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

扩大参与研究中心提供支持历史上黑人学院和大学（HBCU）进行扩大参与研究，并作为严格研究和广泛传播批判理论，结构和方法的国家中心，以及有助于HBCU在教育非洲裔美国人STEM本科生方面取得成功的文化敏感干预措施。为了解决国家优先事项，准备足够数量的公民来满足STEM劳动力需求，HBCU行政和教师领导人正在寻求做出战略决策，以定位他们的机构，以及国家，继续扩大参与成功。HBCU的历史记录表明了培育学术环境，高期望和获得榜样的重要性，以增加非裔美国人在干的参与。然而，更仔细的研究揭示了HBCU领导人在各个组织层面在为实现这些成果创造条件方面的重要作用。今天的HBCU领导人不仅要创造这些理想的制度条件，而且要在处理往往模棱两可、动荡和复杂的现实的同时做到这一点。这一现实加剧了三个因素：1）知识的稀缺性HBCU领导人如何先进扩大参与; 2）有限采用HBCU扩大参与过程到主流本科STEM改革网点;和3）无效的领导力发展工作的扩散，不服务于今天的HBCU STEM领导人.为此，STEM领导力促进中心（Center for the Advancement of STEM Leadership，CASL）将利用其研究成果和创新，使STEM领导者能够提高参与成功率，并有意义地为主流STEM高等教育改革提供信息，以创造扩大参与所需的制度条件。旨在成为美国首屈一指的研究中心，研究和确定扩大参与的学术领导力。为了帮助非洲裔美国人和其他在科学、技术、工程和数学领域代表性不足的群体，维尔京群岛大学与其机构/组织伙伴--北卡罗来纳州农业和技术州立大学、菲尔丁研究生大学和美国学院和大学协会--合作，设计了一种独特的方法来扩大参与研究。具体来说，CASL的战略方法涉及既定的理论框架的力量，认为HBCU的复杂的文化和体制背景扎根于非裔美国人的遗产，并探讨HBCU STEM领导人如何导航他们的机构，以实现成功的扩大参与成果。支撑该中心的集体研究，教育和知识转移/推广议程是创造力的系统模型，它提供了一个透镜，用于更深入地了解各种类型和级别的HBCU领导人的创造性过程，并继续使用以扩大参与。在成人教育学、苏格拉底式提问和知识转移科学的理论基础的指导下，这些见解将被整合到整个本科STEM改革社区并在其中传播。一个强有力的外部评估将监测和评估所有目标的进展情况，为中心的所有活动提供形成性和总结性评估。该奖项反映了NSF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.