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This paper presents progress and insights from the NSF-funded “Transforming STEM Education using an Asset-Based Ecosystem Model” (Eco-STEM) project at California State University Los Angeles, a minority-serving institution where over 70% of students are Hispanic/Latiné, Pell-eligible, and first-generation. Historically, the College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology (ECST) has implemented various intervention programs - preparatory courses, cohorting, tutoring, workshops, and peer-mentoring - to support students from their transition to college through graduation. While these efforts have led to incremental improvements, they have not delivered the transformative outcomes we envisioned. A key realization from these interventions is the need for a new approach that meets our students “where they are”. This prompted a shift from operating through the lenses of a rigid, "factory model" of education—which assumes uniformity in student input and output—to an adaptable ecosystem framework that leverages its agents' assets and community cultural wealth. The Eco-STEM project focuses on developing structures and tools to allow the current system, constrained by factory-like processes, to evolve into an asset-based ecosystem that better serves the diverse needs of its agents—students, faculty, and staff. Key initiatives include: (1) the Faculty Fellow Community of Practice, a year-long cohort engaging in discussions on topics such as identity, teacher identity, and cultural wealth, culminating in Action Research Teaching (ART) projects; (2) the Lecturer Faculty Workshops, providing condensed versions of the Faculty Fellow Community of Practice experience; (3) the Educational Ecosystem Health Survey, which uses validated constructs to assess the well-being of the system's members; (4) a new Peer Observation Tool and Process focused on formative, growth-oriented feedback for faculty; (5) a new Student Opinion Survey designed around the ecosystem model, examining classroom climate, structure, and vibrancy; and (6) the Mental Model Survey, which assesses faculty perspectives on academia through the lens of ecosystem and factory educational paradigms. This paper briefly discusses the tools and strategies developed, lessons learned through implementation, and team member reflections on how creating educational spaces that value and adapt to the unique strengths of students, faculty, and staff can lead to thriving outcomes for all. 

This Research paper describes the development of the Eco-STEM Student Opinion Survey as a tool designed to aid in the development of a healthy STEM educational ecosystem for students, faculty, and staff at a majority-minority Hispanic-Serving Institution. An important aspect of this endeavor is to obtain meaningful feedback from students about their experiences in STEM classrooms. However, current institutional student opinion surveys lack important context instructors require to make decisions as they intentionally construct inclusive classroom spaces. The Eco-STEM project is developing a student opinion survey and process designed to provide meaningful feedback to instructors. Climate, structure, and vibrancy, three aspects that are critical to evaluating the health of any healthy educational ecosystem, were used to develop the survey. This work is situated in the engineering education community’s effort to create more inclusive classroom environments. The Eco-STEM Student Opinion Survey contains three component parts: a Demographic Survey, a Values Survey, and an Experiences Survey. The Demographic Survey includes items previously shown by the Eco-STEM project to have significant impacts on perceptions of ecosystem health for our students, such as race/ethnicity, gender, living situation, and household income level. The Demographic Survey will be administered to students in their first semester, and participants will be provided with their previous responses each semester and given the opportunity to update them. The Values Survey has been developed based on the Eco-STEM project conceptualization of a healthy educational ecosystem, one that focuses on classroom climate, structure, and vibrancy. The Values Survey measures students’ views on the importance of each aspect. Like the Demographic Survey, it will be administered to students in their first semester and then updated each semester as desired. Instructors will receive reports on their students’ responses to the Demographics and Values Survey at the beginning of each semester, which will provide them with a basis for intentional decision-making and the establishment of an inclusive classroom space. Finally, at the end of each semester, students will be asked to respond to the Experience Survey for each course in which they were enrolled. This survey is also structured around the proposed constructs of climate, structure, and vibrancy. Reports provided to instructors on each of their classes at the end of the semester will provide useful feedback on which to reflect and design intentional changes for future courses. In this paper, we describe the development of the three component parts of the Eco-STEM Student Opinion Survey as well as the proposed process of implementation. We also present the results of confirmatory factor analyses on a pilot study of the Values and Experiences Surveys, which measures the construct reliability for the proposed constructs of climate, structure, and vibrancy. Evidence of validity will enable the institutionalization of a new process that is centered around the voices of our students and supports the evolution of an educational ecosystem in which all can thrive. 

