Thank you Fredrika! I agree, the students are so inspiring!

Thank you Folashade! I too wish I could experience these programs myself! An important implication would be focusing on the sense of belonging and offering support to the students in this field. Many beautiful stories have been shared stating that these programs have provided many opportunities for them. Some opportunities they never thought they would have had. 

Hi Folashade! Thank you! I think one of the most important things we are learning from this work is that there are many ways to support island students within STEM ecosystems and that including family, culture, and place are some powerful ways to do this. I am sure others on the team have other thoughts too, so please add them!

Thanks Shellie! We'd love to learn more about your project! 

Hi Perrin! All of the individual interventions have run for different amounts of time and we are better at tracking participants at some levels of our programming (e.g., undergraduate and graduate students) versus pre-college students, at the moment. But, we hope to improve on this. We have built and implemented  a student-tracking system through Salesforce that is helping us to do this.

Hey Perrin - great to "see" you here! Just a quick note to add to Kristin's. As part of a concurrent effort, we just interviewed 16 of the first 21 students to go through the earlier iterations of our SEAS UVI undergrad and UVI/Penn State Bridge programs. They were part of a program some time between 2017 and 2020. All 16 that we talked to are still involved in marine science, and so we are excited about these early results!  Our PR Hub colleagues also have some strong results related to persistence for their TORGUGA program, though I'm going to be vague about those here because the data aren't mine and I don't want to share anything I'm not supposed to! 

Thanks for this additional insight, Karen. We (CAISE) would love to be able to share your and the Tortuga program's findings with the informal STEM learning community when they are available.

Hi Jamie - great to "see" you! We would love to share our results via CAISE, and so I'll reach out in a couple of months when we are ready.  I'll check with the TORTUGA team on their timing and interest too. Thanks for the suggestion! 

Great, thank you Karen!

Thank you Meghan!

Hi Jamie! We connect them in a few different ways. The Islands Alliance Summit is one way, where we connect participants from pre-college through to the Workforce in a two-night/morning virtual event. This event includes families and happens each year. We just held the first of these in March of this year. Another way is by bringing students together at professional society meetings. For undergraduate, graduate, Bridge, and Workforce Fellows, this happens through attendance at the National Diversity in STEM Conference by SACNAS and attendance at the Coastal & Estuarine Research Federation Meeting and participation in that society's Rising TIDES Program. We pair attendance at those meetings with pre- and post-conference activities that connect students through culture and other cohort-building activities. Another way is through virtual clubhouses; we have experimented with different forms of these this past year and I think one new thing we will try this year is quarterly culture nights where students will learn more about the different places we are all from. Finally, the Bridge Program brings students together in a single program; this program has had to be adapted to be virtual because of the pandemic, but students have connected that way and in the future, we will bring those students together in person as conditions allow.

Thanks Kristin! Wonderful to hear the rich variety of ways that the participants come together in this project. You use a strategy that we have also found to be effective and generative, i.e. leveraging society conferences as events where folks are already coming together and/or where students who are building their careers can make new connections and become inspired. Im curious if the Puerto Rico site is connected at all with the work of Ciencia Puerto Rico?

Hi Lawanda, thanks for watching and for your comment and thoughtful question! We have a research team dedicated to working through those markers and incorporating culture. I've shared your question with them and will share back their response because I don't want to misrepresent their efforts.

In the meantime, I can say that for each island location, the research team has hired an on-the-ground cultural liaison, who is shepherding their efforts and interactions with the community.

I love that. We have been transitioning some educational theory in culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings) into our formal and informal learning efforts in St. Thomas. Its been a great access point for relevance for students and their potential contribution in STEM to their local environment. I look forward to learning more. Again,  love the project.

Cheers, Lawanda.  Apologies for delay in response. A couple of thoughts, and happy to stay connected (hopson@illinois.edu):

1) Our RT work in the SEAS project is driven by 3 questions:

• how do our interventions and programming affect individual identity construction?
• how do concepts like self-efficacy, engagement, sense of belonging, persistence in STEM affect individual identity construction?, and 
• how do individual identity construction in island settings vary within and across cultural contexts?

Currently, we are reviewing exploratory data from one hub event in fall, 2020 (ie. SACNAS participation) and our initial research team thinking is converging around the core notions of the SEAS work, especially in light of our indigenous and culturally responsive research design and framing, and

2) We are in full throes of recruiting hub participants to collect more data that may give us a sense of success in the way of our outcomes presented in our project logic model.  These outcomes (and subsequent markers of success) would include evidence regarding, such as positive increases in self-efficacy in science, increased engagement in science activities, increase parental/community support, heightened sense of belonging in the Alliance.  These more quantitative outcomes however do not begin to brush the surface of the nuances we are finding out in the qualitative dimensions of the study.  Hope to share more soon...

Thanks, Nicole! Working with and seeing the students progress and feel more comfortable with STEM has been such a rewarding piece of the project. 

Hi Shane! Thank you for watching our video and for your appreciation. At times, our program participants act as ambassadors by sharing their great experiences and the opportunities they've had that arose from their programs. They share their stories at many conferences, social media, or at events we've hosted, like the SEAS Islands Alliance Virtual Summit. Our student's voices are important and we emphasize that their voices are heard.

As for our partnerships, including school districts, we contact local members to organize and discuss recruitment efforts for students from middle school and high school students. STEM or geoscience activities are conducted in the communities which leads to more exposure to the geoscience field. We are continuing to work on improving these efforts on expanding our partnerships. I'm sure my colleagues can add some more details!

This is great, thanks for the info Genae and Howard!  That makes sense to have a number of hands-on activities for the younger students - and I'm always for getting more kids outside exploring!

Wonderful - thanks for sharing Valerie!