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1. A Change Model that Helps Faculty Mentor Underrepresented Minorities (URM) Doctoral Students for the STEM Professoriate

   Grasso, M and (January 2020, The chronicle of mentoring coaching)

   In response to the well-documented themes of unique challenges URM doctoral student experience (tokenism, stereotyping, microaggressions, etc.), faculty mentoring remains an especially critical resource to change the trajectory for URM students in graduate education. The purpose of this study is to examine the frst two years of change in institutional culture which will increase the number of URM doctoral students who pursue the STEM professoriate. The primary research question asked is “Can a focus on developing and mentoring faculty catalyze change in the culture and practices of their doctoral programs to increase faculty diversity?” Based on the idea that faculty are drivers of lasting institutional change, three diverse public universities collaborate to adapt and implement an institutional change project, called “AGEP-NC Alliance: A Change Model for Doctoral to Faculty Diversity in STEM,” that prioritizes cultural frameworks for deep change in postsecondary education (Gumpertz et al., 2019). Key model components include faculty learning communities; use of national faculty mentoring networks; and use of institutional diversity data. Culturally relevant mentoring is among several approaches of interest to STEM reformers to shift the focus to institutional-level change and not student defciencies. Operationalized as “cultural integrity,” the approach calls upon students’ racial and ethnic backgrounds as assets for reform in pedagogies and learning activities, while valuing those backgrounds as critical ingredients for acquiring academic capital and career success (Tierney, 1999). Kezar’s (2018) cultural framework for institutional change emphasizes knowledge formation in context as well as analysis of espoused meaning and values organizational members maintain. The researchers present the AGEP-NC Alliance as a narrative, rich case study and collaborative mentoring model, an approach allowing participant researchers to detail sustained data use in collaborative social interaction (Patton, 1990). Results will be shared that highlight faculty as cultural change agents, and organizational learning as a cultural process. Preliminary results show evidence of institutional change at several levels from classroom and laboratory practices to key departmental policies. 

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2. A Change Model that Helps Faculty Mentor Underrepresented Minorities (URM) Doctoral Students for the STEM Professoriate

   Grasso, M; Campbell, CD. (December 2020, The chronicle of mentoring coaching)

   In response to the well-documented themes of unique challenges URM doctoral student experience (tokenism, stereotyping, microaggressions, etc.), faculty mentoring remains an especially critical resource to change the trajectory for URM students in graduate education. The purpose of this study is to examine the first two years of change in institutional culture which will increase the number of URM doctoral students who pursue the STEM professoriate. The primary research question asked is “Can a focus on developing and mentoring faculty catalyze change in the culture and practices of their doctoral programs to increase faculty diversity?” Based on the idea that faculty are drivers of lasting institutional change, three diverse public universities collaborate to adapt and implement an institutional change project, called “AGEP-NC Alliance: A Change Model for Doctoral to Faculty Diversity in STEM,” that prioritizes cultural frameworks for deep change in postsecondary education (Gumpertz et al., 2019). Key model components include faculty learning communities; use of national faculty mentoring networks; and use of institutional diversity data. Culturally relevant mentoring is among several approaches of interest to STEM reformers to shift the focus to institutional-level change and not student deficiencies. Operationalized as “cultural integrity,” the approach calls upon students’ racial and ethnic backgrounds as assets for reform in pedagogies and learning activities, while valuing those backgrounds as critical ingredients for acquiring academic capital and career success (Tierney, 1999). Kezar’s (2018) cultural framework for institutional change emphasizes knowledge formation in context as well as analysis of espoused meaning and values organizational members maintain. The researchers present the AGEP-NC Alliance as a narrative, rich case study and collaborative mentoring model, an approach allowing participant researchers to detail sustained data use in collaborative social interaction (Patton, 1990). Results will be shared that highlight faculty as cultural change agents, and organizational learning as a cultural process. Preliminary results show evidence of institutional change at several levels from classroom and laboratory practices to key departmental policies. 

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3. Work in Progress: H-AGEP - A Model to Improve the Preparation and Transition for Hispanic STEM Doctoral Students into Community College Faculty Positions

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--35641  

   Velez-Reyes, Miguel; Aklog, Fenot; Horton, Dawn; Mejia, Yajaira; Santiago, Ivonne; González, Jorge; Sivils, Jeff; Meeuwsen, Harry; Moshary, Fred; Barba, Joseph (June 2020, 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access)

   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. 