This research, full paper examines the impact of introducing asset-based perspectives on faculty mental models of teaching and learning through participation in a Community of Practice. Ongoing research at California State University, Los Angeles is exploring how faculty perspectives are affected after participating in a community of practice intended to promote asset-based thinking towards students. This research challenges the factory-based framing of engineering education and advocates for an ecosystem model, where all participants-students, faculty, and staff-recognize their interdependence and embrace authenticity. This paper is based on qualitative data from minute papers, or participant reflections. Through inductive qualitative coding of this data, the research team has developed a code book with themes around Insights into Mindsets and Critical Points regarding understanding asset-based perspectives. Our results, contribute to the conversation about changing mental models, by tracing the journey of different faculty as they learn about asset-based perspective, process their learning through discussion and application, and how introducing this different framework affects faculty perspectives on students. This conversation is particularly important as we continue to create more inclusive classrooms, especially when faculty and students have differing experiences, based on different social identities (e.g. different racial/ethnic identities, socioeconomic status, gender identity). The contributions will also include implications for practice as we understand how faculty consider asset-based perspectives. 

The research team at [anonymized for review], is implementing an ongoing NSF-funded research project aiming to change the paradigm of teaching and learning in STEM and its underlying mental models from a factory-like model to a more ecosystem-like model. One aspect of the project is developing Communities of Practice for faculty that help foster this shift in mindset. This paper specifically discusses a more workshop-like delivery of the existing [anonymized for review] Faculty Fellows’ Community of Practice, condensed into two days, as opposed to throughout a full academic year. This workshop model was developed for lecturers, or non-tenure track (NTT) faculty, who are given less resources and opportunities for professional development and have less flexibility in their schedules. Some lecturers work part-time on campus and may have full-time employment elsewhere. Lecturers responded enthusiastically and actively contributed to conversations about educational models in these sessions. They showed interest in more professional development opportunities like [anonymized for review], which they are often not afforded in their roles as lecturers. Lecturers also reiterated the lack of opportunities for community-building such as what they felt was provided by this workshop series. The research team’s Lecturers’ Community of Practice was overwhelmingly well-received by lecturers, despite its condensed nature. The focus of this paper is on the intentional decisions made by the research and facilitation team to provide professional development experience catered to non-tenure track faculty, some who are part-time instructors . In this paper, we also highlight what aspects of the workshop resonated with lecturers, particularly those designed with lecturers in mind, and those unexpectedly helpful for the participants. This paper adds to the conversation on providing more workshops on inclusive teaching for NTT Faculty, who play a critical role in making our programs successful. We include feedback from participants and implications for practice. 

