Karen, thank you for viewing our video and your kind words! Indeed, intergenerational interactions have arisen in our survey and photo elicitation interviews, both in terms of participants wanting to honor their elders (e.g., in terms of supporting elders' goals for their Nation's technology sovereignty) and wanting to serve as STEM role models for present and future generations. I love your idea about using learning sciences knowledge on memory making. We will need to investigate this approach! Thank you again.

Karen, I wanted to echo Mia's comment, thanks for viewing the video and your kind words!

I agree with the idea of making our work more personal. That is the intention in this project with photo elicitation: these are photos that the participants took that reflect their own experiences in STEM, so they are intimate looks at how they view and experience the hurdles and supports they have encountered in STEM. 

Intergenerational interactions are at the center of giving back, as participants talk about doing outreach to bring younger Native students to STEM, being role models and mentors for younger generations coming after them, and also how their own role models and mentor support them in their STEM pathways. 

I would love to hear more about your idea of using learning sciences knowledge about how we make memories in this project. I am intrigued! Thanks again for stopping by. 

Meagan, thank you for viewing our video and for your comments! You're right, seeing others in STEM roles can be so powerful, and it can be as simple as judging a science fair. We hope our project and this video will support raising visibility of Native higher education students and professionals in STEM.

Hi, Jeff. Thanks for your comments and questions. 

What we learned in the pilot and what we're learning in this project shows us that giving back is a key value for Native students and professionals in STEM. Study participants have let us know that being able to use their STEM skills to give back to the community is motivating and helps them stay in STEM. We are currently finalizing revisions to a paper from our pilot addressing giving back among Native students in computing undergraduate education. Our framework for that paper stems from Page-Reeves et al.'s (2019) paper (citation below). 

So far, the study's data shows that giving back is a motivation for both students and professionals. However, survey data shows that for professionals it is an even greater motivation than for students. Maybe Matthew (the project's quantitative expert along with Selay) can illuminate this point a bit more. 

In the fall, we're going to start out second round of data collection. The goal is to see how things change for Native STEM students and professionals as they continue their academic and professional trajectories. We also want to disseminate broadly, making sure to reach the Native public as well as institutions of higher education and workplaces so that they learn about the project's findings and recommendations. 

Thanks again, Jeff. 

Page-Reeves, J., Cortez, G. L., Ortiz, Y., Moffett, M., Deerinwater, K., & Medin, D. (2019). Situating giving back for Native Americans pursuing careers in STEM: “you don’t just take, you give something back.” Intersections: Critical Issues in Education, 3(1), 3-24. https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/intersections... 

Thanks Nuria. For my dissertation, I looked at (amongst other things), student persistence in research settings, and one of the key findings was the role that personal interest in the project played in motivating students to push through the difficult phases of their projects. Part of my interest in the 'giving back' finding is that it seems to echo what I found in my project with student interest. 

Hi, Jeff. Though I partially agree with you, giving back here is in the broader context of the different Native cultures, so we can't really look at it from a strictly individual perspective. We are finding that giving back is considered a cultural value for Native students and professionals, so there is a cultural tug that goes well beyond the individual interest -- duty towards the community, defining success in STEM in relation to giving back, being a translator of STEM knowledge for the community, being a role model, and finding ways to give back in STEM. I recommend you take a look at Page-Reeves et al. (2019) for more on that. I wish our paper was already published! -- it addresses the idea of giving back as a cultural value and the different shapes it takes. 

Absolutely on the differences between individual interest and a sense of the broader collective, and I really appreciate this idea of giving back as a cultural value. The word 'duty' seems really important here-it's got me thinking about the broader scientific/STEM community, and how many STEM students and professionals feel that sense of collective responsibility in their work.

Thanks for the reference. 

Hi, Rebecca. Thanks for watching our video! I think it's a fantastic idea to incorporate the idea of giving back to the lessons! I think the students themselves will probably have many ideas on how to use science to give back to their communities, so I would make sure to ask them as you get started working on this project.