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4. Course Based Undergraduate Research Demystifies and Democratizes inquiry-based research for undergraduate STEM students.

   Hoffbuhr, K; Mast, G; Brady, B; Blume, G; Elliser, C; Palmer, C (June 2023, Transforming Institution Conference)

   Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) have been shown to improve both persistence and graduation rates for women and students of color (Alquicira et al. 2022). Although these effects are observed broadly across higher education, they are especially pronounced in the context of the STEM fields (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2017). Although community colleges disproportionately enroll students who can most benefit from UREs, structural barriers make UREs rare at community colleges (Hewlett 2018). This change project, based at a mid-sized community college in Washington State, is part of the state’s Consortium for Undergraduate Research and Equity (CURE) and aspires to address the paucity of community college research opportunities in STEM through the design and implementation of a year-long research project for students enrolled in the primary course sequence for biology majors (approximately 50-100 annually). The project’s underlying theory of change is twofold. First, two local community partners and four science faculty use backward design to create a research project that embeds laboratory skills and learning outcomes in a year-long URE. Second, participating faculty replace the entire lab curriculum in the college’s three-course biology sequence with this applied year-long research project. Incorporating applied research into the college’s biology curriculum demystifies and democratizes inquiry-based research for first-generation, underrepresented, and/or academically underprepared students, who also may not have the financial privilege to participate in an unpaid internship that affords them such an experience. Preliminary findings from this change initiative will focus on project goals related to creating equitable access across a range of outcomes including demographic participation rates, the development of professional STEM research skills, and the extent to which UREs enhance a community college student’s sense of belonging among a larger scientific community. 

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5. Where’s My Whiteboard? The Challenge of Moving Active-learning Mathematics Classes Online

   Nelson, Jill K.; Rosenberg, Jessica; Fernandez, Kathryn; Shank, Julie (July 2021, 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   This research paper studies the challenges that mathematics faculty and graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) faced when moving active and collaborative calculus courses from in-person to virtual instruction. As part of a larger pedagogical change project (described below), the math department at a public Research-1 university began transitioning pre-calculus and calculus courses to an active and collaborative learning (ACL) format in Fall 2019. The change began with the introduction of collaborative worksheets in recitations which were led by GTAs and supported by undergraduate learning assistants (LAs). Students recitation periods collaboratively solving the worksheet problems on whiteboards. When COVID-19 forced the rapid transition to online teaching, these ACL efforts faced an array of challenges. Faculty and GTA reflections on the changes to teaching and learning provide insight into how instructional staff can be supported in implementing ACL across various modes of instruction. The calculus teaching change efforts discussed in this paper are part of an NSF-supported project that aims to make ACL the default method of instruction in highly enrolled gateway STEM courses across the institution. The theoretical framework for the project builds on existing work on grassroots change in higher education (Kezar and Lester, 2011) to study the effect of communities of practice on changing teaching culture. The project uses course-based communities of practice (Wenger, 1999) that include instructors, GTAs, and LAs working together to design and enact teaching change in the targeted courses alongside ongoing professional development for GTAs and LAs. Six faculty and five GTAs involved in the teaching change effort in mathematics were interviewed after the Spring 2020 semester ended. Interview questions focused on faculty and GTA experiences implementing active learning after the rapid transition to online teaching. A grounded coding scheme was used to identify common themes in the challenges faced by instructors and GTAs as they moved online and in the impacts of technology, LA support, and the department community of practice on the move to online teaching. Technology, including both access and capabilities, emerged as a common barrier to student engagement. A particular barrier was students’ reluctance to share video or participate orally in sessions that were being recorded, making group work more difficult than it had been in a physical classroom. In addition, most students lacked access to a tablet for freehand writing, presenting a significant hurdle for sharing mathematical notation when physical whiteboards were no longer an option. These challenges point to the importance of incorporating flexibility in active learning implementation and in the professional development that supports teaching changes toward active learning, since what is conceived for a collaborative physical classroom may be implemented in a much different environment. The full paper will present a detailed analysis of the data to better understand how faculty and GTA experiences in the transition to online delivery can inform planning and professional development as the larger institutional change effort moves forward both in mathematics and in other STEM fields. 

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