy for collective impact, conduct data collection to longitudinally track student movement across campuses, and launch a multi-site pilot to test feasibility of the full-scale plan and process for change. While prior research has identified strategies for increasing graduate program completion rates for underrepresented minorities, little attention has been paid to the role of HSIs in reducing attrition. Attention to HSIs is a critical element in developing successful pathways to STEM careers. The networked community will involve social scientists across the different regions in research on Hispanic graduate program completion, to complement existing research on undergraduate completion. Developing a comprehensive, scalable model for cross-institutional advancement of students, in particular the combination of a bilingual and bicultural student body with unique needs, is critical to grow the STEM pipeline. Through a pilot, the project will engage two-year colleges and universities to begin the initial investigation on the impact of building strong student identity, student belonging, advocacy, and preparation on accelerating the number of students entering, persisting in the major, and considering, entering, and ultimately completing graduate studies in computational areas.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Ann GatesMarjorie ZatzMohsen BeheshtiEnrico PontelliAaron Velasco
The INCLUDES project will build on the Leveraging and Integrating New Knowledge in STEMS (LINKS) framework that was developed at the University of Rochester to target students participating in Upward Bound programs at four institutions that will comprise the Upstate NY Alliance: Cornell University, D'Youville College, Monroe Community College, and the University of Rochester. The project will increase curricular and experiential learning offerings to underserved students by integrating faculty and graduate students into Upward Bound programs. Applying the LINKS framework, educators will learn and develop new means for managing classroom diversity, including ethnicity, language, age, educational background, and other cultural markers that shape the way students learn. The team will develop and disseminate best practices on creating inclusive teaching and research environments. The Upstate NY Alliance will produce a proof of concept model for national scale-up with measurable outcomes for varying populations of at-risk high school students.
The Alliance will strive to translate and further develop the LINKS framework within the context of each of the varied institutional environments, resulting in a more robust model that draws from the strengths of all of the schools with a core focus and range of applications. The project will create a diverse collegial community dedicated to bridging the gap between P-12 and higher education learning environments. It also will implement a clearly-articulated and successful collaboration among the four institutions that will provide multiple opportunities to share best practices, engage in cross-institution dialog, and leverage each member's strengths to enhance and further develop the LINKS framework.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Beth OlivaresLaurel SangerJason AdsitKathryn DimidukWendi Heinzelman
The Bay Area Regional Collaboration to Expand and Strengthen STEM (RECESS) is a regional, unified STEM continuum effort from preschool through graduate school and career. RECESS is based on successful collective impact efforts in other fields and employs a participatory action research (PAR) approach to broaden participation in STEM. In the PAR framework, youth and their families will help to define the issues and develop expertise about community needs through a shared research process.
RECESS introduces participatory action research as an innovative element to the collective impact social agency framework. The intent is to determine the extent to which the engagement and involvement of the students and communities targeted can effectively shape the function of the collective impact network of organizations.
During the two year planning phase, RECESS (a) conducts a comprehensive needs assessment and gap analysis; (b) establishes a functioning organization of stakeholders with a common agenda and governance model; and (c) develops a detailed action plan. It is a significant contribution to the body of knowledge on effective and innovative collective impact structures designed to promote STEM education and participation.
The Yellowstone Altai-Sayan Project (YASP) brings together student and professional researchers with Indigenous communities in domestic (intermountain western U.S.) and international (northwest Mongolian) settings. Supported by a National Science Foundation grant, MSU and tribal college student participants performed research projects in their home communities (including Crow, Northern Cheyenne, Fort Peck Assiniboine & Sioux, and Fort Berthold Mandan, Hidatsa and Sahnish) during spring semester 2016. In the spirit of reciprocity, these projects were then offered in comparative research contexts during summer 2016, working with Indigenous researchers and herder (semi-nomadic) communities in the Darhad Valley of northwestern Mongolia, where our partner organization, BioRegions International, has worked since 1998. In both places, Indigenous Research Methodologies and a complementary approach called Holistic Management guided how and what research was performed, and were in turn enriched by Mongolian research methodologies. Ongoing conversations with community members inspire the research questions, methods of data collection, as well as how and what is disseminated, and to whom. The Project represents an ongoing relationship with and between Indigenous communities in two comparable bioregions*: the Big Sky of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and the Eternal Blue Sky of Northern Mongolia.
