Broadening Participation Research Center: Center for the Advancement of STEM Leadership

Broadening Participation Research Centers provide support to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to conduct broadening participation research and serve as national hubs for the rigorous study and broad dissemination of the critical theories, structures and pedagogies, as well as culturally sensitive interventions that contribute to the success of HBCUs in educating African American STEM undergraduates. In an effort to address the national priority to prepare sufficient numbers of its citizens to fill STEM workforce needs, HBCU administrative and faculty leaders are seeking to make strategic decisions that will position their institutions, as well as the Nation, for continued broadening participation success.

The HBCU historical record demonstrates the importance of a nurturing academic environment, high expectations, and access to role models to increase the participation of African Americans in STEM. However, closer examination reveals the significant role of HBCU leaders, at various organizational levels, in creating the conditions for achieving these outcomes.

Today’s HBCU leaders are not only expected to create these ideal institutional conditions, but to do so while navigating realities that are often ambiguous, volatile, and complex. This reality is exacerbated by three factors: 1) the scarcity of knowledge about how HBCU leaders have advanced broadening participation; 2) limited adoption of HBCU broadening participation processes into mainstream undergraduate STEM reform outlets; and 3) a proliferation of ineffective leadership development efforts that do not serve today’s HBCU STEM leaders.

To this end, the Center for the Advancement of STEM Leadership (CASL) will leverage its research findings and innovations to empower STEM leaders for increased broadening participation success and meaningfully informing mainstream STEM higher education reform to create institutional conditions necessary to broaden participation.

Designed to be the Nation's premier research center examining and determining the kind of academic leadership that broadens the participation of African Americans and other underrepresented groups in STEM, the University of the Virgin Islands, in collaboration with its institutional/organizational partners – North Carolina Agricultural and Technological State University, Fielding Graduate University, and the American Association of Colleges and Universities – has designed a unique approach to broadening participation research. Specifically, CASL’s strategic approach engages the power of established theoretical frameworks, considers the complex cultural and institutional contexts of HBCUs grounded in African American heritage, and examines how HBCU STEM leaders navigate their institutions to achieve successful broadening participation outcomes.

Undergirding the Center’s collective research, education, and knowledge transfer/outreach agendas is the systems model of creativity, which offers a lens for gaining deeper insights into the creative processes that HBCU leaders of various types and levels have and continue to use to broaden participation. Guided by principles of andragogy, Socratic questioning, and the theoretical foundations of knowledge transfer science, these insights will be integrated into and promulgated throughout the entire undergraduate STEM reform community.

A robust external evaluation will monitor and assess progress on all objectives, providing both formative and summative assessment of all Center activities.

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.