Houston Alliance for Minority Participation Project

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HOUSTON LOUIS STOKES ALLIANCE FOR MINORITY PARTICIPATION.PHASE II The Houston-Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (H-LSAMP) consortium consisting of 6 universities, 2 community colleges, and a school district, will build upon its Phase I foundation to implement a realistic, comprehensive plan to: a) recruit well-qualified minority students in STEM disciplines; b) enhance retention rates by focusing on individual retention issues, and; c) ensure that each student graduates with a clear career goal and the preparation to achieve it. The H-LSAMP will maintain its management structure, its recruitment and selection process, and will continue to provide financial support in the form of stipends to its H-LSAMP scholars. Scholars will earn their stipends by performing activities associated with their training, such as working in research laboratories. The H-LSAMP will maintain its successful Collaborative Learning Community model in which scholars are required to attend rigorous excellence workshops associated with core courses such as calculus and chemistry. Additionally, the H-LSAMP will implement processes to educate the scholars about career opportunities open to well-prepared graduates, and monitor and counsel them to optimize the likelihood of on-time graduation. Strong emphasis will be placed on encouraging students to pursue graduate degrees and preparing them for entry to graduate school. To this end, the H-LSAMP will plan and execute regularly scheduled workshops and forums about STEM careers and graduate education, emphasizing the leadership opportunities open to those with doctoral degrees in these fields. The H-LSAMP will respond to the need for improved communication skills by providing formal written communications skills training. Concurrently, a protocol for routine monitoring and documenting student progress that includes periodic individual assessment and follow-up meetings with a staff member will be designed and employed. The H-LSAMP will contribute to the growing body of knowledge about retention of undergraduate minority STEM students by using accepted research methods to determine the relative contributions of factors believed to be important to retention in this population. Last, because information management is important to the success of programs such as the LSAMP, a state-of-the-art information management software program developed specifically for the H-LSAMP will be made available to other institutions. The intellectual merit of this project lies primarily in the generation of important new knowledge about factors that contribute to retention and success in the population of underrepresented minorities, primarily Hispanics and African-Americans pursuing STEM baccalaureate degrees in Texas. One can reasonably expect much of this knowledge to be generalizable to Hispanics and African-Americans in other geographic areas of the U.S. Once the results of an innovative student-centered plan that combines application of educational principles with a standardized counseling and monitoring protocol are known, the educational community will have a model for assessing and responding to needs of individual minority STEM students as they progress through their college careers. The commitment of the H-LSAMP leaders, faculty, and staff is well-documented, and evidence of institutionalization of the program includes the commitment of physical facilities and an institutional to NSF match of approximately 1.5:1. The broader impact of this project lies in its potential to greatly increase the numbers of well-focused, minority graduates who graduate from our institutions inspired and prepared to pursue career goals. The expectation is that a high proportion will aspire to attend graduate school, swelling the ranks of the next generation of scientific leaders and educators. Finally, the H-LSAMP will have the potential to enhance the success and impact of similar programs by making available proprietary software that facilitates the data collection, retrieval, analysis, and reporting required for effective, efficient operation.