I see that registration is open for this summer. Is it limited to students enrolled in certain programs, schools, or states? Or could any undergrad from any state sign up? We have a really great group of summer interns who might be looking for a supportive space like this!

Thank you Dr. Berges for providing our students with an opportunity to meet and learn from amazing faculty at UWM. You rock! Thanks for posting...your package is on its way BTW. (-;

Thank you Dalila for your questions and feedback! Working with STEM students of color, I have found that scholarship funding is sorely needed for students that are first-generation, low income or ineligible for federal aid. I've also observe that truth telling is lacking in the profession as a whole and can be addressed more by faculty and staff to dismantle toxicity, misogyny and racial bias in our classrooms and labs. Likewise, more people can be of help to marginalized students by not always selecting students viewed as the "cream of the crop," and instead mentoring emerging professionals who demonstrate acumen in their STEM major but who may not have the highest GPA or the greatest "profile." We have to see STEM differently across disciplines and make sure we are not discriminating against potential research candidates who could make a difference in researching STEM breakthroughs, with some encouragement.

What helped you to be successful as a postdoctoral researcher that I can use to help my students? 

Hi Anique,

Thank you very much for your thoughtful and candid response. Much of what you said strongly resonated with me. I am currently building a community of emerging interdisciplinary scholars called Emerging Scholar CIRCLS. This community is an Expertise Exchange at NSF-funded Center for Integrative Research in Computing and Learning Sciences (CIRCLS). Broadening participation in learning and computing sciences is part of our mission. I greatly appreciate the input that helps me ensure our current and future activities are meaningful and build the social and academic capital the next generation of scholars need to succeed in their work. I invite your students to join the Emerging Scholar community (link to the form included below) or contact me for more information. 

I have a couple of reflections that might be helpful to share with your students.

I found that it is not just my academic training that prepared me for the postdoctoral work that I am currently doing. I draw a lot on my other life experiences of being a war survivor and a refugee living in a refugee camp. Although these experiences might not seem related to scholarly and research work, they are a constant source of inspiration and strength. It is essential to draw on all our life experiences and recognize that they contribute to our unique expertise and perspective development.

I also found that allies and paths to success do exist, although the obstacles may seem tremendous at times. After coming to this country, I found that the ivory towers were not quite ready to accept me, although I have already completed two years of electrical engineering. After talking to several local schools, it was an HBCU, North Carolina Central University, that took a chance on me, and took me into their Physics program, and helped me start my academic and professional journey in this county.

I hope you and your students find these reflections helpful. I’d be happy to connect outside of the showcase and continue our conversation. Once again, I congratulate the team on this much-needed work. 

Link: CIRCLS Communities Interest Form

Dalila, your story is so powerful and helpful for others to hear and glean from. I am SO happy we met on this platform and I would love to meet sometime virtually to get to know you and learn more about the Emerging Scholars CIRCLS Initiative! Can you call me at 414-229-3306 anytime after 2pm CST this Friday, May 14th? If not, what does your schedule look like this month? Our campus uses MS Teams, so I can send you and Deb (Deb, let me know if you can join as well) a calendar invite to download further. Take care Dalila and I look forward to virtually "meeting you" soon!

What a great connection! Thank you, Dalila, for reaching out and sharing your inspirational story and reflections. I look forward to continuing the discussion and learning about Emerging Scholars CIRCLS. I see several opportunities to collaborate! Anique - please invite me, but if I am not available, please don't let me stop you and Dalila from connecting and losing momentum. 

Wonderful making this connection, Dalila! - Deb 

Deb and Anique, it is wonderful to connect with you both.

Anique, thank you for your kind words. I could give you a call this Friday at 3:30 PM, to talk more about the Emerging Scholar CIRCLS and to figure out the next steps.

I look forward to a continued conversation and a potential collaboration!

Great! Please inbox me at anique@uwm.edu with your email address and I can send you a calendar invite. 

Hi Suzanne -

Thank you so much for the question. As a group of student mentors and program directors, we decided which topics we felt our students needed at the time (such as De-Stress & Motivate), as well as, which topics would they benefit from in order to keep our students focused on their future and staying productive over the summer months. Going foward in selecting topics for Fall 2020, Spring 2021, and Summer 2021, we have used feedback from the alliance mentors and directors, as well as, student surveys to determine the topics and areas of interest. 

