HSI Conference: Pathways for Hispanic Students in STEM

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) Dear Colleague Letter NSF 17-092: Improving Undergraduate STEM Education in Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) calls for projects to support conferences that will identify the most critical challenges and opportunities regarding undergraduate science, technology engineering and mathematics (STEM) education at HSIs, and potential actionable solutions that fall within NSF's mission, policies, and practices. In keeping with this call, the principal investigators of this project observe that while campus faculty and administrators work with students in their classrooms and offices every day, they are rarely presented with data about overall student success by demographic or preparation level. This group is also rarely asked to collaborate to build recommendations for actionable solutions. The proposed conference aims to address both these oversights by creating an expert community to address Educational Pathways for Hispanic Students in STEM. Hispanic students, whether attending a 2-year or 4-year college, experience a high rate of derailment from pursuing STEM degrees. Impediments tend to arise at transition points, namely from high school to college, in early college, and from community college to 4-year university. The conference focuses on the critical transitions that students must negotiate from high school to successful graduation with a Bachelor's degree. These issues are relevant to Hispanic students across the nation, and more broadly, to other groups of underrepresented students who face significant challenges in pursuing their higher education goals. Conference attendees will be primarily and faculty and administrators from local high schools and 2-year and 4-year colleges, emphasizing those that serve Hispanic students. The conference's goals are twofold: to educate key faculty and administrators about known research regarding Hispanic students in STEM, and to produce a set of recommendations to help NSF identify critical challenges, best practices, and potential actionable solutions for undergraduate STEM education. The University of California, Irvine (UCI) proposes to convene scholars from Southern California for a three-day conference in response to NSF's call for identification of critical challenges and opportunities in undergraduate STEM education at two-year and four-year Hispanic-serving institutions. The conference's ultimate purpose is to advance an important national goal: improving retention and graduation rates for Hispanic students in STEM in higher education institutions nationwide. The conference will be interactive and is intentionally designed to be both a learning experience and data collection exercise. Primary topics are: 1) Moving Students from High School to College (2 or 4-year) with a Declared STEM Major; 2) Initial Challenges for STEM College Students (2 and 4-year); 3) Challenges Specific to Community College Students; 4) Transfer Students and Their Challenges; and 5) Data and Analytics: Challenges and Promise. After hearing from a number of experts, the conference attendees will create working groups that will gather and organize evidence-based solutions that may be supported by NSF. Conference proceedings will be written summarizing information delivered at the conference. Recommendations for designing an HSI program at NSF will be developed by the group and widely disseminated. Assessment will be used to gather information for the conference proceedings.