WELCOME!

We are excited to be part of the 2020 NSF Video Showcase! We invite you to view our project video and post any questions or comments you have here.  

LSMRCE is in year 2 of a 5-year project. As part of the project activities, LSMRCE has partnered with Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) to provide underrepresented (URM) STEM majors summer internships through the Fermilab SIST program.

This was the first year in partnering with Fermilab and preliminary findings indicate increases in the growth mindset of the students to see STEM as a 'many-pathways', as well as, build the students' confidence and science identity. 

Thanks for sharing your video! How many students are typically in a cohort and how are students selected into the program?

Hi Sara - Thank you for viewing our video and for your questions!

Each year the Fermilab SIST program (that has been in existence since the 1970s) has approximately 12-15 students participate each summer. Of these students, approximately 3 students are from our partner institutions* and receive supplemental supports in the form of mentoring, research presentation opportunities, and career pathway development.

2019 was our first summer and we had 2 students in the cohort. This summer 3 students will participate in the 2020 cohort. Our goal is to have a total of 15 students from our partner schools participate over 5 years. 

*Our partner schools are institutions that do not currently receive funding from the NSF Louis Stokes Alliances but are actively working to increase URM participation in STEM on their campus. 

Thanks for sharing these stories. The two students clearly enjoyed the experience.  Do you do follow up to see how the experience impacts their choices going forward?  Do you use these students as "recruiters" for more URM students?  I'd be willing to bet that their stories would carry some weight in their communities.  What kind of evaluation of the program is done--from your perspective? from the students' perspective?  from the Lab's perspective?  What did YOU learn from your first experience with these internships?

Thank you for sharing--I enjoyed hearing from the students.

Hi Nancy - Thank you so much for the questions.

We follow the students longitudinally and remain in contact with them using regular touch points. In addition, the previous interns are required to attend the annual conference and serve as peer mentors for future cohorts. The student recruiter model is something we've not fully leveraged, but it’s something we plan to implement this year.

Our external evaluator conducts pre- and post- surveys to assess changes in science identity, self-efficacy, and sense of belonging. The surveys are administered to all SIST participants (not just those students we mentor) so we can see if there are differences between the groups. In addition, the evaluation probes for overall feedback of the program from the students. 

What we learned… two things.

• Use an LMS to communicate with the students and set expectations. The first year we conducted an in-person onboarding and offboarding with the students. Our plan between the onboarding and offboarding was to do periodic touch-base with the students via email, text, or zoom – their choice. It was not structured or organized in a centralized LMS, nor did we ‘require’ any discussions. This did not elicit a lot of interaction. This year, we have implemented a course for the interns with ‘assigned’ reflections and quick zoom check-ins to engage them in more regular conversation throughout the summer.
• Timing is everything. We scheduled the intern onboarding to be held at Fermilab the day before their first day at the laboratory. That was perfect. Students got to see the main building, have lunch in the cafeteria, and learn about the summer opportunity and expectations. However, we planned the offboarding for the day after last day, thinking we did not want to interfere with their work at the lab and the goodbyes. However, what we didn’t take into consideration is that the students would be moving out of their Fermilab housing that day and parents would be waiting to head home. Yikes!  So this year (prior to COVID-19 forcing this internship to go virtual) we planned the offboarding to occur the Monday before their last week at the lab to avoid this scheduling conflict again.

Sounds like you are learning a lot! Thanks for sharing this.

I agree with many of the comments above, including student testimonials allows for your audience to connect with this project in an authentic way. It is great to hear that your project has had such an impact on your students. I think we can all agree with the importance of introducing students to the possibilities that come with STEM careers. 

Considering the need to transition this internship onto a virtual platform, what challenges have you faced thus far regarding the transition, and how are you planning to address them?

Hi Ivory - Thank you for the comments. Yes, regarding virtual - The Fermilab SIST program itself is is a well-established program that we only recently partnered with through our co-PI, Sandra Charles (co-presenter here). She can provide more detail on what they're doing at the lab to virtualize the SIST internship experience from her perspective

From our (LSMRCE) perspective, the only thing that has really changed for us is that we have converted the onboarding and offboarding to be a virtual experience for the interns. In addition, LSMRCE will not be hosting an in-person conference this year (where interns come to present and peer-mentor), but we are looking at avenues to virtualize that as well. We will need to be very intentional about the virutal tactics we use to build that sense of community that the in-person events provide.

Great program! It reminds me of our CAMPARE summer research program which places students from around California at research sites around the country. You mention a conference and the fact that you will be holding that conference virtually. We are grappling with how to pull that off and I would like to hear how you plan to do that logistically, as well as how you plan to build a sense of community in the current virtual world.

What an awesome opportunity to spend a summer at Fermilab - great to see the authentic results! These projects are so important to individuals' growth mindset.  

Deanna.
This programs includes an incredible real world experience at one of the nation’s premier labs. I have valued  the experiences over the years that our Noyce Scholars have had as research interns at energy labs across the nation. Your project provides a similar experience and we have found, as I know you have, that students come back as changed in many ways with a better understanding of the true nature of STEM  research. Nice work!

David

Thank you, David. Yes, we hope that our research around this activity with respect to self-efficacy, science-identity, and sense of belonging will support what we already know just from interacting with the students. Thank you for the comment and viewing our work!