NSF INCLUDES Alliance: ALRISE - Accelerate Latinx Representation In STEM Education with Institutional Intentionality and Capacity Building for Experiential Learning

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The ALRISE Alliance is developing a network of faculty, staff, administrators, and students at 2-yr and 4-yr Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) and emerging HSIs (eHSIs) to accelerate Latinx representation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. Challenges such as (1) campus environments that are not intentionally culturally-responsive to Latinx STEM students; (2) deficit mindsets of STEM educators that devalue Latinx students’ strength and resilience; (3) Latinx STEM retention and graduation rates that are significantly lower than enrollment; and (4) the underrepresentation of Latinx professionals in STEM job clusters compound broadening participation efforts. These factors place a necessity for change on institutions, educators, and employers to intentionally harness Latinx students’ assets and create a more welcoming environment that fosters reproducible success. The ALRISE Alliance provides professional development for faculty, staff and industry to serve Latinx students with intentionality through culturally-responsive undergraduate research and work-based experiential learning. Uniquely focused on the intersectionality of Latinx STEM students and experiential learning, ALRISE fills an important gap in ongoing broadening participation efforts, with its focus on culturally-responsive experiential learning in an action-oriented and data-driven environment of continuous improvement and collaboration. The Networked Improvement Community (NIC) collaborative infrastructure of the ALRISE Alliance will mobilize large-scale change through shared vision, partnerships, common goals and metrics, leadership and communication, and potential for expansion, sustainability, and scale. The ALRISE backbone organization, Science Foundation Arizona Center for STEM at Arizona State University, provides leadership and communications structures to connect and collaborate amongst four Regional Hubs that coordinate a total of 26 HSI/eHSI institutional members and their STEM Planning educator teams. Partner subgroups defined by professional expertise in experiential learning and intentionality, undergraduate research, work-based experiences and advocacy and policy will provide services for assessing and developing intentionality across the Alliance. A continuous improvement cycle will be used to effect change locally while also improving the ALRISE Alliance and processes. Quantitative and qualitative data will be collected and analyzed at the student, institutional, and experiential learning program levels to provide evidence for practices supported and disseminated by ALRISE. Triangulated findings from multi-level mixed methods research, and outcomes from formative and summative evaluation, will advance knowledge on culturally responsive practices, HSI intentionality, and as-yet undiscovered common challenges and synergies within and across Alliance members. Instilling intentionality to serve Latinx students at the institutional level, and through asset-oriented educator professional development and coaching, will build capacity to effect change at each member institution. This capacity-building approach will not only serve the Latinx students actively engaged in experiential learning programs but also retain the knowledge and programs to impact a far greater number of students in the future.The ALRISE Alliance is funded by NSF Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES), a comprehensive national initiative to enhance U.S. leadership in discoveries and innovations by focusing on diversity, inclusion and broadening participation in STEM at scale and the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (NSF IUSE): Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) program, which supports efforts to enhance the quality of undergraduate STEM education and to increase the recruitment, retention, and graduation rates of students pursuing associate's or baccalaureate degrees in STEM.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.