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1. Culturally informed strengths-based coaching- a novel approach to support the success of underrepresented minority faculty

   Vieira, Philip A; Membere, Ashley; Almeida, Daniel J (March 2023, Applied Dispute Resolution Journal)

   Ervin, David; Harirchian, Paradis; Salmon, Thomas; Valentine, Shareef; Jarrett, Brian; Dellacioppa, Kara; Alli, Julie; Polk, Matthew; Pacada, Nicole (Ed.)

   Underrepresented Minority (URM) faculty play a crucial role in higher education and yet they face numerous barriers to success. This paper describes a project that seeks to address these barriers by supporting URM faculty through Strengths-based coaching while also examining how social and cultural identities intersect with individual faculty. Strengths that are determined by the Clifton Strengths online assessment administered by Gallup, Inc. throughout this yearlong intervention, URM junior faculty were paired with senior faculty coaches to provide one-on-one support. Additionally, all faculty participated in a series of work-shops aimed at supporting faculty teaching, research, and service by applying individual Strengths through a lens of social/cultural identity. This project serves as a model for how coaching can be used to address an important facet of dispute resolution that involves URM faculty in higher education. 

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2. Culturally informed strengths-based coaching- a novel approach to support the success of underrepresented minority faculty

   Vieira, Philip A; Membere, Ashley; Almeida, Daniel J (March 2023, Applied Dispute Resolution Journal)

   Ervin, David; Harirchian, Paradis; Salmon, Thomas; Valentine, Shareef; Jarrett, Brian; Dellacioppa, Kara; Alli, Julie; Polk, Matthew; Pacada, Nicole (Ed.)

   Underrepresented Minority (URM) faculty play a crucial role in higher education and yet they face numerous barriers to success. This paper describes a project that seeks to address these barriers by supporting URM faculty through Strengths-based coaching while also examining how social and cultural identities intersect with individual faculty. Strengths that are determined by the Clifton Strengths online assessment administered by Gallup, Inc. throughout this yearlong intervention, URM junior faculty were paired with senior faculty coaches to provide one-on-one support. Additionally, all faculty participated in a series of work-shops aimed at supporting faculty teaching, research, and service by applying individual Strengths through a lens of social/cultural identity. This project serves as a model for how coaching can be used to address an important facet of dispute resolution that involves URM faculty in higher education. 

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3. The Role of Contextual Variables and Structural Diversity on College Students’ Engineering Self-Efficacy

   https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14070564  

   Lee, Bo Hyun; Hu, Xiaotian; Flores, Lisa Y; Navarro, Rachel L (July 2024, Behavioral Sciences)

   Structural diversity is defined as the numerical representation of diverse racial/ethnic student groups on campus as one way of exposing students to diversity in higher education. The current study implemented the concept of structural diversity on faculty in higher education, given the significant and unique roles in STEM education. We integrated the proportion of URM faculty within the College of Engineering as a moderating variable in the social cognitive career theory (SCCT) model. With a sample of 254 diverse engineering students from six universities, the results indicated that both perceived engineering barriers and perceived engineering supports significantly related to perceived self-efficacy even after controlling for the effects of the other. Perceived engineering supports mediated the effects of engineering barriers on self-efficacy. Moreover, a moderated mediation effect by the proportion of URM faculty was observed, showing that when the proportion of URM faculty reached a certain level, high levels of perceived engineering barriers had no effect on increasing perceived engineering supports. Implications for fostering career development in engineering with a systematic-tailored approach are discussed. 

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4. Supporting Historically Underrepresented Groups in STEM Higher Education: The Promise of Structured Mentoring Networks

   https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2022.674669  

   Markle, Robert S.; Williams, Tyrslai M.; Williams, Kristen S.; deGravelles, Karin H.; Bagayoko, Diola; Warner, Isiah M. (May 2022, Frontiers in Education)

   Although institutions of higher education have placed a large emphasis on increasing the number of underrepresented minority (URM) students matriculating in higher education, the disparities in STEM retention and graduation rates between URM and non-URM students emphasize the dire need for increased support to help URM students navigate challenges including stereotype threat, impostor phenomenon, and lack of social connectedness that disproportionately affect URM students in majority-dominated fields. Prior research has demonstrated that structured mentoring has the potential to generate substantial improvements in academic, social, and career outcomes for URM STEM students. In particular, network-based mentoring approaches that allow for students to receive both professional and peer mentoring, as well as the opportunity to mentor other students, have demonstrated success in this realm. In this article, we discuss how the current state of academia often fails URM STEM students and faculty, review literature regarding the ways in which structured mentoring approaches can alleviate barriers to success among URM groups in STEM fields, and offer recommendations regarding how academic institutions can successfully implement holistic student and faculty mentoring programs. 

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5. An Institutional Transformation Model to Increase Minority STEM Doctoral Student Success.

   Gumpertz, M and (January 2019, 2019 CoNECD - The Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity)

   null (Ed.)

   One of the major barriers to increasing the percentage of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty in STEM fields is the small number of URM applicants for academic positions. Recent studies have shown that African-American and Hispanic/Latinx students make up only 2.7% and 3.3%, respectively, of doctorates granted in STEM disciplines in the U.S. Additionally, the 2-year attrition rate of URM doctoral students is nearly 50%, substantially greater than the rate for non-URM students at most institutions. This presentation reports on an effort by an alliance of three North Carolina public universities to develop, implement, and test a model to improve these URM outcomes. The project involves adapting and implementing research-based institutional change strategies that positively impact URM graduate students in STEM disciplines. Each participating department has a volunteer faculty member interested in URM success issues designated as a "AGEP-NC Faculty Fellow." The Fellow receives support and training on mentoring, the experiences of underrepresented minority students, and on fostering change. First, the Fellows introduce their departmental colleagues to best practices in supporting URM students in PhD programs. Together with their department head and director of graduate programs, they work with the faculty to understand graduate student pathways, identify practices and policies that promote success, and diagnose trouble spots. Based on this study of the graduate student experience in their own department, the faculty then develop a departmental diversity plan to build these insights into departmental practices and procedures. This presentation will overview the project design for the 5-year program, share materials used in the Faculty Fellow training, and summarize preliminary findings from surveys regarding attitudes and perceptions of the faculty and graduate students in the Year 1 cohort of six departments. The project is supported by the NSF AGEP(Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate) program. 

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