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In this Rapid Community Report - Process Reflection, the STEM PUSH Network (Pathways for Underrepresented Students to HigherEd), an NSF INCLUDES Alliance, describes a root cause analysis process used to build the conceptual foundation of the improvement network and establish a shared vision and clear roles for the partnership. Four layers of reflection, including internal evaluation, external evaluation, advisory council review, and an NSF reverse site visit, surfaced the need for and strategies to strengthen equity and youth agency in the root cause analysis process. 

The National Science Foundation (2019) points to Black, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian, Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Island peoples as underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) college majors and professional pathways. This underrepresentation results from an interplay of representation and process, meaning that it in part results from STEM opportunities and programming that do not reflect the experiences of racially and ethnically diverse people, offer insight into the needs of diverse communities, nor address barriers that prevent participation (McGee 2020). One way that institutions of higher education (IHEs) and community organizations try to address inequities in STEM is through pre-college programs aimed at supporting racially and ethnically minoritized (REM) youth. These pre-college STEM programs (PCSPs) work to foster increased STEM awareness and support students in achieving academic milestones that make college pathways more viable. Out-of-school learning (OSL) and informal STEM programming have the potential to fill gaps in STEM K–12 education, as well as complement and support connections with K–12 STEM by offering REM youth opportunities to connect STEM with their lives and influence both their capabilities and dispositions toward STEM (Kitchen et al. 2018). Studies have pointed to positive connections between OSL STEM participation and outcomes such as high school graduation, sustained interest in STEM, and matriculation to university (Penuel, Clark, and Bevan 2016). PCSPs may also support IHE’s development of infrastructure to increase admissions of REM students into college STEM programs. For PCSPs to be an effective element of reducing inequities in STEM, they must successfully engage with and recruit REM youth to participate. In this article, we focus on the recruitment of REM youth into STEM OSL to better understand what is effective for REM youth and their families, as well as highlight connections between OSL and in-school STEM opportunities. Our goals in this work are to (1) identify program practices with the aim of broadening STEM educational and career pathways for REM youth and (2) support strengthened pathways between STEM in K–12 schools and IHEs. 

K–12 schools across the United States have been challenged to make programmatic shifts to meet the needs of youth and their families during the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to both structure and existing connections to youth and families, many out-of-school learning (OSL) programs, including Pre-College STEM Programs (PCSPs), are nimbler and have the ability to be more responsive. The STEM PUSH Network (a National Science Foundation INCLUDES Alliance; https://stempushnetwork.org)—which brings together PCSPs as part of a national collaborative of programs and citywide STEM Ecosystems focused on program improvement and college admissions—revealed some of the ways programs have adjusted during COVID- 19, as well as the ways systematic cross-program collaboration can enhance this work.