Our participants talked about many ways of giving back that they are engaged in or that they would like to engage in. Some examples are: improving the use of solar energy for clean energy access in the reservation, creating an app for Native language preservation and learning, digitizing cultural documents, using Native knowledge to preserve natural environments, digitizing processes within their tribes, studying illnesses that affect Native communities, creating websites for their tribal governments, and more. 

Our participants also talked about bringing together Native science with western science. So, given that your goal is to design lessons that are responsive to students' experiences, thinking about ways that the two could be brought together would be key. Including Elders in the lesson design and implementation may be an interesting way of doing this. 

Your project sounds really interesting! I look forward to learning more about it! Please keep us posted.

Hi Rebecca,

Thanks for your message and question. As an Indigenous womxn myself and a co-PI on this project, my recommendations would be to build relationships with the local tribal peoples and find out what are some of their relevant needs. This would help build culturally relevant projects dedicated to nation-building. This inherently builds an opportunity for them to give back to their communities. Hope that helps!

Nuria and Tiffany, thank you so much for your responses. Those are great ideas for thinking about how to incorporate giving back. 

Hi Tara!

Christina here - I'm one of the research associates on the project! Thank you so much for watching our video! I greatly appreciate you sharing this dissemination opportunity with us. I have shared the link with the rest of our team and will reach out with any follow-up questions. Thanks again!

Hello, Tara. Thank you for watching our video! Thank you so much for the invitation! Can you share more information about what presenting at the STEMS² Symposium, such as the length presentations and the type of content you're looking for? We will bring back the information to the team and will get back to you as soon as we can. You can contact me at nuria_jaumot-pascual@terc.edu. 

Thanks again! Looking forward to chatting more. 

Hi Marci! Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to view our video!

Hi Meltem! We used a variety of sources for our student recruitment, including student membership of AISES, networks of our advisory council, and institutional partners. Students were also recruited by other participants via a snowballing method. We are especially grateful to the project co-PI at AISES, Dr. Tiffany Smith, who personally reached out to individuals to invite their participation. This resulted in many positive responses.

Thanks for stopping by and watching our video! We agree about the importance of storytelling. We are currently working on different ways to disseminate the stories that we have learned through our work. So far, we've presented in two conferences and have done talks with smaller groups of coworkers and advisors. Last year's summer intern also wrote a blog post sharing her experiences in the project (the blog post is available here:https://blog.terc.edu/from-teacher-to-social-sc...). We are also working on manuscripts for publication, a couple more presentations, and a traveling exhibit of images and captions. 

We would love to hear any ideas you may have to disseminate these stories! 

By the way, I realize I am really just asking Bhaskar's question in another way...and please take your time, no rush to respond. In appreciation...

Hi Sarah! I'm grateful to you and Bhaskar for your questions. A surprise for me in looking at the faculty data was the ways in which the institutional context seemed to constrain, or enable, the integration of Native ways of knowing and being with Western STEM pedagogy. For example, one professor at a public university said his institution set clear objectives for him to teach students problem solving and getting jobs; he felt he "wouldn't be free" to teach STEM concepts through a lens of, for example, honoring the Earth. In contrast, a professor at a tribal college described how she talked with her students about "cultural aspects" alongside the Western science and also openly prayed for their learning and safety through the pandemic. These are two sides of dissonance and balance of epistemologies, also known as "walking in two worlds." We hope to collect more stories like these in the next round of data collection to study how they connect (or not) to giving back. Down the line, it would be great if project findings could help shift systemic practices towards being more open to non-Western STEM understandings.

I really appreciate what you share here. I am also working on a project with the goal of bridging western science and indigenous ways of knowing, with colleagues from Hawaiian and Alaskan communities. Our project focuses on coastal erosion. We have learned that the approach we had in mind - mitigating strategies - is also western. Native ways of knowing are more responsive and in relationship with what nature brings. It has been a profound experience of listening and learning. Even the term "science" is not easily translatable. I am looking forward to learning how students figure out what they can give back using their STEM knowledge and skills in these communities as well. Thank you again for your thoughts.

Hi Sarah. Thank you for sharing your project. How interesting about your discovery that "mitigating strategies" is western! I'm also intrigued by your combining of earth science and computational thinking. There are certainly overlaps between our work which I'd like to explore further! We seem to be located in the same area, so perhaps an outdoor coffee over the summer would work?

