Center: Track 4 Center for Engineering Equity Throughout the Student Collegiate Experience

从历史上看，女性和有色人种在领导STEM领域的公平努力方面承担了不成比例的负担。尽管做出了这些努力，但仍有许多群体在STEM中代表性不足。在全国范围内，女性占获得学士学位的大多数，占57%，但其中只有38%的人毕业于STEM领域的学士学位。来自代表性不足群体的学生获得STEM学士学位的比例较低：西班牙裔学生和太平洋岛民为15%，美国印第安人和阿拉斯加原住民为14%，黑人学生为12%。这些统计数据往往忽略了许多服务不足和代表性不足的群体（例如，残疾人、退伍军人、认同LGBTQ+社区的人以及低收入的第一代）。科罗拉多矿业学院的工程同伴平等中心将建立一个框架，培养广泛的学生成为促进STEM平等的同伴领袖。该中心与美国国家科学基金会的项目使命一致，该使命指出，人们越来越认识到需要为21世纪创造和支持一个包容和创新的工程专业。要做到这一点，需要了解来自所有社区的工程师是如何形成的，以及如何支持他们成功获得解决当今社会面临的复杂、往往是关键问题所需的技术和专业技能。该中心将支持来自各种不同背景的学生，远远超出基于性别、种族和民族的常见和可见类别，还包括退伍军人、第一代学生和不同能力的学生。同侪领袖将来自学生经历的各个领域，包括体育、兄弟会和姐妹会生活、住房和学生俱乐部。该培训项目将培养一种广泛的共同责任感，促进公平，并将整个社区作为倡导者和盟友，通过将公平和盟友融入同龄人领导项目，改变我们的STEM文化。该中心将建立基础设施，并展示一种成功的stem范围内的同伴教育和联盟方法，为所有学生，特别是代表性不足的学生改变文化和成果。一项研究和评估计划将评估由学生同伴教育者和领导者推动的STEM文化转型的有效策略。本中心的研究将探讨知识基金（FOK）在同伴教育和盟友培训中的新颖整合，并评估这种方法是否有助于工程专业学生发展他们的专业工程身份。以FOK为中心可以帮助传统上在STEM中代表性不足和服务不足的学生发展更强的工程身份。这被认为是第一个在整个校园范围内为大学生开发正式盟友训练模式的方法。本中心将为这些最佳实践创建可重复的模型，并评估其影响、可重复性、有效性、可靠性和有效性。结果将催化STEM文化的重大变化；这是STEM急需的转变。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。

Historically, women and people of color have shouldered a disproportionate burden for leading equity efforts in STEM. Despite these efforts, there are still many groups who are underrepresented in STEM. Nationwide, women make up the majority of bachelor’s degrees awarded overall, at 57%, but only 38% of them graduate with bachelor’s degrees in a STEM field. Students coming from underrepresented groups receive bachelor’s degrees in STEM at lower rates: 15% for both Hispanic students and Pacific Islanders, 14% for American Indian and Alaska Natives and 12% for Black students. There are a number of underserved and underrepresented groups that are often invisible to these statistics (e.g., persons with disabilities, veterans, persons who identify with the LGBTQ+ community, and low-income first-generation). The Center for Engineering Peer Equity Throughout the Student Collegiate Experience at Colorado School of Mines will establish a framework that trains a wide range of students as peer leaders who promote equity in STEM. This center aligns with the NSF program mission which states that there has been a growing recognition of the need to create and support an inclusive and innovative engineering profession for the 21st Century. Doing so requires an understanding of how engineers from all communities are formed and how they can be supported to successfully obtain both the technical and professional skills needed to solve complex, often critical, problems facing today’s society. The Center will support students from a wide variety of diverse backgrounds, well beyond the usual and visible categories based on gender, race, and ethnicity, but also including veteran status, first generation students, and differently abled students. Peer leaders will come from all areas of the student experience, including athletics, fraternity and sorority life, housing, and student clubs. The training program will cultivate a broad sense of shared responsibility for fostering equity and will enroll the entire community as advocates and allies in changing our STEM culture by integrating equity and allyship into a peer-leadership program. This Center will stand up infrastructure and demonstrate a successful STEM-wide approach to peer education and allyship that changes culture and outcomes for all students, and in particular, underrepresented students. A research and assessment program will evaluate effective strategies for transformation of STEM culture driven by student peer educators and leaders. Center research will address the novel integration of funds of knowledge (FOK) in peer educator and ally training and assess whether this approach helps engineering students in the development of their professional engineering identity. Centering FOK helps students traditionally underrepresented and underserved in STEM develop stronger engineering identities. This is believed to be the first approach to develop a formal ally training model for college students at the scale of an entire campus. This Center will create reproducible models for these best practices and evaluate their impact, reproducibility, validity, reliability, and effectiveness. The outcomes would catalyze significant change in STEM culture; a much-needed transformation for 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.