Broadening Participation Research Center: Center for the Advancement of STEM Leadership

扩大参与研究中心为传统黑人学院和大学（HBCUs）提供支持，以开展扩大参与研究，并作为严格研究和广泛传播关键理论、结构和教学法的国家中心，以及有助于HBCUs成功教育非裔美国人STEM本科生的文化敏感干预措施。为了解决国家优先考虑的问题，准备足够数量的公民来满足STEM劳动力的需求，HBCU的行政和教师领导正在寻求做出战略决策，为他们的机构和国家定位，以继续扩大参与的成功。HBCU的历史记录表明，培养良好的学术环境、高期望和获得榜样的机会对于提高非裔美国人在STEM领域的参与度至关重要。然而，仔细研究就会发现，HBCU各级领导人在为实现这些成果创造条件方面发挥了重要作用。今天的HBCU领导人不仅要创造这些理想的制度条件，而且要在往往模棱两可、不稳定和复杂的现实中做到这一点。三个因素加剧了这一现实：1)HBCU领导人如何推动扩大参与的知识匮乏；2) HBCU扩大参与过程在主流本科STEM改革渠道中的应用有限；3)大量无效的领导力发展工作，无法为今天的HBCU STEM领导者服务。为此，STEM领导力促进中心（CASL）将利用其研究成果和创新，赋予STEM领导者更多的权力，以扩大参与的成功，并为主流STEM高等教育改革提供有意义的信息，以创造扩大参与所需的制度条件。维尔京群岛大学旨在成为美国首屈一指的研究中心，研究和确定扩大非裔美国人和其他代表性不足群体在STEM领域参与的学术领导力。维尔京群岛大学与其机构/组织合作伙伴——北卡罗来纳州农业和技术州立大学、菲尔丁研究生大学、美国学院和大学协会设计了一种独特的方法来扩大参与性研究。具体而言，CASL的战略方法利用了已建立的理论框架的力量，考虑了以非裔美国人遗产为基础的HBCU的复杂文化和制度背景，并研究了HBCU STEM领导者如何驾驭他们的机构，以成功地扩大参与成果。在中心的集体研究、教育和知识转移/推广议程的基础上，是创造力的系统模型，它提供了一个镜头，可以更深入地了解HBCU各种类型和级别的领导者已经并将继续使用的创造性过程，以扩大参与。在人类学原则、苏格拉底式提问和知识转移科学理论基础的指导下，这些见解将融入并传播到整个本科STEM改革社区。强有力的外部评价将监测和评估所有目标的进展情况，对中心的所有活动进行形成性和总结性评估。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。

Broadening Participation Research Centers provide support to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to conduct broadening participation research and serve as national hubs for the rigorous study and broad dissemination of the critical theories, structures and pedagogies, as well as culturally sensitive interventions that contribute to the success of HBCUs in educating African American STEM undergraduates. In an effort to address the national priority to prepare sufficient numbers of its citizens to fill STEM workforce needs, HBCU administrative and faculty leaders are seeking to make strategic decisions that will position their institutions, as well as the Nation, for continued broadening participation success. The HBCU historical record demonstrates the importance of a nurturing academic environment, high expectations, and access to role models to increase the participation of African Americans in STEM. However, closer examination reveals the significant role of HBCU leaders, at various organizational levels, in creating the conditions for achieving these outcomes. Today’s HBCU leaders are not only expected to create these ideal institutional conditions, but to do so while navigating realities that are often ambiguous, volatile, and complex. This reality is exacerbated by three factors: 1) the scarcity of knowledge about how HBCU leaders have advanced broadening participation; 2) limited adoption of HBCU broadening participation processes into mainstream undergraduate STEM reform outlets; and 3) a proliferation of ineffective leadership development efforts that do not serve today’s HBCU STEM leaders. To this end, the Center for the Advancement of STEM Leadership (CASL) will leverage its research findings and innovations to empower STEM leaders for increased broadening participation success and meaningfully informing mainstream STEM higher education reform to create institutional conditions necessary to broaden participation.Designed to be the Nation's premier research center examining and determining the kind of academic leadership that broadens the participation of African Americans and other underrepresented groups in STEM, the University of the Virgin Islands, in collaboration with its institutional/organizational partners – North Carolina Agricultural and Technological State University, Fielding Graduate University, and the American Association of Colleges and Universities – has designed a unique approach to broadening participation research. Specifically, CASL’s strategic approach engages the power of established theoretical frameworks, considers the complex cultural and institutional contexts of HBCUs grounded in African American heritage, and examines how HBCU STEM leaders navigate their institutions to achieve successful broadening participation outcomes. Undergirding the Center’s collective research, education, and knowledge transfer/outreach agendas is the systems model of creativity, which offers a lens for gaining deeper insights into the creative processes that HBCU leaders of various types and levels have and continue to use to broaden participation. Guided by principles of andragogy, Socratic questioning, and the theoretical foundations of knowledge transfer science, these insights will be integrated into and promulgated throughout the entire undergraduate STEM reform community. A robust external evaluation will monitor and assess progress on all objectives, providing both formative and summative assessment of all Center activities.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.