Building Capacity: Transforming Undergraduate Education in STEM Through Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Community Engagement

改善本科STEM教育：西班牙裔服务机构计划（HSI计划）旨在加强本科STEM教育并建立HSI的能力。HSI计划支持的项目也将产生关于如何实现这些目标的新知识。 德克萨斯大学格兰德河谷分校的这一项目将通过提高科学和数学专业本科生的保留率和毕业率来推进HSI计划的目标。 该项目计划通过提供基于文化，社区参与和区域相关研究的精心设计，高影响力的STEM课程来实现其目标。 为此，该项目将在文化相关的教学法和社区参与的奖学金方面培训STEM教师。这些教师将开发新的数学和生物学“入门”课程的第一年/早期职业生涯的学生，在双语模式提供。 该学院还将开发社区奖学金和学习的新课程，这将强调以社区为基础的STEM相关项目的有意义的参与。通过强调STEM领域更广泛的社会相关性，这些新课程将帮助一年级学生培养归属感和承诺。预计这些创新将提高学生在STEM领域的成功率，有助于满足国家增加STEM领域多样性的需求。该项目将设计和实施专业发展研讨会，以帮助教师发展包容性，文化相关的教学实践，并帮助教师实施有效的社区参与和体验式学习STEM。 这些教师将开发和教授新的介绍性核心生物学和数学课程（“网关课程”）在双语模式，以及新的第一年课程在社区奖学金和学习。通过测量学术、行为和感知收益（例如，评估前/评估后;科学动机的措施），该项目将确定这些课程对学生的归属感，自豪感和文化财富的影响，目的是确定这些特点如何与学生的表现和保留交叉。通过调查、开放式问题和焦点小组访谈，该项目还旨在衡量专业发展活动和新课程对教师社区参与意识的影响，以及对教师使用与文化相关的教学法的影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

The Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program (HSI Program) aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims. This project at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley will advance the aims of the HSI Program by increasing the retention and graduation of undergraduate students in science and mathematics. The project plans to achieve its goals by offering well-designed, high impact STEM courses that build upon culture, community engagement, and regionally-relevant research. To these ends, this project will train STEM faculty in culturally relevant pedagogy and community engaged scholarship. These faculty will then develop new mathematics and biology "gateway" courses for first year/early career students, offered in a bilingual modality. The faculty will also develop new classes in Community Engaged Scholarship and Learning, which will emphasize meaningful engagement in community-based STEM-related projects. By emphasizing the broader, societal relevance of STEM fields, these new courses will help first year students develop a sense of belonging and commitment. It is expected that these innovations will enhance students' success in STEM, helping to address a national need to increase diversity in STEM fields. This project will design and implement professional development workshops to help faculty develop inclusive, culturally relevant teaching practices, and to help faculty implement effective community engagement and experiential learning in STEM. These faculty will develop and teach new introductory core biology and math courses ("gateway courses") in a bilingual modality, as well as new first year courses in Community Engaged Scholarship and Learning. Through measures of academic, behavioral, and perceptual gains (e.g., pre/post assessments; measures of science motivation), the project will determine the impact of these courses on students' sense of belonging, pride, and cultural wealth, with the goal of defining how these characteristics intersect with student performance and retention. Using surveys, open ended questions, and focus group interviews, this project also aims to measure the impact of the professional development activities and new courses on faculty awareness of community engagement and on the faculty's use of culturally-relevant pedagogies.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.