HSI Pilot Project: Inclusive and Integrative STEM Education through Undergraduate Research

With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 1 project aims to increase access to research opportunities for traditionally underrepresented students in STEM, support diverse students and faculty in STEM, integrate research in the curriculum, create more inclusive research environments for undergraduates, and to enhance the professional advancement of faculty and research mentors. Undergraduate research, a well-established high-impact practice, provides significant benefits for students who are from traditionally underrepresented ethnicities, the first in their family to go to college, from lower-income families, and transfer students (Jones, Barlow, & Villarejo, 2010; Kinzie, Gonyea, Shoup, & Kuh, 2008; Villarejo, Barlow, Kogan, Veazey, & Sweeney, 2008).

However, these students are less likely to participate in research than their peers (National Academy of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine, 2011), even when attending Hispanic Serving Institutions (Haeger, BrckaLorenz, & Webber, 2015). Additionally, when participating in research, students may find a research culture that is an unsupportive or hostile environment, which ultimately is one of the main contributing factors that cause low enrollment and high attrition rates in STEM fields (Clancy, Nelson, Rutherford, & Hinde, 2014).

In a partnership with California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB) and Monterey Peninsula Community College (MPC), this Planning and Pilot Project will work towards a future proposal including building collaborations with regional community colleges and scaling up interventions that prove effective. The project will support students by: generating more research opportunities; engaging transfer students in research pre- and post-transfer; supporting students through the transition from lower-division, introductory research experiences, to upper-division intensive research experiences; building STEM career pathways; and creating more inclusive research environments through equity training for students and mentors.

In supporting faculty, our aims are to: incentivize research with undergraduates; foster more inclusive research spaces through inclusive mentoring and pedagogy; create a community of practice for faculty to develop interactive learning and career preparation in their courses; build interdisciplinary and multi-institutional faculty collaborations. Program evaluation will involve a series of studies closely tied to the goals of the grant: diversifying undergraduate research, eliminating equity gaps by building more inclusive and equitable research environments, and building partnerships that can help “scale up” educational interventions within and beyond the participating institutions.

The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education, broaden participation in STEM, and build capacity at HSIs. Achieving these aims, given the diverse nature and context of the HSIs, requires innovative approaches that incentivize institutional and community transformation and promote fundamental research (i) on engaged student learning, (ii) about what it takes to diversify and increase participation in STEM effectively, and (iii) that improves our understanding of how to build institutional capacity at HSIs.

Projects supported by the HSI Program will also draw from these approaches to generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.