Collaborative Research: BPE Track 3 Minority Mentoring for Advancement and Participation in Engineering Hub

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This NSF Track 3 Broadening Participation in Engineering (BPE) project aims to address the resilience, identity formation, and academic outcomes of minorities in engineering through the "Minority Mentoring for Advancement and Participation (Minority-MAP) in Engineering Hub’s infrastructure, resources sharing, community engagement, and evidence-based inclusive mentoring. The hub will leverage an all-access, open-platform called the Inclusive Mentoring to Advance Participation Hub (iMAP Hub) to dynamically foster inclusive mentoring through a community of practice in engineering. The project’s catalytic activities are expected to democratize minority representation in engineering through the hub’s data and technology ecosystem that will connect student mentees with faculty and industry mentors and employers in the Minority-MAP network. The iMAP Hub will positively impact the completion rates of students pursuing engineering degrees and improve the career preparation of engineering students at participating minority serving institutions, thereby enhancing the diversity of the US engineering workforce. The project will employ the interest of HBCUs, leading companies, and non-profit organizations to collaboratively transform the human capital via inclusive mentoring, thus creating a culture change towards an impactful, resilient career. This effort aligns with the NSF Broadening Participation in Engineering’s mission to strengthen the future U.S. engineering workforce.This project will be led by Center for Engineering Excellence at Morgan State University, in collaboration with North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Jackson State University, STEMconnector, and Ziker Research. The goals of the project are to: 1) recruit 100 student mentees and faculty or industry mentor pairs by 2024, to test and refine an innovative mentoring platform called Inclusive Mentoring to Advance Participation Hub (iMAP Hub); 2) curate, develop, and expand inclusive mentoring resources and activities to include 300 student mentees at 10 minority-serving institutions by 2027; 3) develop and implement a framework to identify gaps in the hub’s inclusive mentoring practices through formative and summative evaluations; 4) provide professional development to support implementing culturally responsive, inclusive mentoring practices at annual Summer Institutes, and develop and refine online student, faculty, and industry training resources for evidence-based inclusive mentoring practices delivered through an online repository that is integrated into the iMAP Hub platform by 2024; and 5) share findings and presentations during annual Summer Institutes, STEMconnector's Annual STEM Summits, Million Women Mentors Summits, and annual Post-Secondary Innovation Labs as a strategy for growing the network and expanding iMAP Hub services. Proposed research efforts will investigate the aspects of mentoring that promote the development of an engineering identity and have the potential to improve the persistence and retention of underrepresented groups in engineering. Methods will include data collection from multiple sources, including data analytics using iMAP usage data, survey reports from all participants, and observations of mentor-mentee activities. Outcomes related to changes in engineering identity, career awareness, and professional skills will be measured through pre- and post-surveys informed by the Engineer Identity Survey (EIS), interview protocols, and observations. The iMAP Hub’s resources and research findings will be disseminated through a dedicated website, conference presentations, workshops, newsletters, publications, and social media. The project team will scale the network of mentors and mentees by working with STEMconnector's membership which includes over 100 industry partners and MSI universities.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.