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Moderator: Martina Arndt, Bridgewater State University

Entering Mentoring: Inclusive Faculty To Student Mentoring

Jamie A. Turgeon-drake, University of South Dakota

Success in college is strongly influenced by the quality of faculty mentoring that students receive and this is especially true for students from under-represented groups. The University of South Dakota-HHMI Inclusive Science Initiative hosts an Entering Mentoring program once an academic year for faculty, research faculty, graduate student research faculty and staff to promote inclusive ideas and foster positive mentoring experiences inside the lab, classroom settings and beyond on the university's campus. In sharing our curriculum and modifications we hope to encourage other universities to adapt a similar program that will fit their universities needs.

Building a Culture of Research and Support in STEM at an HBCU

Verleen McSween, The University of the Virgin Islands

Lawanda Cummings, The University of the Virgin Islands

The Virgin Island Institute for STEM Education, Research, and Practice (VI-ISERP) is the STEM Workforce Development component of the Virgin Islands Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (VI-EPSCoR) initiative. The goal of VI-EPSCoR is the development of the U.S. Virgin Islands scientific capacity and ability to support economic growth. Addressing this goal in workforce development, VI-ISERP, has employed a 3-prong approach focused on 1) STEM teacher professional development, 2) student mentoring/training, and 3) research capacity and infrastructure development. The resulting constellation of programing and supports seek to address the persistent underrepresentation of minorities and women in STEM fields. The Mentoring and Research Infrastructure component supports pre and early-career STEM professionals and promotes their research productivity. The VI-ISERP team has created unique psychological and professional skill scaffolding for undergraduate, graduate, and early career professionals to bolster industry-relevant skills and navigational resiliency. We employ mentoring compacts and success plans to capitalize on faculty/student relationships, host research support groups like Voices of Women in STEM (VOWS) to create community and accountability, and intensive training in education research through university partners like the Professional development for Emerging Education Researchers- Virgin Islands (PEER-VI) Field school through Rochester Institute of Technology.

Complexities of Change: Lessons from an Institution’s Efforts to Transform STEM Teaching

Alisa Hutchinson, Wayne State University

Peter Hoffmann, Wayne State University

S. Asli Özgün-Koca, Wayne State University

Karen Myhr, Wayne State University

Sara Kacin, Wayne State University

Despite decades of research validating the use of active learning and other student-centered instructional practices in improving student performance (Freeman et al., 2014), such techniques have failed to achieve status quo as routine pedagogy in undergraduate STEM classes (Henderson et al., 2011). Active learning strategies have also been shown to be beneficial in reducing the achievement gap for underrepresented students in undergraduate STEM courses (Theobald et al., 2020), underscoring the importance of establishing them as a standard practice to address urgent societal needs for equity and inclusion. In recent years, efforts have increasingly focused on institution-level interventions to drive transformation and several perspectives for approaching these changes have emerged. This presentation will share results from an eight-year, NSF-funded project to support faculty at a large urban research university to incorporate evidence-based teaching methods (active learning strategies) across STEM disciplines and increase reflection, feedback, and conversations focused on teaching. Our presentation will review how different elements of our reform effort met (or did not meet) their objectives, how sustainable they are, and what lessons our project offers to reform efforts at colleges and universities in a range of contexts. We will reflect on our lessons learned by considering our experiences through the lens of Henderson et al.’s (2011) four-quadrant model (which framed our project), while also considering the potential influences of sensemaking & sensegiving as well as faculty identity on change at the departmental and institutional levels.