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

扩大参与研究中心支持历史上一直是黑人的学院和大学(HBCU)开展更广泛的参与研究，并成为严格研究和广泛传播关键理论、结构和教学方法以及对文化敏感的干预措施的国家中心，有助于HBCU成功地培养非裔美国STEM本科生。为了应对国家的优先事项，让足够数量的公民准备好满足STEM劳动力需求，HBCU的行政和教职员工领导正在寻求做出战略决策，使他们的机构以及国家为继续扩大参与成功定位。HBCU的历史记录表明，培养学术环境、高期望和获得榜样的重要性，以增加非裔美国人在STEM的参与。然而，更仔细的审查表明，HBCU领导人在不同组织级别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领导人不仅应该创造这些理想的制度条件，而且要在这样做的同时驾驭往往模棱两可、不稳定和复杂的现实。三个因素加剧了这一现实：1)对HBCU领导人如何推进STEM改革缺乏了解；2)对HBCU的采用有限，将参与程序扩大到主流本科生STEM改革渠道；3)无效的领导力培养努力激增，无法服务于今天的HBCU STEM领导人。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，并有意义地为主流STEM高等教育改革创造扩大参与所需的体制条件。旨在审查和确定哪种学术领导力可以扩大非裔美国人和其他未被充分代表的群体参与STEM，维尔京群岛大学与其机构/组织伙伴--北卡罗来纳农业技术州立大学、菲尔丁研究生院和美国学院和大学协会--合作，设计了一种扩大参与研究的独特方法。具体地说，CASL的战略方法利用了既定理论框架的力量，考虑了以非裔美国人传统为基础的HBCU复杂的文化和体制背景，并审查了HBCU STEM领导人如何驾驭其机构以实现成功的扩大参与成果。该中心的集体研究、教育和知识转移/推广议程的基础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人已经并将继续用来扩大参与的创造性过程。在教育学、苏格拉底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生STEM改革社区并在整个社区中传播。强有力的外部评估将监控和评估所有目标的进展，对所有中心活动提供形成性和终结性评估。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.