The AGEP Data Engineering and Science Alliance Model: Training and Resources to Advance Minority Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Researchers into Faculty Careers

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The AGEP DES Alliance Model was created in response to the NSF's Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program solicitation (NSF 16-552). The AGEP program seeks to advance knowledge about models to improve pathways to the professoriate and success of URM graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty in specific STEM disciplines and/or STEM education research fields. AGEP Alliances develop, replicate or reproduce, implement, and study, via integrated educational and social science research, AGEP Alliance Models to transform the dissertation phase of doctoral education, postdoctoral training and/or faculty advancement, and transitions within and across the pathway levels, of URMs in STEM and/or STEM education research careers. This collaborative research project brings together Rice University, Texas Southern University and the University of Houston, with the goal to develop, implement, study, evaluate, disseminate, sustain and potentially reproduce an AGEP Alliance Model to support and advance historically underrepresented minority (URM) STEM doctoral candidates and postdoctoral researchers into faculty positions in data engineering and science (DES) fields. The project employs a three-pronged approach: Professional development opportunities for faculty advisors and mentors; activities to address equity issues in institutional policies and procedures; and training for URM graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in key knowledge and skill areas that are essential to DES faculty member success: research, teaching, entrepreneurship, leadership and administration. The targeted outcomes of this AGEP DES Alliance Model project include the career advancement of URM doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars into faculty positions in DES fields; institutional changes to improve the retention of URM doctoral students, improve the equity of faculty hiring practices and remove systemic barriers to URM faculty and postdoctoral scholar success; and interest by other universities and colleges to reproduce the AGEP DES Alliance Model or specific interventions.As the nation addresses a STEM achievement gap between URM and non-URM undergraduate and graduate students, our universities and colleges struggle to recruit, retain and promote URM STEM faculty who serve as role models and academic leaders for URM students to learn from, work with and emulate. Recent NSF reports indicate that URM STEM associate and full professors occupy only 8% of these senior faculty positions at all four-year colleges and universities, and only about 6% of these positions at the nation's most research-intensive institutions. The AGEP DES Alliance Model has the potential to advance a model to improve the success of URM graduate students and postdoctoral researchers as they enter faculty careers. Advancing the careers of URM faculty ultimately leads to improved academic mentorship for URM undergraduate students in DES research fields. The integrated education research being conducted by the AGEP DES Alliance Model team investigates factors that help or hinder URM STEM doctoral degree candidates' persistence to degree completion and success in securing postdoctoral or faculty appointments upon graduation. The research team is also investigating ways that hiring procedures might contain bias that hinders the hiring of URM candidates. This research will provide valuable insights to advance knowledge about the higher education contexts in which URM STEM doctoral degree recipients and postdoctoral researchers compete for faculty positions.The AGEP DES Alliance Model institutions are working with a team of external evaluators who are conducting formative and summative evaluations. This AGEP Alliance also engages four boards - an AGEP DES Alliance Model Advisory Board, an institutional Executive Leadership Board, a Research Advisory Board, and an Evaluation Advisory Board - that provide feedback to the institutions and the project team, and that suggest adjustments to the project management, to the integrated research project and to the model development, implementation, testing, evaluation, dissemination, sustainability and reproduction potential. The project team is disseminating findings from research, and from their work on the AGEP DES Alliance Model's development, implementation, self-study, evaluation, dissemination, sustainability and reproduction potential, by presenting at national conferences and publishing peer-reviewed articles in professional journals. Additionally, the Alliance is creating video and on-line materials about the AGEP DES Alliance Model and about the curricula used as part of the interventions.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.