There is a critical need for more students with engineering and computer science majors to enter into, persist in, and graduate from four-year postsecondary institutions. Increasing the diversity of the workforce by inclusive practices in engineering and science is also a profound identified need. According to national statistics, the largest groups of underrepresented minority students in engineering and science attend U.S. public higher education institutions. Most often, a large proportion of these students come to colleges and universities with unique challenges and needs, and are more likely to be first in their family to attend college. In response to these needs, engineering education researchers and practitioners have developed, implemented and assessed interventions to provide support and help students succeed in college, particularly in their first year. These interventions typically target relatively small cohorts of students and can be managed by a small number of faculty and staff. In this paper, we report on “work in progress” research in a large-scale, first-year engineering and computer science intervention program at a public, comprehensive university using multivariate comparative statistical approaches. Large-scale intervention programs are especially relevant to minority serving institutions that prepare growing numbers of students who are first in their family to attend college and who are also under-resourced, financially. These students most often encounter academic difficulties and come to higher education with challenging experiences and backgrounds. Our studied first-year intervention program, first piloted in 2015, is now in its 5th year of implementation. Its intervention components include: (a) first-year block schedules, (b) project-based introductory engineering and computer science courses, (c) an introduction to mechanics course, which provides students with the foundation needed to succeed in a traditional physics sequence, and (d) peer-led supplemental instruction workshops for calculus, physics and chemistry courses. This intervention study responds to three research questions: (1) What role does the first-year intervention’s components play in students’ persistence in engineering and computer science majors across undergraduate program years? (2) What role do particular pedagogical and cocurricular support structures play in students’ successes? And (3) What role do various student socio-demographic and experiential factors play in the effectiveness of first-year interventions? To address these research questions and therefore determine the formative impact of the firstyear engineering and computer science program on which we are conducting research, we have collected diverse student data including grade point averages, concept inventory scores, and data from a multi-dimensional questionnaire that measures students’ use of support practices across their four to five years in their degree program, and diverse background information necessary to determine the impact of such factors on students’ persistence to degree. Background data includes students’ experiences prior to enrolling in college, their socio-demographic characteristics, and their college social capital throughout their higher education experience. For this research, we compared students who were enrolled in the first-year intervention program to those who were not enrolled in the first-year intervention. We have engaged in cross-sectional 2 data collection from students’ freshman through senior years and employed multivariate statistical analytical techniques on the collected student data. Results of these analyses were interesting and diverse. Generally, in terms of backgrounds, our research indicates that students’ parental education is positively related to their success in engineering and computer science across program years. Likewise, longitudinally (across program years), students’ college social capital predicted their academic success and persistence to degree. With regard to the study’s comparative research of the first-year intervention, our results indicate that students who were enrolled in the first-year intervention program as freshmen continued to use more support practices to assist them in academic success across their degree matriculation compared to students who were not in the first-year program. This suggests that the students continued to recognize the value of such supports as a consequence of having supports required as first-year students. In terms of students’ understanding of scientific or engineering-focused concepts, we found significant impact resulting from student support practices that were academically focused. We also found that enrolling in the first-year intervention was a significant predictor of the time that students spent preparing for classes and ultimately their grade point average, especially in STEM subjects across students’ years in college. In summary, we found that the studied first-year intervention program has longitudinal, positive impacts on students’ success as they navigate through their undergraduate experiences toward engineering and computer science degrees. 

This complete evidence-based practice paper discusses the strategies and results of an introduction to mechanics course, designed to prepare students for introductory-level physics and other fundamental courses in engineering, such as statics, strength of materials, and dynamics. The course was developed to address historically high failure (DFW) rates in the physics courses and is part of a set of interventions implemented to support student success in a college of engineering and computer science. The course focuses on providing in-depth understanding of Newton’s Laws of motion, free-body diagrams, and linear and projectile motion. Because it focuses on a limited number of competencies, it is possible to spend more time on inquiry-based activities and in-class discussions. The course framework was designed considering the Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve, to provide students with learning opportunities in 6-day cycles: (i) day 1: a pre-class learning activity (reading or video) and a quiz; (ii) day 2: in-class Kahoot low-stakes quiz with discussion, a short lecture with embedded time for problem-solving and discussion, and in-class activities (labs, group projects); (iii) day 4: homework due two days after the class; (iv) day 6: homework self-reflection (autopsy based on provided solutions) two days after homework is due. The assessment of course performance is based on the well-characterized force concept inventory (FCI) exam that is administered before the intro to mechanics course and both before and after the Physics I course; and on student performance (grades) in Physics and Statics courses. Results from the FCI pre-test show that students who took the introduction to mechanics course (treatment group) started the physics course with a much better understanding of force concepts than other students in the course. The FCI post-test shows better normalized gain for the treatment group, compared to other students, which is also aligned with student performance in the course. Additionally, student performance is significantly better in statics, with 25% DWF rate compared to 50% for the other students. In summary, the framework of the course, which focuses on providing students with in-depth understanding of force concepts, has led to better learning and performance in Physics I, but importantly it has also helped students achieve better performance in the Statics course, the first fundamental course in civil and mechanical engineering programs. 

