RCN-UBE-Incubator: Environments and Metrics in Biology Education and Research

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The Environments and Metrics in Biology Education and Research (EMBER) RCN-UBE Incubator Project seeks to generate innovative measures to increase retention and diversity in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workforce by capitalizing on the unique insights and collaboration of interested educators from a multitude of relevant disciplines including biology, education, psychology and sociology. Addressing STEM student retention is crucial to avoid the projected deficit in qualified workers required for a growing STEM-based economy. The US population and workforce are becoming increasingly diverse yet a lack of diversity in STEM fields is stubbornly persistent. Nationwide efforts to boost education in STEM and address the projected deficits in the STEM workforce have had mixed results. Like other STEM disciplines, approximately half of undergraduate students that enter biology majors complete their degrees. Addressing retention and diversity will require innovative solutions that capitalize on the contributions from a variety of fields including psychology, sociology, education and STEM. The broader impacts of the project lie in forming a network that brings together experts from these fields to study the environment of the current biology STEM pipeline, and establish and assess benchmarks for inclusivity at critical points along this career trajectory. The activities of the EMBER Research Coordination Network include organizing and building a collaborating network of experts by hosting a workshop, developing a website, publishing insights generated in the workshop session, and drafting a full Research Coordination Network-Undergraduate Biology Education proposal. The focus of the project will be on retention in biology degree programs but new metrics and paradigms developed by EMBER collaborators are expected to be broadly applicable to other STEM disciplines and to STEM-based businesses.This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR), Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action http://visionandchange/finalreport/. This project is also co-funded by the Division of Human Resources Development (HBCU UP) in the EHR directorate.