Piloting an Inter-Ivy League Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate

Brown University, Providence RI

Investigators

Abstract

To increase the number of graduate students and postdocs entering the professoriate in STEM disciplines, the Leadership Alliance, a national consortium of higher education institutions, in conjunction with its member institutions, Brown University and Columbia University, and in collaboration with four minority serving institutions - Dillard University, Howard University, Morgan State University, and Spelman College - will design, pilot, and rigorously evaluate activities to foster professional development, skills-building, mentoring, and career training. The activities of this project consist of (i) conducting a baseline needs analysis of the diversity efforts at Brown and Columbia to better understand issues and barriers to establishing a sustainable institutional culture of diversity; (ii) investigating incentive mechanisms to promote the engagement of participating departmental faculty and administrators in the proposed mentoring and professional development activities to provide a supportive environment that fosters successful outcomes; (iii) and identifying effective strategies to develop and implement mentoring, skills-building and professional development opportunities for underrepresented graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Intellectual Merit This project will provide the first systematic effort to: (i) identify the professional development and career training needs of STEM graduate students and postdocs from underrepresented groups at leading research institutions; (ii) evaluate best practices in training of doctoral students and postdocs; (iii) assess the effectiveness of a comprehensive program of professional development workshops on the mentoring and skills-building of STEM graduate students and postdocs from underrepresented groups. The comprehensive, multi-faceted evaluation efforts of these interventions that employ the expertise of STEM faculty members, senior administrators, an external evaluator, graduate students and postdocs from both research-intensive and minority-serving institutions will provide a foundation upon which to design novel, relevant and effective best practices, resources and initiatives that will prepare underrepresented minority STEM graduate students and postdocs for the 21st century professoriate. Broader Impacts This project supplements earlier efforts to expand the pipeline of scholars from underrepresented groups in STEM disciplines, which focus on pre-collegiate and undergraduate students. By firmly focusing on graduate students and postdocs, who have already firmly committed their professional lives to STEM fields, this project's overarching goal is to give them the skills to ensure professional success. The larger objective is to encourage the creation of sustainable institutional cultures and programs that will increase the diversity of the professoriate in STEM disciplines, not simply at Brown and Columbia but across the 32 members of the Leadership Alliance consortium and at other institutions of higher learning. This project's broad impact will take five specific, measurable forms. First, it will provide research universities nationwide with a review and evaluation of existing professional development, career training, skills-building,and mentoring programs for graduate students and postdocs from underrepresented groups at institutions across the United States. Second, this project will design, pilot, and assess replicable workshops in areas essential to the professional success of future STEM faculty. Third, the project will create and test instructional resources that will be readily available to institutions of higher learning via project website. Fourth, the project will provide postdocs from underrepresented groups authentic teaching experience to be better positioned for a future career as a professor. Fifth, this project will alter institutional cultures at leading research institutions by placing a greater emphasis on mentoring, professional development, skills-building, and career training to prepare students and postdocs to progress successfully along the academic pathway. All best practices in professional development and evaluations of the practices' effectiveness will be disseminated through the Leadership Alliance consortium, the project website, and public presentations and other outreach efforts. Through these activities this novel and potent Inter-Ivy AGEP will contribute to the societal goal of increased representation of underrepresented scholars as research leaders of the 21st century professoriate.