An official website of the United States government
This work in progress paper presents an overview of the Hispanic Alliance for the Graduate Education and the Professoriate (H-AGEP) program. H-AGEP is working on developing and implementing a new model to improve the preparation and transition of Hispanic STEM doctoral students into community college faculty positions. The partnership is a collaborative effort between the City College of New York (CCNY) (lead institution) and The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) along with a group of partner community colleges: LaGuardia Community College, Queensborough Community College, and El Paso Community College. The H-AGEP model consists of three main elements: (1) a training and mentoring program for effective STEM teaching at community colleges; (2) a training program for effective mentoring of community college students in STEM research; and (3) a professional development program to address career preparation, transitioning, and advancement at academic careers in community colleges. H-AGEP research goals are: (1) to consider the collected evaluation and research data to determine what intervention activities are most impactful, and (2) to better understand the career-decision making process of Hispanic STEM doctoral students regarding whether they will seek employment at community colleges and other two-year institutions. An interesting aspect of the partnership is that the institutions in El Paso, Texas, serve primarily a Mexican-American student population while the New York institutions serve primarily a Hispanic population of Caribbean origin. This provides the unique opportunity to compare Hispanic students from both groups. The program evaluation: (1) documents and provides feedback on H-AGEP activities and model implementation; and (2) assesses the extent to which H-AGEP is achieving its intended outcomes. Assessment results on the first cohort of students in the program show the value of including community college faculty as career and teaching mentors in the program. Furthermore, the effect of model interventions in students from the first cohort show positive advances in improving teaching skills, increasing student professional networks, and increasing interest and awareness in careers at community college.
more »
« less
Can Community Laboratory Facilities Increase Access and Inclusivity in Geoscience?
Abstract Geochronology and geochemistry are critical tools in geoscience research and research training, but students and faculty at many institutions have little or no access to the specialized and expensive facilities needed for sample preparation and analysis. Here, we explore whether a community laboratory, dedicated to hosting and training visitors, can help address this inequity by increasing access to specialized geochemical techniques and the resulting data. We report the first three years of outcomes from the Community Cosmogenic Facility, the goal of which is to improve access by making an increasingly important analytic technique more widely available. Although the facility we describe here focuses on cosmogenic nuclide sample preparation, the model we present is viable across the geosciences. Three years of development, assessment, and refinement demonstrate that the community laboratory model increased technique access to undergraduate and graduate students. Women were represented in first‐authored, peer‐reviewed papers at a rate nearly twice that of the broader community. In contrast, the participation of under‐represented groups did not increase over geoscience norms. Our data clearly illustrate that challenges to fostering a diverse geoscience community persist. Proactive interaction with faculty and students at Minority Serving Institutions, cohort‐focused training models, and financial support to visit community laboratories may be future steps toward further diversifying users of community facilities.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1735676
- PAR ID:
- 10367730
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Earth and Space Science
- Volume:
- 9
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 2333-5084
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Research has shown that student achievement is influenced by their access to, or possession of, various forms of capital. These forms of capital include financial capital, academic capital (prior academic preparation and access to academic support services), cultural capital (the attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors related to education which students are exposed to by members of their family or community), and social capital (the resources students have access to as a result of being members of groups or networks). For community college students, many with high financial need and the first in their families to go to college (especially those from underrepresented minority groups), developing programs to increase access to these various forms of capital is critical to their success. This paper describes how a small federally designated Hispanic-serving community college has developed a scholarship program for financially needy community college students intending to transfer to a four-year institution to pursue a bachelor’s degree in a STEM field. Developed through a National Science Foundation Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) grant, the program involves a collaboration among STEM faculty, college staff, administrators, student organizations, and partners in industry, four-year institutions, local high schools, and professional organizations. In addition to providing financial support through the scholarships, student access to academic capital is increased through an intensive math review program, tutoring, study groups, supplemental instruction, and research internship opportunities. Access to cultural and social capital is increased by providing scholars with faculty mentors; engaging students with STEM faculty, university researchers, and industry professionals through field trips, summer internships, professional organizations, and student clubs; supporting student and faculty participation at professional conferences, and providing opportunities for students and their families to interact with faculty and staff. The paper details the development of the program, and its impact over the last five years on enhancing the success of STEM students as determined from data on student participation in various program activities, student attitudinal and self-efficacy surveys, and academic performance including persistence, retention, transfer and graduation.more » « less
-
Over the past 20 years, the explosion of genomic data collection and the cloud computing revolution have made computational and data science research accessible to anyone with a web browser and an internet connection. However, students at institutions with limited resources have received relatively little exposure to curricula or professional development opportunities that lead to careers in genomic data science. To broaden participation in genomics research, the scientific community needs to support these programs in local education and research at underserved institutions (UIs). These include community colleges, historically Black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, and tribal colleges and universities that support ethnically, racially, and socioeconomically underrepresented students in the United States. We have formed the Genomic Data Science Community Network to support students, faculty, and their networks to identify opportunities and broaden access to genomic data science. These opportunities include expanding access to infrastructure and data, providing UI faculty development opportunities, strengthening collaborations among faculty, recognizing UI teaching and research excellence, fostering student awareness, developing modular and open-source resources, expanding course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs), building curriculum, supporting student professional development and research, and removing financial barriers through funding programs and collaborator support.more » « less
-
The CUAHSI Virtual University is an interinstitutional graduate training framework that was developed to increase access to specialized hydrology courses for graduate students from participating US institutions. The program was designed to capitalize on the benefits of collaborative teaching, allowing students to differentiate their learning and access subject matter experts at multiple institutions, while enrolled in a single course at their home institution, through a framework of reciprocity. Although the CUAHSI Virtual University was developed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the resilience of its online education model to such disruptions to classroom teaching increases the urgency of understanding how effective such an approach is at achieving its goals and what challenges multi-institutional graduate training faces for sustainability and expansion within the water sciences or in other disciplines. To gain faculty perspectives on the program, we surveyed (1) water science graduate program faculty who had served as instructors in the program, (2) water science graduate program faculty who were aware of the program, but had not participated, and (3) departmental chairs of participating instructors. Our data show widespread agreement across respondent types that the program is positive for students, diversifying their educational opportunities and increasing access to subject matter experts. Concerns and factors limiting faculty involvement revolved around faculty workload and administrative barriers, including low enrollment at individual institutions. If these barriers can be surmounted, the CUAHSI Virtual University has the potential for wider participation within hydrology and adoption in other STEM disciplines.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)High attrition rates have been a defining characteristic of doctoral education for decades, representing a loss of time, talent, and effort for departing students and their faculty. This qualitative study uses a biomedical science doctoral student sample to collect “real time” data on attrition within the first 2 years of doctoral training. Eighteen students, who represented 16 distinct universities, were interviewed as they engaged in the withdrawal process. Using the conceptual frames of socialization and social cognitive career theory, we explored experiences that preceded these students’ doctoral program withdrawals. Furthermore, we examined how expressed roles of students’ self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and professional goals contributed to the withdrawal process. Findings indicate that faculty advising (both positive and negative), laboratory rotation experiences, self-efficacy components, and changing professional goals all play a role in the early doctoral program attrition process.more » « less