Maria, I am actually based in Oregon -

I acknowledge that the land on which I work and live is the ancestral land of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians; Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde; Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs - and work out of Concord's Emeryville CA offices.  However I would be delighted to talk further, perhaps over Zoom? We can take this offline (shaavind@concord.org).

Maria, thank you for the kind invitation. I am actually in Central Oregon - 

I acknowledge that the land on which I work and live is the ancestral land of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians; Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde; Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs - working out of Concord's Emeryville CA offices. But I would be delighted to connect over Zoom sometime for sure! Please email me at shaavind@concord.org

Sarah -- I will reach out to you! Looking forward to learning more. --MO

Thank you, Carol! I appreciate your kind words. 

Thanks for your kind words, Rita! It's always good to hear that others confirm our findings in their own work. This points to some concrete solutions to attract and retain Native students. I look forward to learning more about your own work.

Thank you, Leigh. I am glad our video helped you to think about your work in a different way.

Hi Fenice! Thanks for visiting our video and for your thoughtful remarks about service learning. We agree that service learning would be one compelling way to provide a meaningful learning experience that might utilize students' STEM skills and benefit Native communities. Of course, a full partner in these endeavors would need to be the communities themselves. A similar option would be internships or classroom-based research experiences. For example, Navajo woman and engineer Sandra Begay has been very successful working with Native and non-Native students to bring solar power to Native families living in very remote areas  in New Mexico. She frequently talks about what a profound effect the experience has on students.

Leanne, thank you for viewing our video! Both the quantitative data and the photo elicitation data speak strongly to giving back and Nation building as central to Native individuals' cultural identities and STEM identities. We hope the action steps suggest some ways giving back could be more easily facilitated within STEM classrooms and departments. In case you are interested, we are finalizing a manuscript (led by Nuria Jaumot-Pascual and based on pilot work with Native undergraduates in computing) that goes into more depth around giving back and deepening STEM identities.

Hello, Maria. Thanks for stopping by and watching our video! 

I am glad to hear that our research resonates with what you see in your institution. How does UNCP support this desire to give back from Native students? Do you have courses or services that have been particularly successful in supporting this desire? 

Hi Jennifer! Good to see you here. What I have experienced with photo elicitation is that participants go through a self-reflection period where that think about how they want to respond to the prompts. They have a series of prompts that guide their thinking and they need to think about how to portray an idea through photos, so the self-reflection can be quite challenging but at the same time very rewarding, as many participants have told us. This type of self-reflection brings up quite complex thinking about the topics that we pose, which is not necessarily true for traditional interviews, where participants don't have the same opportunity for paused reflection. One of the thing I have noticed is how quickly the interview becomes quite intimate using photo elicitation. I have listened to very shy and reserved individuals open up in ways that I was not expecting due to the photographs that they shared with us. 

Hello, Dr. Quinlan. Thank you for watching our video and for your thoughtful comments. In other work Dr. Ong and I have done with women of color in engineering and computer science, we have also found that giving back is a very important factor for their persistence in their studies and careers. So, this is a topic that cuts across communities of color, as far as we can see. It is exciting for us to see that what we learn in our research resonates with other researchers as well. 

The main difference we are finding with Native students and professionals is the emphasis on Native sovereignty and on giving back that is intimately connected to their cultures. An example of giving back that supports Native sovereignty (which we call nation building) would be when a Native student in STEM builds a database for her tribe's government so that they can have control of their own data to make decisions. An example of culturally connected giving back would be the implementation of a Native value (such as the Seven Generations Principle) to engage in conservation work. 

Thanks for reaching out! I would love to connect as well. I'm always available at nuria_jaumot-pascual@terc.edu. 

Thank you!

Hi Eden. Thanks for your request! We are still early in our project, but an executive summary would be a great dissemination goal down the line. We will add it to our list of project products.

Thank you for watching our video, Eden! We are working on dissemination. An executive summary sounds like a good idea. We'll bring it back to the team. Thanks for the suggestion!