BPE Track 3 Inclusive Mentoring Hub: Raices Institute for Transformative Advocacy (RITA)

该奖项全部或部分由《2021年美国救援计划法案》（公法117-2）资助。这个NSF-BPE轨道3：包容性指导中心项目，称为Raíces变革倡导研究所（RITA），将为工程队伍（兼职、兼职和非终身教职）提供装备，他们是黑人、土著、各种交叉身份的有色人种（BIPOCx），形成他们自己的变革基层倡导策略，以在他们雇用的学术机构中实现晋升途径和工作条件的平等。项目目标围绕：发展真正的导师/学员关系，学习/发展变革性的个人/集体宣传计划，以及提高对BIPOCx工程学院的晋升和/或工作条件的认识。由于对临时教师的关注不足，这一群体严重缺乏研究和支持。仅在美国，约有150万名教师受雇于高等教育，其中超过46%是偶然的，大多数由边缘化群体组成，这就错失了扩大参与的机会。为了扩大参与，我们的国家需要利用一个多样化和包容性的科学和工程企业来确保经济、国家安全和未来的就业机会。这个项目满足了这个国家的各个方面的需要。临时教师通常负责基础本科课程和大班授课，间接影响学生的教育体验。然而，不稳定和非永久性的临时劳动力的持续压力，以及有限的专业发展、晋升机会和福利，对高等教育产生了负面影响。文献表明，临时教师很难对学生实施基于证据的教学和指导，因为他们要么在多个机构中同时学习多个课程，以“维持收支平衡”，要么在几乎没有支持的情况下承担多个服务责任，以充分帮助学生。RITA是早期研究工程专业临时教师的现实和情况的研究之一，旨在为这些教师提供知识，为机构行动提供建议和策略，并为这些教师提供公平的工作条件。这个项目将进一步使许多参加这些偶然由教师主导的课程的工科本科生受益。RITA将开发一个由基层发起的、产生知识的、包容性的指导中心，在那里，从BIPOCx工程学院获得的第一手经验信息将与他们机构的关键决策者战略性地共享。虽然不是所有的途径都会导致晋升，但我们认为，所有临时教员都需要更好的工作条件。该项目是佛罗里达大学（西班牙裔新兴机构）、弗吉尼亚理工大学（白人占主导地位的机构）和莫尔豪斯学院（历史上的黑人学院和大学）之间的合作项目。这些机构将创造一系列专业发展和指导机会，以协助两批临时工程学院（第一阶段- 12名教师和第二阶段- 12名教师）与导师、评估人员和专业发展专家一起制定个人和集体宣传计划。通过一种被称为参与式行动研究（PAR）的实施研究方法，RITA要回答的关键研究问题是：如何在基层指导BIPOCx工程方面的临时教师，以实现实现晋升和/或公平工作条件的变革性宣传计划？PAR将需要BIPOCx特遣队教师及其导师之间的一系列协作规划、行动和反思活动，以便在安全的空间和环境中设计和制定宣传计划。日志，日志，和其他反射材料将收集和分析使用现象启发的方法。编码和去标识化的信息将产生多种实践、建议和策略，这些信息将被整合到一个在线存储库中，并通过播客共享，以便广泛传播。这项工作将显著：(1)告知未充分研究的奖学金如何支持这些工程方面的临时教员；(2)通过提高对BIPOCx工程专业临时教师的晋升和/或工作条件的认识，为改变这些教师的轨迹奠定行动议程的基础。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).This NSF-BPE Track 3: Inclusive Mentoring Hub project, called Raíces Institute for Transformative Advocacy (RITA) will equip engineering contingent faculty (adjuncts, part-timers, and non-tenure track), who are Black, Indigenous, People of Color of all intersecting identities (BIPOCx), to form their own transformative grassroots advocacy strategies for attaining equity in promotion pathways and working conditions at their hiring academic institutions. Project objectives center around: developing authentic mentor/mentee relationships, learning/developing transformative individual/collective advocacy plans, and raising awareness for the promotion and/or working conditions of BIPOCx contingent faculty in engineering. Due to the scant attention paid to contingent faculty, this population is severely understudied and undersupported. In the United States alone, there are ~1.5 million faculty employed in higher education out of which over 46% are contingent, the majority composed of marginalized groups, creating a missed opportunity to broaden participation. To broaden participation, our nation needs to leverage a diverse and inclusive science and engineering enterprise to secure economic, national security, and jobs of the future. This project attends to all aspects of this national need. Contingent faculty typically serve fundamental undergraduate courses and large class sizes, indirectly impacting the educational experience of students. Yet, continual stresses of an unstable and non-permanent contingent workforce with limited professional development, promotion opportunities, and benefits, negatively affects higher education. Literature suggests that contingent faculty struggle with implementing evidence-based teaching and mentoring to students because they are either juggling multiple courses in multiple institutions to ‘make ends meet’ or handle multiple service responsibilities with little-to-no support to assist students fully. RITA serves as one of the early studies into the realities and circumstances of contingent faculty in engineering with the aim to generate knowledge, provide recommendations and strategies for institutional action to support, and provide equitable working conditions for these faculty. This project will, by extension benefit numerous undergraduate engineering students who are enrolled in many of these contingent faculty-led courses.RITA will develop a grassroots-initiated, knowledge-generating, inclusive mentoring hub where first-hand, experiential information acquired from the BIPOCx contingent faculty in engineering will be strategically shared with key decision-makers at their institutions. While not all paths lead to promotion, we argue that all contingent faculty need better working conditions. This project is a partnership between the University of Florida (a Hispanic-Emerging Institution), Virginia Tech (a Predominantly White Institution), and Morehouse College (a Historically Black College and University). These institutions will create a series of professional development and mentoring opportunities to assist two cohorts of contingent engineering faculty (Phase 1- 12 faculty and Phase 2- 12 faculty) to create individual and collective advocacy plans alongside a repertoire of mentors, evaluators, and professional development experts. Through an implementation research methodology called participatory action research (PAR), RITA’s key research question to be answered is: How can BIPOCx contingent faculty in engineering be mentored, at the grassroots, towards transformative advocacy plans for attaining promotion and/or equitable working conditions? PAR will require a series of collaborative planning, acting, and reflection activities between the BIPOCx contingent faculty and their mentors to design and enact advocacy plans in a safe space and environment. Journals, logbooks, and other reflective materials will be collected and analyzed using phenomenographically-inspired approaches. The coded and de-identified information will yield multiple practices, recommendations, and strategies that will be assembled into an Online Repository and shared via podcasts for widespread dissemination. This work will significantly: (1) inform the understudied scholarship on how to support these contingent faculty in engineering; and (2) lay the foundation for an action agenda that alters the trajectory of these faculty by raising awareness for the promotion and/or working conditions of BIPOCx contingent faculty in engineering.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.