Collaborative Research: An AGEP Alliance Model to Advance Underrepresented Minority STEM Faculty at Predominately Undergraduate Institutions

Suny College Of Technology Farmingdale, Farmingdale NY

Investigators

Abstract

This Alliance brings together three universities with the goal of developing, implementing, studying, institutionalizing, evaluating and disseminating a model focusing on career development for historically underrepresented minority (URM) doctoral degree students in STEM, who successfully transition into early career STEM faculty positions at predominately undergraduate institutions (PUIs), or who enter postdoctoral STEM scholar positions and then transition into early career STEM faculty positions at PUIs. The AGEP PUI Alliance works with URM doctoral degree students, postdoctoral scholars and early career faculty to provide them with mentoring, professional development training, and the teaching pedagogy skills necessary to succeed in academic faculty positions. The AGEP Alliance model work is through partnerships between Stony Brook University - The State University of New York (SUNY), Suffolk County Community College - SUNY, and Farmingdale State College - SUNY. This alliance was created in response to the NSF's Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program solicitation (NSF 16-552). The AGEP program seeks to advance knowledge about models to improve pathways to the professoriate and success of URM graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty in specific STEM disciplines and/or STEM education research fields. AGEP Transformation Alliances develop, replicate or reproduce; implement and study, via integrated educational and social science research, models to transform the dissertator phase of doctoral education, postdoctoral training and/or faculty advancement, and the transitions within and across the pathway levels, of URMs in STEM and/or STEM education research careers. While this Alliance is primarily funded by the AGEP program, additional support has been provided by the NSF INCLUDES program, which focuses on catalyzing the STEM enterprise to collaboratively work for inclusive change. As the nation addresses a STEM achievement gap between URM and non-URM undergraduate and graduate students, our universities and colleges struggle to recruit, retain and promote URM STEM faculty who serve as role models and academic leaders for URM students to learn from, work with and emulate. Recent NSF reports indicate that URM STEM associate and full professors occupy 8% of these senior faculty positions at all 4-year colleges and universities, and about 6% of these positions at the nation's most research-intensive institutions. The AGEP PUI Alliance has the potential to advance a model to improve the success of URM early career STEM faculty in PUIs, which ultimately leads to improved academic mentorship for URM undergraduate students in STEM at community colleges, two-year academic institutions, and other PUIs. One of the research components of the Alliance investigates the role of self-mindset beliefs versus perceptions of others' mindset on dissertating students' success and engagement; assesses the specific role of mentor mindset versus mentee mindset on relationship quality and mentee engagement outcomes; and explores change over time in psychosocial engagement among doctoral students through their work on dissertation development and completion. The AGEP PUI Alliance will work with an assessment team at the Center for Advanced Study of Education, at the City University of New York's Graduate Center, to conduct formative and summative evaluations. They will also engage an Executive Board of institutional administrators and leaders, as well as an external Advisory Board. The boards will provide feedback to the Alliance team and suggest adjustments to the project's management, to the research, and to the model development, implementation, testing, evaluation, dissemination, sustainability and reproduction potential. The boards will also provide input about how the Alliance work impacts institutional policies and practices to advance URM early career faculty in their academic STEM careers at PUIs. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.