*A ‘bioregion’ encompasses landscapes, natural processes and human elements as equal parts of the whole (see http://bioregions.org/).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kristin RuppelClifford MontagneLisa Lone Fight
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
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
This paper contains an overview of the programmes currently existing in Latin America to train science communicators. For such purpose, only postgraduate courses held regularly were considered in the study. Twenty-two programmes meeting such requirement were identified in five countries, 65% of which were in fact established over the past ten years. They present a lot of diversity in terms of admittance requirements, goals, contents, approaches, duration and graduation requirements. However, all of them share the same effort, aiming to offer specific contents in the area of science
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Luisa MassaraniElaine ReynosoSandra MurrieloAyelen Castillo
This project by California State University San Marcos and their collaborators will expand and continue to innovate on a pilot Mobile Making program with the goal of developing a sustainable, regional model for serving underserved, middle-school aged youth in twelve after-school programs in the San Diego region. Evaluation of the current Mobile Making program has documented positive impacts on participants' interest, self-efficacy, and perception of the relevance of Making/STEM in everyday life, and led to a model for engaging underserved youth in Making. The work will focus on implementing the program model sustainably at greater capacity by increasing the number of undergraduate activity leaders, after-school sites, and level of community engagement. The expanded Mobile Making program is expected to engage ~1800 middle school youth at 12 local school sites, with activities facilitated by ~1020 undergraduate CSU-SM STEM majors. The sites are in ethnically diverse and economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, with as many as 90% of students at some sites qualifying for free or reduced price lunch. The undergraduate facilitators are drawn from CSU-SM's diverse student body, which includes 44% underrepresented minorities. Outcomes are expected to include increases in the youth participants' interest, self-efficacy, and perception of the relevance of Making/STEM in everyday life. Positive impacts on the undergraduate facilitators will include broadened technical skills, increased leadership and 21st century skills, and increased lifelong interest in STEM outreach/informal science education. The program is designed to achieve sustainability through innovative means such as involving undergraduate facilitators via Community Service Learning (rather than paid positions), and increased community engagement via development and support of a community of practice including local after-school providers, teachers, Makers, and University members. Evaluation of the program outcomes and lessons learned are expected to result in a comprehensive model for a sustainable, university-based after-school Making program with regional impact in underserved communities. Dissemination to other regions will be leveraged via CSU-SM's membership in the California State University (CSU) system, yielding a potential statewide impact. The support of the CSU Chancellor's Office and input from a CSU implementation group will ensure the applicability of the model to other regional university settings, identify common structural barriers and solutions, and increase the probability of secondary implementations. This work 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.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative resources for use in a variety of settings. This Research in Service to Practice project will examine how a wide range of pre-college out-of-school-time activities facilitate or hinder females' participation in STEM fields in terms of interest, identity, and career choices. The study will address the ongoing problem that, despite females' persistence to degree once declaring a major in college, initially fewer females than males choose a STEM career path. To uncover what these factors might be, this study will look at the extent to which college freshmen's pre-college involvement in informal activities (e.g., science clubs, internships, shadowing of STEM professionals, museum-going, engineering competitions, citizen science pursuits, summer camps, and hobbies) is associated with their career aspirations and avocational STEM interests and pursuits. While deep-seated factors, originating in culture and gender socialization, sometimes lower females' interest in STEM throughout schooling, this study will examine the degree to which out-of-school-time involvement ameliorates the subtle messages females encounter about women and science that can interfere with their aspiration to a STEM careers.
