HSI Pilot Project: Broadening Research Experiences for HSI STEM Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (BREDEI)

With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-­Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 1 project aims to improve the quality, availability, and diversity of the STEM educational pipeline. By building a sustainable undergraduate field research program at Texas A&M University-­San Antonio, the project will develop a strong scientific and professional identity critical to the persistence in STEM majors and the motivation to pursue a science-­related career.

We will develop role models, facilitate student participation in federally-­supported research projects, and provide field training programs to heighten the scientific literacy and identity among the participating students. As the project team validates the impact of these practices and develops them into a curricular program, the project will have a long-­term impact of cultivating reliable domestic talent from underrepresented populations by improving the disproportionately low representation of Hispanic students in south Texas in the aquatic ecology profession.

Aquatic sciences are highly interdisciplinary and require a considerable amount of field experience that has not always been accessible to under-­represented student groups. We hypothesize that improving the availability of field research opportunities and role models are key to the success of minority STEM majors. Thus, the specific aims of the project are to (1) improve scientific literacy among minority communities, (2) broaden undergraduate research experiences focusing on assessing the health of stream ecosystems, (3) improve recruitment, retention, and graduation of minority students by offering field research and mentoring programs, and (4) establish a sustainable model for a field-­heavy curriculum via a collaborative model between HSIs, schools, public and private sector entities.

These objectives will be achieved by implementing field-­training activities supported by the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), the National Hispanic Environmental Council (NHEC), and the Texas Aquatic Science project. The outcome of the project will enable the development of a university faculty-reviewed field-­study curriculum for A&M-­SA that will benefit students from multiple natural resource majors.

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.