Very nice video! I liked your idea of the student "dreaming" of their success. A very powerful analogy. How have your used your research findings to help African-American high school students find their way to HBCUs?

I would like to hear your thoughts about our video on the Cal-Bridge program, which is working to help underrepresented students achieve PhDs in physics and astronomy, and tell us what you think: http://stemforall2018.videohall.com/p/1277

I agree that this video offers a very nice way to help students imagine themselves in an HBCU environment, experiencing a problem that many students encounter with their progress in introductory STEM courses, and ways that the institution provides for students to overcome these obstacles.

I'm hoping that you can provide a link to the survey instrument so that others at HBCUS and elsewhere can more easily access it. Could you also provide some additional information about your survey methods. For example:

- How were respondents selected? Was this through some process of randomly identifying people? Or did respondents self select?

- What was the sample size for each group of respondents? If the respondents didn't self-select, what was the response rate in each group to your original request to participate?

- Since HBCUs range from Research 1 universities to comprehensive universities and smaller institutions, could you please provide some additional information about the kinds of HBCUs from which you received responses? Were these different kinds of institutions well-represented in the responses or were the preponderance of them from one type of institution?

One other thing that came to mind while watching this video: when the student received an "F" on his first exam, his professor referred him to a mentor. As he was ready to graduate the mentor congratulated him for his persistence and in working with his professors. I think that people who view this video would benefit from knowing more about the models of interaction and connectedness among students, faculty, and mentors at HBCUs, since these institutions often emphasize these connections to a greater extent than at other types of institutions of higher education.

Thank you again for submitting this entry!

Thank you so much for your feedback. I appreciate your questions and insight into the HBCU experience. 

Data were collected from students (Group 1) and faculty (Group 2) from four HBCUs nationwide using surveys. The surveys were distributed online, in-person, or using both approaches. Hard copies were printed and disseminated to students in STEM major classes, student organization meetings, and at the university student center. Students/faculty were also emailed a link to the survey for online completion. These efforts resulted in a total of 648 participants across Group 1 (n = 579) and Group 2 (n = 69).

The participating HBCUs were public, coed and tier 2. 

We hope to collect more data from other HBCUs across the country. 

Thank you again for watching and your comments! 

Thank you for sharing your study on the experience of STEM majors at HBCUs. What are your plans to address the challenges you have identified to increase student success?

Does the study assess current models/resources offered to students facing barriers?

Excellent video. My question is similar to Danielle's. The results of your study seem to indicate that students run into difficulty pretty early on in their academic STEM careers. Given inadequate high school preparation was found to be a major issue, do you think interventions should be designed to assist students at the high school level, college, or both? 

Hi Shabnam!

Very fun and creative video to help give context to the results of your research for students at HBCUs!  I am curious as to your thoughts on how well these results translate to non-HBCUs? 

To create a diverse, equitable, and inclusive system of higher education, I am wondering how information like that obtained from your grant can be useful to projects like ours on providing academic engineers with information for changing their department cultures (regardless of institution type--HBCU or otherwise):  http://videohall.com/p/1295.  Your thoughts?

Warmly, Gretal

Very nice video and creative approach to studying student success in STEM at HBCUs. I am curious as to whether your survey instrument captures other interventions in addition to mentoring (i.e. math help centers, writing centers, study halls)?

Do you have additional details in regard to "inadequate high school STEM preparation"? In particular, I'm curious to know if this means (1) lack of access to high-level coursework, (2) lack of access to particular subjects, and/or (3) issues of teacher quality. I'm also curious to know if you know anything about personal traits of high school STEM teachers that might influence student engagement...I'm not sure if you would have looked at the race/gender of their high school teacher and correlations with students of color and young women in particular in pursuing STEM fields?

I ask because I'm currently putting together a project to support STEM teachers at the high school level who in turn support students of color. In physics, we struggle with two areas that we think might have some influence on supporting the enrollment of students of diverse backgrounds: (1) there is significant underrepresentation of people of color in high school STEM teaching (or at least this is very much the case for physics), and (2) across the board regardless of background, new teachers of physics are often underprepared because they are out-of-field, and this issue disproportionately impact students of color especially considering the issues of inequity of access to physics programs at the high school level. 

So, with this ind mind, I'm curious to know if you've looked "backward" -- in detail -- as well as "forward" in the experiences of STEM students of color and those factors that result in persistence.

Thanks for sharing, very interesting. Lots of implications for younger learners and how we support their STEM learning.