We are currently writing our annual report and calcuating exactly how many 'repeat students' were in the sessions, but through visual review of the attendee reports, I would estimate that 60-70% of student attendees attendended at least 5 of the 10 sessions, with the vast majority attending 7+ of the 10 sessions, and we continue to see this trend in the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 webinar data.

Deb

Hi Marisol - Your program sounds wonderful. If your sessions are recorded and publicly available, please let me know. We are slowly but surely building a repository of resources for URM STEM students.  

Regarding assessment. So much like our activities we had to pivot very quickly when the pandemic hit and the only assessment tool we had IRB approval for was the post-webinar survey (satisfaction of topic/presenter/content/relevence). So we did not get an opportunity to do any formal pre- and post- in order to assess impact. However, we hope to amend our IRB to add some focus groups with the speaker series participants. That being said...we did conduct informal assessment within some of the sessions where we would start with the pre-condition poll question (Ex. Who here plans to go to graduate school? 5pt likert), then ask the same question at the end. We shared the poll results in real-time so the students can see the overall trend and we discussed it, had students take themselves off mute and share their thoughts on how their mindset changed or what spoke to them the most during the session.  

What about the COMPASS2 program? Were you able to assess the impacts? 

It is great connecting, Marisol. Please share your pogram information so we can stay in contact.

Warmly,

Deb

Hi Marisol -

Thank you so much for sharing your program link and details about your program activities by year, and your smart approach for assessment of your speaker series.

We also found students really engaged when we had near-peer subject matter experts and when the presenters were AUTHENTIC in their responses. Our students wanted to hear the good, bad, and ugly and we encouraged our presenters to speak their truth when asked direct questions. Our skillful moderators were always able to provide space for these conversations, but always brought it around to what skills or tools are available to address these challenges.

Let's please stay connected and please save the date for the LSAMP 30th anniversary and LSMRCE annual conference, Oct 22-24. The conference offers tracks for STEM mentors and faculty, as well as, URM STEM undergrads and grad students, a competitive poster session, a resource fair, and several networking sessions. Our resources and opportunities are open to all! https://lsmrce.org/events/annual/2021-annual/2021-conference-overview.aspx

Warmest regards,

Deb

Definitely Deb, we should stay connected and I am saving those dates for the LSMRCE conference. I just took a look to the website you sent and it looks like a wonderful opportunity for our students to attend. Excuse my ignorance Deb, but what do you mean by "offers tracks for STEM mentors and faculty"? 

Yes, speakers' authenticity is key to engage students. That is why panels work so well, the exchange really reveals the true personalities. We have been really fortunate to have excellent ones.

Cheers!

Marisol 

Hi Meredith - Thank you for visiting our page and your question! From our survey results, the session that students rated as most impactful during the summer months were, "Applying to Grad School", "PhD? Why not me!", and "Funding Grad School". These three and the two career panels were all rated very high and also had the highest participate rate. These surveys were given directly following the session, so we hope to conduct some focus groups to determine if there are any longitudinal impacts, or impacts that were not fully appreciated at the time. 

Thank you for your question and visit to our video!

Deb 

Thanks Scott for your involvement with Cheyanne and our URM STEM students at UW-Milwaukee. You are an amazing lecturer and faculty research preceptor, and we can't thank you enough for your support! 

Thank you, Scott, for your engagement and continued support and mentorship of our students. If you ever have a suggestion for at topic, please don't hesitate to reach out! - Deb

Hi Alexa - Thank you for sharing our opportunities with your students! Thank you for viewing our video and your engagement! - Deb

Thank you, Marie! And thank you for your support of the speaker series!! Good point -

2021 Speaker Series Schedule: https://lsmrce.org/students/speaker-series.aspx

Hi Pati -

Thank you for the question and I invite my co-presenters to also comment if they have insights. But I would say the things we learned from hosting the summer series via Zoom is that we have a formula that works.

1) Keep the sessions to 1hr or less for attention spans; We struggle with this, but it's always our goal!

2) Be intentional in leveraging the interactive tools to gain and keep the engagement of the students. For instance, we almost always open up with a poll with a surprising statistic or trend. This sets the context and hooks their interest.And about every 10m we have some sort of question we ask the audience to keep them engaged. 

