Louis Stokes Regional Center of Excellence: Center for Promotion of Academic Careers through Motivational Opportunities to Develop Emerging Leaders in STEM (LS-PAC MODELS)

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The Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program assists universities and colleges in diversifying the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce through their efforts at significantly increasing the numbers of students from historically underrepresented minority populations (African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, American Indians or Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians or Other Pacific Islanders) to successfully complete high quality degree programs in STEM. Louis Stokes Regional Centers of Excellence in Broadening Participation (LSRCE) are designed to serve as regional testbeds for outreach, knowledge-generating and diffusion activities or other activities that contribute to successful practices in STEM education.Developing a stronger, more diverse STEM workforce is a clear national need to promote economic prosperity and maintain global leadership in science. Work toward that end is in accord with the National Science Foundation's mission to promote the progress of science. To address this need, the Louisiana State University (LSU) Office of Strategic Initiatives proposes a Louis Stokes Regional Center of Excellence in Broadening Participation, entitled "LSRCE: Center for Promotion of Academic Careers through Motivational Opportunities to Develop Emerging Leaders in STEM (LS-PAC MODELS)." Specifically, the vision for this Center is to create a successful, data-driven model for increasing underrepresented minority (URM) preparation for academic careers (i.e., an effective model with well-tested strategies). This Center will cement an alliance between LSU and IBM, with IBM assisting in data management, organization, and strategizing focused data collection to aid in early promotion of best practices. The goals of this alliance are to (1) increase the quality and quantity of URM STEM students pursuing doctoral degrees within the LSAMP collaborating institutions through mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students; (2) increase retention to graduation rate of underrepresented STEM PhD students; (3) develop a national model and platform for increasing the number of URM minority STEM PhD recipients, and (4) develop a model for increasing placement of URM PhDs into the professoriate and to minimize attrition once they get there. With data and use of IBM consulting and software, the Center's social science researchers will examine the strength of social network connections and how those strengthen URM students' learning experiences, and whether corresponding increases in career resources occur. This will contribute scientific knowledge to the theoretical understanding of how social capital in the form of mentorship can be acquired in computer-supported collaborative learning environments. Data gathered with assistance from IBM will also allow members of the alliance to examine cognitive and personality characteristics of URM students that predict success along with the development of intellectual and intra- and interpersonal skills and wellbeing. The aggregate of these data will be used for iterative processes during the creation of the mentoring platform in collaboration with IBM. Ultimately, an interactive App and website will be created, manuscripts will be published in top-quality journals, and a book of best practices in mentoring URMs to the professoriate will be developed.This award is co-funded by NSF INCLUDES which focuses on catalyzing the STEM enterprise to collaboratively work for inclusive change.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.