Resource Hub: The NSF National Resource Hub for STEM Education at Hispanic-Serving Institutions

New Mexico State University, Las Cruces NM

Investigators

Abstract

The Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program (HSI Program) aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims. This collaborative project at New Mexico State University, Dona Ana Community College, and California State University, Northridge, will advance the aims of the HSI Program by establishing the NSF National Resource Hub for STEM Education at Hispanic-Serving Institutions. This HSI Resource Hub will help HSIs develop the strategies and processes to obtain the resources needed to improve the quality and outcomes of undergraduate STEM education. It will also support efforts to build institutional capacity for advancing the STEM careers of students and faculty at HSIs. The HSI Resource Hub aims to achieve these goals by building a national network of all HSIs; providing training, mentorship, and peer review to improve grant-writing practices; enabling institutions to identify and fill gaps in their capacity to obtain funding, and to develop administrative tools for conducting STEM research; providing training on diversity, equity, and inclusion issues relevant to STEM education; and disseminating resources that support evidence-based, inclusive teaching practices that increase student retention and graduation. This project has the potential to advance knowledge about how to enhance undergraduate STEM education, how to build research capacity, and how to obtain resources for these efforts, at HSIs and other institutions. The HSI Resource Hub aspires to reach the more than 450 HSIs in the US, with special focus on including those institutions that have received little or no prior NSF support. The project aims to build HSI collaborations that can support existing STEM research, increase STEM research capacity, and encourage implementation of leading-edge pedagogy in STEM education. Regional conferences, workshops, online networking platforms, certifications, and a mini-grant program for junior faculty will support broad participation and enhance professional expertise in writing effective grant proposals. Gap analysis and collaborations will help HSIs identify and develop the infrastructure needed to manage successful STEM research and education projects. Evaluation of the HSI Resource Hub will use quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodologies to provide data that will guide and refine the project throughout the funding period. The HSI Resource Hub activities and outcomes will be disseminated through a dedicated website, conference presentations, workshops, newsletters, publications, and social media. By uniting HSIs across the nation, the HSI Resource Hub is expected to have positive impacts on increasing the degree completion rates of students pursuing STEM degrees, thus enhancing the diversity of the US STEM workforce. 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.