RCN-UBE Incubator: Equity and Diversity in Undergraduate STEM (EDU-STEM)

本科STEM的公平和多样性（EDU-STEM）是一个协作网络，将实施基于证据的方法，以消除科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）领域的公平障碍，最初的重点是生命科学。具体来说，EDU-STEM合作伙伴将把从心理学中吸取的经验教训应用到大规模招生的入门课程中，这些课程通常针对历史上代表性不足的学生，如女性和代表性不足的少数民族（urm）。这些学生面临着与学术能力无关的挑战，比如歧视、被排斥的感觉和冒名顶替综合症，这些都是导致成绩不佳和高流失率的原因。EDU-STEM网络将首先通过汇集来自不同机构（大型公立大学、社区学院、常春藤盟校和少数族裔服务机构）的教授科学入门课程的个人来评估女性和URM学生的地位。通过调查三个广泛的指标，将导致表现或代表性差距的潜在机制在不同的人口统计学中进行量化：学业成绩、全班参与和情感指标（即那些与表现结果不直接相关的指标，如信心、兴趣和包容感）。通过让来自不同机构的一系列教育工作者参与进来，这个网络将在通常不从事教育研究或循证教学技术的教师群体中建立公平意识。该网络旨在通过经验记录影响STEM参与的因素，以扩大STEM学习的机构能力，最终为代表整个国家的STEM劳动力做出贡献。具体而言，EDU-STEM旨在：(1)揭示STEM学科中女性和少数民族文化氛围的地区差异（如果存在的话）；(2)建立一个教师社区，使其能够在其所在机构和全国范围内担任包容性教学和评估的领导者；(3)增加美国教师的数量，使他们熟悉STEM中存在的障碍，并能够应用基于证据的技术来克服已知的障碍。参与者将参加“STEM中的包容性”研讨会，包括讨论课堂参与、表现和情感指标（如对刻板印象威胁的易感性）的比较数据。网络数据将建立性别和种族之间差距（如果存在的话）的基准措施，并发现任何区域或体制差异。初步调查结果将检验区域因素（如性别差距指数，或特定少数群体的百分比代表）导致STEM参与差异、对刻板印象威胁的易感性和包容性的假设。这将为利用这些数据在网络合作伙伴的家庭机构规划现场干预奠定基础，从而使科学教师更多地参与科学教学和基于学科的教育研究。该项目由生物基础设施司生物科学理事会（BIO）和教育和人力资源理事会（EHR）本科教育司共同资助，作为其应对《本科生物学教育的愿景与变革：行动呼吁》（http://visionandchange.org/finalreport/）所提出的挑战的努力的一部分。

Equity and Diversity in Undergraduate STEM (EDU-STEM) is a collaborative network that will implement evidence-based approaches to counter barriers to equity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, with an initial focus on the life sciences. Specifically, EDU-STEM partners will apply lessons learned from psychology to large-enrollment, introductory courses that often select against historically underrepresented students such as women, and underrepresented minorities (URMs). Such students face challenges unrelated to academic competency, such as discrimination, feelings of exclusion, and imposter syndrome that contribute to well-documented underperformance and high attrition rates. The EDU-STEM network will first assess the status of women and URM students by bringing together individuals that teach introductory science courses from a diverse range of institutions: large public universities, community colleges, Ivy League schools, and minority-serving institutions. The underlying mechanisms that lead to gaps in performance or representation will be quantified among different demographics by investigating three broad metrics: academic performance, whole-class participation, and affective measures (i.e., those that do not directly relate to performance outcomes, such as confidence, interest, and feelings of inclusion). By involving a range of educators from a diverse set of institutions, this network will establish tendrils of equity awareness among groups of faculty not typically engaged in educational research or evidence-based teaching techniques. The network seeks to empirically document factors that affect participation in STEM in order to broaden institutional capacity for STEM learning, ultimately contributing to a STEM workforce that is representative of the nation as a whole.Specifically, EDU-STEM aims to: (1) reveal regional differences, if they exist, in the cultural climate for women and minorities in STEM disciplines; (2) develop a community of faculty that can serve as leaders--at their home institutions and nationally--in inclusive teaching and assessment; and (3) increase the number of faculty in the US that are familiar with barriers to inclusion in STEM, and can apply evidenced-based techniques for countering known barriers. Participants will engage in an "Inclusivity in STEM" workshop, including a discussion of comparative data on in-class participation, performance, and affective metrics such as susceptibility to stereotype threat. Network data will establish baseline measures of disparities between genders and ethnicities, if they exist, and detect any regional or institutional differences. Initial findings will test the hypothesis that regional factors (such as the Gender Gap Index, or the percentage representation of a given minority group), contribute to disparities in participation, susceptibility to stereotype threat, and sense of inclusion in STEM. This will set the stage for leveraging these data to plan on-site interventions at the home institutions of network partners, leading to greater engagement of science faculty with scientific teaching and discipline-based educational research. This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO), Division of Biological Infrastructure, and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR), Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action (http://visionandchange.org/finalreport/).