Braiding Opportunities in Training, Advocacy, and Networking for Young Scientists (BOTANY Scientists)

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This project aims to serve the national interest by establishing practices to improve student mindset and persistence in botany. Given the importance of botany to agriculture, land and natural resource management, conservation, and mitigating climate change it is imperative that students pursing these areas have a strong understanding of botany. Given the broad scale of these issues it is important that we recruit and retain students from diverse backgrounds into the field. Therefore, this project will investigate academic, social, and research support interventions under which improved learning occurs for persons excluded because of their ethnicity or race (PEERs). Through a multifaceted approach to engage student learning, this project will build on educational practices that are demonstrably effective and extend and explore these in novel ways. These include, in part, actively working with students who have community ties, upending the commonly used pipeline model to one that encompasses the manners in which the vast majority of students approach higher education and success, and incorporating outreach to K-12 educators in botany. Additionally, strategic partnerships will be developed with native Utah nations, the Utah Native Plant Society and Zion National Park. Emerging from this project will be a model to better understand the most useful interventions to help students reach their academic and career goals in botany.This project intends to integrate six approaches to improve recruitment and retention in botany: 1) early intervention in K-12 via development and implementation of educational and outreach materials, 2) a summer bridge program to help with transition to college, 3) early introduction to research through botanical and ecological field experiences at Zion National Park, 4) peer mentorship, 5) academic training utilizing active-learning practices for teachers across Utah, and 6) appropriate self-assessment to revise and identify the best (combination of) practices. A Bayesian approach will be employed to evaluate the combination of intervention strategies in order to generate novel information on which combinations of recruitment and retention interventions lead to greater success in botany. As such, this project offers a new analytical lens that can be used to address long-standing questions on best practices for broadening participation in botany. Collectively, these approaches will help increase access to and participation in higher education for PEERs in an important area of study and will aid students more broadly in reaching a successful career in botany. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning Level 1, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.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.