HSI Institutional Transformation Project: Unified Community of Support - Building Capacity for STEM Transfer Students’ Success (UCS-STSS)

With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) Program, this Track 3 ITP project aims to (1) build intra-institutional capacity through a Unified Community of Support; (2) create systemic and sustained institutional change that supports STEM Mentors in implementing evidence-based practices that enhance equitable student outcomes in STEM; (3) build inter-institutional capacity across a Regional Transfer Alliance to enhance STEM student transfer rates and transfer success; and (4) implement a theory-guided iterative research design focused on improving the understanding of how actors and institutions in higher education work within a systemic context to build capacity and on how to increase equitable participation and success in STEM using an intersectionality framework. This work will advance new knowledge of systems of domination and resistance in higher education within the context of HSIs.

It will explore how to disrupt social reproduction of educational inequity. Broader impacts of the project will include improving the participation and success of underrepresented minorities in STEM, increasing authentic collaboration and partnerships among academia, and enhancing the infrastructure and capacity for STEM education research and its application to STEM education policy in higher education.

Specific aims of the project are to address institution and system-wide structural change to enhance undergraduate STEM education and improve STEM transfer success through theory-guided research. This will be accomplished through an iterative research design that is grounded in Lewin’s Theory of Change, an intersectionality framework (Núňez 2014), a model of Unified Community of Support (Kezar & Holcombe 2017), and Shlossberg’s Transition Theory.

Expected results will be improved STEM advising, improved STEM teaching and mentoring, enhanced opportunity for co-curricular activities, more equitable participation and outcomes, improved student success, and long-term sustainable intra- and inter-institutional structural change. Findings resulting from this project will be disseminated in a variety of ways.

The research findings will be shared through conferences and submitted for publication to peer reviewed journals. Findings from the action research, conducted by the STEM faculty, will be shared locally through a public-invited poster session held annually and these faculty members will be encouraged to submit their findings to a peer reviewed journal.

Project resources will be shared on the project website, including transfer plans and policy documents such as the Honors Program structure. These resources will be freely available to the public. 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.