July 2020: HBCUs as a Strategic Resource to Advance Diversity in STEM
Expert Panel
HBCUs as a Strategic Resource to Advance Diversity in STEM
Description: This panel discussion will cover the latest scientific innovations at HBCUs, and explore ways to use HBCUs as a strategic resource to advance excellence and diversity in STEM.
Discussion
The Discussion related to HBCUs as a Strategic Resource to Advance Diversity in STEM is now live! Introduce yourself and let us know your interest in exploring this theme. This discussion will continue through July.Related Resources
For this report, we surveyed selected HBCUs and HBCU-adjacent school districts to help state higher education executives and nongovernmental organizations understand what drives successful teacher preparation at HBCUs. Further, the report suggests ways to use HBCUs as resources to resolve longstanding racial disparities and inequities in majority-minority school districts.
This chapter shares information on the QEM’s efforts to broaden participation in STEM fields, disparities in federal grant funding to HBCUs, the role of HBCUs in supporting Science and Engineering (S&E), drivers to HBCU grant productivity, and applying institutional theory to HBCU grant productivity.
Melissa Demetrikopoulos
Thanks for choosing two of our our projects with Morehouse College (iSTEM and iSTEM-Xe) to be included on the curated playlist for the Multiplex's July 2020 Theme of the Month, HBCUs as a Strategic Resource to Advance Diversity in STEM! I look forward to the webinar and discussion.
Kinnis Gosha
Claire Fackler
At NOAA we have several undergraduate and graduate student scholarships and fellowships (https://www.noaa.gov/education/opportunities/student-opportunities) and we are always looking for ways to best connect with advisors, mentors, etc. and HBCUs to make sure we are reaching a diverse audience with these science scholarships. Any advice?
Ann Podleski
At Harris-Stowe State University, we have a Director for Institute of Science and Mathematics, Dr. Tommie Turner (turnert@hssu.edu). She would be a good person to send information about graduate student scholarships. This is a grant funded position, so not sure what would be the best strategy at other HBCU's.
Jonathan Lewis
Jonathan Lewis
Might there be a listing of contact information for directors like Dr. Turner at other HBCUs? The STEM Student Experiences Aboard Ships (STEMSEAS, see video in 2019 offerings) project has a challenge of the sort Claire described for NOAA opportunities. We aim to sail diverse undergraduate cohorts on UNOLS vessels during transits, and the applicant pool from HBCUs is not nearly as large as we had anticipated. The project covers the costs for 5-10 seagoing experiences and the data we have collected so far reveal substantial impact on the students. We are keen to address this through dialog for lots of reasons, but on is that Geoscience is the least diverse STEM field, but geoscience problems are acute in many of our most diverse communities.
Ann Podleski
The project I talked about (related to climate geo-science) funded through our Department of Education MSEIP grant is related to plant science and urban agriculture. This has a strong data science and GIS component and is a good fit for our school. It has strong botanical and plant-phenotyping components, with imaging, optical, computational and programming, statistical, and remote sensing aspects, PIs and CoPis in the MSEIP Grant include a botanist, a mathematician with a strong statistics background, and a physicist. These same people are involved in the design and execution of a Sustainability & Urban Ecology degree program with concentrations that include computational and physical science, as well as urban agriculture. We are planning (and already doing some of this) to focus our capstone and internship courses in SUE (and sometimes in Math as well) around the fields of plant-phenotyping, and data science. The whole area of enterprise is perfect for our HBCU. Our collaborators at a university right next-door are experts in GIS, geospatial and data science. Also, the national geospatial agency in our city is expanding its collaborations with area universities because of growth in this sector and is looking to diversify its workforce. Additionally, as you stated geoscience issues of climate change adversely impact underserved minority communities in a disproportionately large manner.
Kinnis Gosha
Feel free to share any opportunities with me. I can forward to the proper channels at Morehouse.
Jonathan Lewis
Rekha sivaprasad
Harris Stowe University MSEIP Summer conference in the summer for the last 3 years gave more insight for highschool students how math, science subjects, social science and technology are connected through various lab sessions, research projects, documentary, field trips and interaction with college professors and college students. This was a great opportunity for highschool teachers to introduce and motivate cityschool sudents to STEM field.
Ann Podleski
It was challenging and very rewarding to work this year's summer program as a total virtual synchronous program. The simultaneous presence of TAs, high school students, high school teachers, and HSSU instructors and visitors (including a visit from the CDC) in common zoom sessions helped us to think of the best way to structure an effective cyber institution. We had breakout rooms, and a main room to get back together. Breakout rooms not only allowed for simultaneous instruction in different subjects but also allowed individual TAs and instructors to meet a group of students for review, and help, as well as a chance for teachers to have meetings with students from their school with specific schedules and times. The simulated environment mimicked an actual cohesive school structure (offices, common spaces, simultaneous classes in different rooms – including lab simulations, all in the same building).This will greatly benefit us (teachers and students) for fall instruction that includes effective student engagement in our courses in a virtual format.
Ann Podleski
There were several questions asked in the chat from the panel session about what can PWI's and other institutions do to build supportive relationships with HBCUs. There are research and internship opportunities funded by grants, at PWIs for HBCU students to take advantage of. Typically, ads are put out for students and students apply with a recommendation from a faculty who knows them. Based on our experience with our MSEIP grant, we found it more rewarding when faculty from our university were building collaborations with PWIs, while simultaneously building faculty-student relations through instructional and mentorship activities outside the classroom. Collaborations include faculty research and technology development workshops, and conferences. Some of these workshops and conferences had a student presence as well. Workshops soon included projects, with PWI collaborators actually asking for input from students about project questions they would like to explore. It helped build research capacity while simultaneously helping students explore research interests. Faculty and students could join in data collection for our PWI collaborators which was mutually beneficial and PWIs had instruments and tools that were often beyond our budget. We found in general that a faculty student relationship through mentorship and instructional/research activities outside the classroom also helped students make good decisions about summer research projects they wanted to pursue elsewhere, and it helped faculty at the HBCU guide students in these pursuits.
Jonathan Lewis
Celeste Brown
Hi everyone. I represent the Center of Excellence for Learning Sciences at Tennessee State University. In Learning Sciences research, its understood that culture plays a large part in how people learn. HBCUs are unique because culturally for us, the mission of educating the world about the talents of Black students is just as important as the goal of educating Black students themselves so the research that we conduct serves two purposes; 1- it highlights the achievements of minority faculty, staff and students and 2- when the research is targeted to the Black community, it helps inform society at large about the degree of disparity in our community. So we focus on intervention and creating new pathways for solving real problems such as overcoming barriers to degree completion within traditional and virtual educational environments. But we also test out cognitive theories and utilize theoretical frameworks in informal learning settings as well.
Jonathan Lewis
Sarah Krejci
Dr. Brown, we are also conducting similar work at B-CU. Using the learning science approach to education at an HBCU or any university has tremendous benefits to students' academic success. HBCUs are becoming leaders in applying learning science research to face to face and online courses. This is always an area we seek collaborations with.
Celeste Brown
Jonathan Lewis
Celeste Brown
I agree and I would be happy to collaborate in the future!
Sarah Krejci
@Claire Fackler FAMU and B-CU are apart of the NOAA CCME program. Internship and Fellowships can be shared with me to send out to the Center and to the other HBCU's in Florida. I'd be happy to provide some emails of contacts I have that you can reach out to as well. Always happy to expand our activities with NOAA!