3) Give the students space to let their voices be heard. So related to the last point, we always included opportunities for students to take themselves off mute and engage with the speakers or share their thoughts directly with the audience;

4) Provide actionable strategies or solutions, along with resources for further exploration and learning;

5) Embedded reflection questions at the end of the sessions gives programs the option to making it an assignment for credit and provides programs artifacts for their evaluation purposes; and

6) Timing of the live session and recording. We found the most success in garnering live attendees by having this at 6p ET each Wednesday. It was a consistent date/time, it was in the early evening for at least 2 time zones, and the sessions were recorded and posted (usually within 48hrs) so students who couldn't attend live, could still participate. 

These are my six top tips to success in what we have delivered, but again, I open this up to others or my co-presenters to share their tips as well!

Deb

Thank you so much, Deb! This is very helpful

Hi Pati! I would agree with Deb that the timing of the sessions and the transparency of the speakers and participants has been key elements in the success of the Speaker Series thus far. Having the ability as a student to see someone that looks like you as a star in their field and willing to share industry-level knowledge with you that will help you to succeed creates what I like to call an "investment strategy" that is guaranteed to result in tremendous growth for the student AND for the professional lending their time and expertise to helping others.

We have to see these engagements as a win-win, that is designed to produce results for our young people and for the STEM community of professionals we hope to attract to mentor our students of color. I hope these insights are helpful as you develop power house programming for your students, and thanks for your engagement on this site!

Hi Luiz - Thank you so much for watching our video and your interest in our project. 

To be honest, we don't yet know if there was really the social presence and engagement, of to what degree. As each LSAMP alliance has different structure on their student's required activities, it was left up to the individual alliance coordinators to choose or not choose to do more with the topic after the session, require students to interact on the Google Classroom, or to complete the interactive polls and reflection questions. However, we will be conducting some focus groups with the 2020 summer participants and we will be asking feedback to assess how that shift impacted them and if the series helped fill the gap. 

As a researcher, what are your thoughts on how we can assess the "social presence" and engagement?

Thank you again for your interest and thank you in advance for your rsponse. :)

Deb

If I may interject in your discussion, I am also very interested in learning about your thoughts and suggestions as a researcher, Luiz. Great topic, engagement. Even though the scale of our program is not comparable because only involved a small group of 11 students, the things we asked them for the careers panels series were:

1- They had to read speakers's bios and come up with some questions ahead

2- They had to write a reflection after the panel

3- We encouraged them to connect through LinkedIn and only recently we have started to suggest they write a short thank you email. 

As for the session related to more actionable subjects such as Time management, Blooms taxonomy, Metacognition strategies, CV/resume writing, etc. we follow up with some applications that given them practice. Students have constructed various short and long term planners, put in practice techniques to avoid procrastination, used bloom's taxonomy to rank the questions they ask to speakers, developed SMART goals, etc. I think is key for them to have opportunities for putting those theories into practice and receive feedback and support. It looks like in your case Deb, you depend on what the individual coordinators require from students after the sessions, but maybe some proposed activities "ready to go" would help the individual alliances to engage their students. Those could be developed jointly by participating alliances. 

I also think that during the sessions the students want to feel like the panelists are speaking to them :) Many years ago, and for lack of access to speakers in person, I turned to recorded videos by the NIH Office of Intramural Training & Education about applying to graduate school, careers exploration, communicating science, etc. I thought they were great but the students did not like them. They could not maintain their attention, even with me pausing and commenting and asking questions, those people were not talking to them :) I remember one student told me that the story of my career path was much more inspirational! I thought they really must be boring videos to them, ha ha ha. I stopped.

Cheers!

Marisol

Thank you, Marisol. Great questions and idea on the 'read to go' material! I'm anxious to hear back from the educational researcher. :)

Thanks Deb for responding, and Luiz and Marisol for your questions and insight into engagement and social presence. As a program director working hands on with my students, I believe that the Speaker Series was the "next best thing" to in-person engagement, namely due to several factors: 

1. Facilitator: Brian Thomas was EXCELLENT at providing a platform where students were heard and could engage with each other and the presenters in real time. His success as a seasoned career coach and group facilitation expert made the engagement less "artificial" and "static" and much more engaging and student-centered. While I am sure that our students would have loved to interact with him and the group in person, they told me that their experience with the series was highly meaningful because of the level of support and engagement they felt, even on a Zoom screen.

Brian even had a "before" and "after" roll call during the pandemic where he would shout out students names who were "regulars" at each webinar and give them a platform to share how they were feeling or what was going on with them that week. It was deeply moving and empowered students to use their own voice to share concerns or introduce topics that were of concern to them. That is how the upcoming "Racism in STEM" webinar series (starting May 26th) was conceived--a student spoke out about how she felt and several students replied, and Deb made it happen.

