HSI Pilot Project: Including others in the teaching and practice of STEM disciplines

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With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 1 project aims to promote systemic change in the teaching of STEM disciplines in order to close the gap between learners, educators, and the pedagogical material used in the classroom. The expected outcomes of this work are to increase faculty expertise through training in anti-racist and inclusive approaches that promote diversity in the STEM classroom, to have STEM students engaged with the faculty-created culturally affirming and anti-racist materials and activities, and to share the newly created resources in an open resource repository to support STEM faculty across the university and improve their pedagogical skills regarding culturally affirming teaching practices. This project proposes to promote institutional transformation in the teaching of STEM disciplines that better represents the student populations at Hispanic Serving Institutions by applying this approach to seven STEM courses at CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The first objective of the project is to conduct an incentivized 1-year STEM faculty seminar in which faculty will learn about anti-racist and inclusive pedagogies, as well as discuss their role and determine actions to undertake to diversify the students’ voices in the classroom. The seminar outcomes include classroom materials and activities aligned with the course content and developed with a culturally affirming, anti-racist lens. The second objective is the implementation of these materials and activities in the first and second year STEM courses to effect change in their epistemological perspectives to reflect the diversity of the classrooms and to empower the students. The third objective is to carry out a robust evaluation that assesses the impact of these activities in relation to students’ sense of belonging to STEM and science identity. The fourth and final objective is to develop an open-resource platform that will house the created resources and tools to make them accessible to other STEM faculty members. Ultimately, this will promote widespread curricular change, enhance faculty engagement and equitable student outcomes. The research plan will include a mixed-method approach to analyze students’ experiences and outcomes after participating in this program. The project seeks to generate new knowledge about inclusive pedagogical practices to increase the connection of students with classroom materials, and shed light into new strategies to impact students’ persistence in STEM majors that promote the retention of marginalized and historically underrepresented minority students in STEM. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims.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.