The Social Cognitive Career Theory will serve as the theoretical framework to connect the development of interest in STEM with students' later career choices. An epidemiological approach will be used to test a wide range of hypotheses garnered from a review of relevant literature, face-to-face or telephone interviews with stakeholders, and retrospective online surveys of students. These hypotheses, as well as questions about the students' demographic background and in-school experiences, will be incorporated into the main empirical instrument, which will be a comprehensive paper-and-pencil survey to be administered in classes, such as English Composition, that are compulsory for both students with STEM interests and those without by 6500 students entering 40 large and small institutions of higher learning. Data analysis will proceed from descriptive statistics, such as contingency tables and correlation matrices, to multiple regression and hierarchical modeling that will link out-of-school-time experiences to STEM interest, identity, and career aspirations. Factor analysis will be used to combine individual out-of-school activities into indices. Propensity score weighting will be used to estimate causal effects in cases where out-of-school-time activities may be confounded with other factors. The expected products will be scholarly publications and presentations. Results will be disseminated to out-of-school-time providers and stakeholders, educators, and educational researchers through appropriate-level journals and national meetings and conferences. In addition, the Public Affairs and Information Office of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics will assist with communicating results through mainstream media. Press releases will be available through academic outlets and Op-Ed pieces for newspapers. The expected outcome will be research-based evidence about which types of out-of-school STEM experiences may be effective in increasing young females' STEM interests. This information will be crucial to educators, service providers, as well as policy makers who work toward broadening the participation of females in STEM.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Roy GouldPhilip SadlerGerhard Sonnert
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This project will convene a workshop focused on digital micro-credentials, also known as digital badges, and the role they might play in the high-stakes process of college admission. Digital micro-credentials represent one potential mechanism for broadening access for underrepresented groups to higher education. Digital micro-credentials enable students to present a broader view of themselves as learners that connects different domains of their lives: academic, social, and personal interest-driven. As such, digital micro-credentials enable students to represent expertise and potential in ways that go beyond traditional high school grade point averages and standardized test scores. The workshop addresses questions such as: Can micro-credentials serve as valid and reliable measures of learning? What "gap" in current assessment practices can be filled by micro-credentials? What is required for micro-credentials to be useful as evidence of preparation for future learning in the college admission process?
The project's principal investigators will employ case studies, drawn from the Chicago City of Learning network (chicagocityoflearning.org) and Mouse (mouse.org) in New York City, to better understand the use of micro-credentials for learning in STEM-focused extracurricular activities. During the workshop, participants with expertise in student learning from a range of perspectives will design representations of the knowledge or skills demonstrated by students. Participating admissions officers and STEM faculty will critique the designs with respect to how well the designs demonstrate evidence of preparation for future learning by students. The workshop outcomes will include sample designs of micro-credentials that show promise to both promote learning and support college admissions. The workshop will also result in a white paper discussing the potential of micro-credentials for college admission in STEM fields by youth from underrepresented groups.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Barry FishmanStephanie Teasley
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Most experimental studies in the behavioral sciences rely on college students as participants for reasons of convenience, and most take place in North America and Europe. As a result, studies are only sampling from a narrow range of human experiences. The results of these studies have limited generalizability, failing to reflect the full range of mental and behavioral phenomena across diverse cultures and backgrounds. However sampling from broader populations is challenging, due to limited opportunities and access, heightened cost, and the need for specific knowledge about how to adapt research protocols to different communities. The goal of this workshop is to develop some tools and guidelines to help researchers overcome barriers to broader sampling, and to incentivize doing so through better institutional support.
The goal of this workshop is to develop tools to support and encourage increased robustness and generalizability in the experimental behavioral sciences. The meeting is dedicated to identifying and developing potential solutions to the so-called "WEIRD people" problem: the fact that most experimental behavioral science research is conducted with members of WEIRD populations (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich Democracies). The discovery that much of this research fails to generalize to broader populations and fails to capture the range of human patterned variation in thought and behavior creates a pressing need for research approaches to be more inclusive. Although there are researchers throughout the world who have developed effective models for overcoming these limitations, there are significant barriers to achieving robust and generalizable experimental behavioral research for most researchers. This workshop will bring together scholars from a range of disciplines whose research represents positive case studies of how to overcome these barriers. The participants aspire to accomplish three goals: 1) develop tools and training materials to help researchers enhance diversity in their research populations, 2) develop infrastructure solutions for connecting researchers across diverse contexts and populations, and 3) develop a set of recommendations for institutional changes to support enhancing diversity in experimental behavioral science through manuscript, grant, and tenure review.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Douglas MedinDaniel HruschkaLera BoroditskyCristine Legare
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. The United States is facing a crisis: not enough students are being trained in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to support and foster economic growth. In response, the State University of New York (SUNY) and the New York Academy of Sciences (The Academy) are collaborating to train SUNY graduate students and post-doctoral fellows to deliver mentoring and STEM content to underserved middle-school children in afterschool programs