In this Work-in-Progress paper, we report on the challenges and successes of a large-scale First- Year Engineering and Computer Science Program at an urban comprehensive university, using quantitative and qualitative assessment results. Large-scale intervention programs are especially relevant to comprehensive minority serving institutions (MSIs) that serve a high percentage of first-generation college students who often face academic and socioeconomic barriers. Our program was piloted in 2015 with 30 engineering students, currently enrolls 60 engineering and computer science students, and is expected to grow to over 200 students by Fall 2020. The firstyear program interventions include: (i) block schedules for each cohort in the first year; (ii) redesigned project-based introduction to engineering and introduction to computer science courses; (iii) an introduction to mechanics course, which provides students with the foundation needed to succeed in the traditional physics sequence; and (iv) peer-led supplemental instruction (SI) workshops for Calculus, Physics and Chemistry. A faculty mentorship program was implemented to provide additional support to students, but was phased out after the first year. Challenges encountered in the process of expanding the program include administrative, such as scheduling and training faculty and SI leaders; barriers to improvement of math and science instruction; and more holistic concerns such as creating a sense of community and identity for the program. Quantitative data on academic performance includes metrics such as STEM GPA and persistence, along with the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) for physics. Qualitative assessments of the program have used student and instructor surveys, focus groups, and individual interviews to measure relationships among factors associated with college student support and to extract student perspectives on what works best for them. Four years of data tell a mixed story, in which the qualitative effect of the interventions on student confidence and identity is strong, while academic performance is not yet significantly different than that of comparison groups. One of the most significant results of the program is the development of a FYrE Professional Learning Community which includes faculty (both tenure-track and adjunct), department chairs, staff, and administrators from across the campus. 

The College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology (ECST) at California State University, Los Angles, an Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) with over 60% Hispanic students, is committed to improving graduation rates through the Grad initiative 2025 (the California State University’s initiative to increase graduation rates for all CSU students while eliminating achievement gaps). The majority of our students are under-represented minorities, low-income, Pell-eligible and first generation. Currently, one quarter of the students leaving the major before the second year. Many that “survive” the first two years of math and science do not develop the knowledge and the skills that are needed to succeed in upper division engineering courses, leading to more students unable to finish their engineering majors. Three years ago, we launched a pilot program for the First-Year Experience at ECST (FYrE@ECST) for incoming freshmen. The program focuses on providing academic support for math and physics courses while introducing students to the college community, and comprises a summer bridge program, a hands-on introductory course, cohorted math and science sections, and staff and faculty mentoring. Academic support is provided through peer-led supplemental instruction (SI) workshops. The workshops have led to a significant improvement in student performance in Math, but have had no significant impact in the student performance in physics. Our hypothesis is that students, in addition to having limited understanding of calculus, struggle to understand the fundamental principles of physics and thus cannot apply their knowledge of math to theories in physics to solve problems. This work-in-progress paper describes an inquiry-based hands-on pre-physics course for first-year students as part of the FYrE@ECST program. The course is intended to prepare students for the calculus-based mechanics course in physics and covers about half of the competencies of a classical mechanics course, with focuses on the fundamental concepts of mechanics (i.e. Newton’s Laws, Types of forces, vectors, free-body diagrams, position, velocity and acceleration). Equations are only introduced in the second half of the semester, while the first half is directed to help students develop a deep understanding of these fundamental concepts. During classes, students run simple experiments, watch segments of movies and cartoons and are asked questions (written and orally) which can guide them to think intuitively and critically. A think-pair-share mode of instruction is implemented to promote inquiry and discussion. Students work in groups of five to discuss and solve problems, carry out experiments to better understand processes and systems, and share what they learned with the whole class. The paper presents preliminary results on student achievement.