Life STEM Capacity-Building Workshop for Minority Serving Institutions

Morgan State University, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Abstract

In meeting the national need for a stronger and more diverse future workforce, the Foundation seeks and embraces contributions from all segments of the STEM community through investments in a number of programs targeting underrepresented populations and institutions. This LifeSTEM initiative represents another opportunity for the Foundation to provide a mechanism for minority serving institutions to strengthen their capacity to help the nation meet the growing demand for a more diverse future STEM workforce. To accomplish this goal, a workshop will be held in the Greater Washington, DC area to provide an opportunity for representatives from surrounding minority serving institutions to share best practices about ways to prepare and retain underrepresented minority students in STEM fields. Specifically, the workshop will advance knowledge and practices about high quality research and discuss ways to create, implement, and evaluate innovative models of intervention in the life sciences and bioscience. In collaboration with MERAssociates, Morgan State University will host a workshop for up to 25 teams (three to four-member) of key university administrators, STEM educators and researchers, and sponsored research office representatives. Through carefully crafted sessions, workshop attendees will be able to obtain a deeper understanding of research-based practices and interventions shown to be effective in retaining underrepresented students in STEM pipelines. The workshop will promote foundational research methods about STEM education, contribute to the achievement of desired societal outcomes of increasing minority participation in STEM careers, and establish a more connected community of scholars from institutions that produce large numbers of underrepresented students with degrees in STEM fields.