Enhancing Disciplinary Learning to Diversify Biology Degree Pathways and Career Pursuits in the Ecological and Evolutionary Sciences

在改进的本科生STEM教育：拉美裔服务机构(HSI)计划的支持下，这个Track 2项目旨在通过整合课程、系和机构层面的循证改革，使生态学和进化生物学学位的参与和职业追求多样化。该项目基于这样一种观点，即纪律学习是学生申报的专业、升入高级课程、获得学位和参与职业生涯的核心组成部分，是一个关键但未得到充分研究和充分利用的公平指标。因此，学科学习是使STEM学科多样化的潜在基础战略。因此，对于教师、部门和机构来说，监控学习对于经验地确定本科生的课程工作是促进学科纳入还是排除是至关重要的。利用一个新的公平框架，该项目综合了各种措施，以捕捉学习的关键方面，并使利益攸关方能够产生有意义的指标，以衡量实现公平目标的进展情况。这个新的指标有可能填补本科院校基于证据的决策的空白。在课堂规模上，该项目将通过(I)通过与文化相关的课程的交织来扩展最近出版的主动学习和以错误概念为重点的教学方法，(Ii)将本科教学助理计划整合到生物课程中，以最大限度地提高学生的参与度和包容性，以及(Iii)开发与生态与进化相关的职业模块，将学科概念与现实世界的应用联系起来，从而开始改革门户生物学课程。由于门户生物学只是学生学术之旅的开始，这个项目通过在教授下一级生态学和进化论课程的教职员工中建立一个教员学习社区，将其扩展到系级规模。这一步将为将改革扩大到学位途径的下一系列课程奠定基础。在机构规模上，该项目加强了与主要机构中心的新伙伴关系，以开发和部署关于生态和进化职业生涯的模块，并在学生大学经历的早期直接进入课堂。这项工作的方法、材料和结果将被出版，并与其他拉美裔和少数族裔服务机构广泛分享。HSI计划旨在加强本科生STEM教育，扩大STEM的参与，并建设HSIS的能力。考虑到HSIS的不同性质和背景，实现这些目标需要创新的方法来激励机构和社区的变革，并促进基础研究(I)关于参与式学生学习，(Ii)关于如何有效地多样化和增加对STEM的参与，以及(Iii)提高我们对如何在HSI建设机构能力的理解。这一奖项反映了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。

With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) Program, this Track 2 project aims to diversify Ecology and Evolutionary Biology degree participation and career pursuits by integrating evidence-based reforms at the course, departmental, and institutional levels. This project is grounded in the perspective that disciplinary learning, which is a central component to a student’s declared major, their advancement to upper-division coursework, degree attainment and career participation, is a critical yet understudied and underutilized equity indicator. As such, disciplinary learning is a potentially foundational strategy for diversifying STEM disciplines. Therefore, monitoring learning is essential for instructors, departments, and institutions to empirically determine whether undergraduate coursework is fostering disciplinary inclusion or exclusion. Using a novel equity framework, this project integrates measures that capture critical facets of learning and allow stakeholders to generate meaningful indicators of progress towards equity goals. This new indicator has the potential to fill a gap in evidence-based decision making at undergraduate institutions.At the classroom scale, the project will begin reform efforts in gateway biology courses by (i) expanding a recently published active-learning and misconception-focused instructional approach through the interweaving of culturally-relevant curricula, (ii) integrating an Undergraduate Teaching Assistant program into biology classes to maximize student engagement and inclusion, and (iii) developing Ecology and Evolution-related career modules to link disciplinary concepts to real-world applications. Because gateway biology is only the beginning of a student’s academic journey, this project extends to the departmental scale by establishing a faculty learning community among faculty who teach the next level of ecology and evolution courses. This step will lay the groundwork to expand reforms into the next sequence of courses in the degree pathway. At the institutional scale, the project strengthens nascent partnerships with key institutional centers to develop and deploy modules about ecology and evolution careers directly into the classroom early in a student’s college experience. The approaches, materials, and results emerging from this work will be published and shared broadly with other Hispanic and Minority Serving Institutions. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education, broaden participation in STEM, and build capacity at HSIs. Achieving these aims, given the diverse nature and context of the HSIs, requires innovative approaches that incentivize institutional and community transformation and promote fundamental research (i) on engaged student learning, (ii) about what it takes to diversify and increase participation in STEM effectively, and (iii) that improves our understanding of how to build institutional capacity at HSIs are supported by this program.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.