2. Selection of speakers: As opposed to pre-recorded webinars where students are forced to sit and take notes while they are lectured on a particular topic (and can only engage with the speaker or panel via chat or Q&A), the Speaker Series was hosted live and in real time so that everyone could see one other and feel encouraged to come on camera and say hello. Not all students elected to come on screen, but a majority of them stayed on screen throughout the program. Also, the speakers that were invited to participate knew that our aim was to give students a meaningful alternative to in-person events pre-COVID and made sure to tailor their presentation to help students gain confidence in speaking up and asking questions verbally, versus just typing them in the chat.

If these programs are to have any efficacy, I believe the selection of who is speaking to our young people and how they are doing it has to be carefully deliberated and vetted. Deb did an AMAZING job in this area.

3. "Wrap around care": The homework that my WiscAMP STEM-Inspire students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee had to do involved several layers to keep them engaged and informed in their STEM disciplines throughout the pandemic. First, students had to attend the majority of the webinars in each semester live. Second, with the exception of one webinar, I have attended the programs WITH MY STUDENTS live. I say that because while some levels of accountability can intimidate some students who prefer anonymity when attending or participating in a program, I believe that the rapport and openness I encourage on our campus created a level of continuity in a social media space that was otherwise unfamiliar to them, especially when the pandemic hit the hardest. The transition from in-person to virtual STEM programming was not an easy one, but showing up as a program director and learning from and with your students can be richly rewarding and incredibly important, especially in times of crisis when things are unsteady at school, work, and home.

Third, students were rewarded as they completed milestones in the program overall, which lifted morale and provided them with resources necessary to incentivize their participation and frankly, lift morale among a cohort of young people who lost internships, family members, some social supports, etc. 

I could share further, but these are just some of the ways that the Speaker Series created social presence and a base of interconnectedness and sense of empowerment among students and the STEM community. We should know more about how the Speaker Series impacted our program participants by next month when our anonymized survey data comes back.

Thanks for sharing your insight Anique. This is great! I could not agree more with the idea of live sessions being a much superior experience to recorder ones. Again, our group is so much smaller, but we also sit with the students in the same room as we attend together the panels and we moderate, as well as fill some blanks for students and probe them with questions to facilitate discussion. A bit like in your "wrap around care" :)

I love the idea of rewarding students for completing milestones. What do you use?

Cheers!

Marisol

Thanks Marisol! We provided them with stipends for each webinar attended and event reflection submitted, and I plan to provide students with a "Certificate of Completion" to encourage their continued participation in the series. The Speaker Series is a form of professional development for our scholars, and I believe treating them as professionals that receive commendations for learning a new skill or mastering a particular course should be encouraged. On top of the feeling of being accomplished, the focus on our program early on was to provide students with stipends to help them cope with the loss of jobs and other resources during the pandemic.

Hi Tamara -

As a Center of Excellence, LSMRCE took lead in the administrative overhead and building the infrastructure and dissemination portal. The collaborators suggested speakers for certain topics and LSMRCE reached out to secure the speakers and onboard them to our process. In addition, we partnered with the National Association of LSAMP Alumni (NALA) to identify program graduates who are early-mid career to serve as our panelists and presenters. NALA, also known as LSAMP Alumni Group, was only officially launched in 2020, but already has 200+ members from the community. We feel it is important to leverage the expertise and voice of the program alumni as near-peer connections, as well as, gives the alumni the opportunity to reach back and help those who are coming behind them. The students seemed to really connect with these individuals and also serves to highlight NALA as a professional network for our students.

Overall, we had all our speakers secured by early June. BUT we did have a few situations where a panelist or a speaker canceled at the last minute due to family emergencies, so we did have to scramble and tap some of our colleagues to serves as speakers as well. :-)

Thank you so much for your question and interest in our project!

Deb

ALSO - Brian Thomas was our secret weapon. As my colleagues, Anique Ruiz, mentioned, Brian Thomas served as the moderator for all sessions and as a presenter/co-presenter for some. Brian has been working with the Center since 2014 as a student professional development specialist and has a library of topics he has presented for us over the years. So he has many topics 'in his back pocket' that he can pull from in a real emergency. We did this for the "Networking in the New Normal" and Brian was a rockstar!

Thank you, Dr. Hamilton - We are very proud of the impacts of the Louis Stokes Alliancse for Minority Participation and we look forward to celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the program in October 2021! - Deb