Being Human in STEM 2020 Conference

Amherst College, Amherst MA

Investigators

Abstract

This project aims to support the national need for increased student success in undergraduate STEM education. It will do so by organizing a conference on Being Human in STEM (HSTEM). HSTEM began at Amherst College in response to student calls for greater inclusion and sense of belonging in their academic experiences. Students at the participating institutions, especially students from underrepresented groups, have described the many challenges they face as they pursue a pathway in STEM. In response, the institutions developed and refined the HSTEM model for inclusive STEM curriculum. The HSTEM model incorporates specific teaching practices, together with a course about inclusion and diversity research, and student-led projects focused on STEM education. HSTEM teams investigate the experiences of diverse students in STEM courses and labs, seeking to understand challenges and best practices on their own campus and in other educational environments. Since it was developed in 2016, the HSTEM program has been adopted by seven other institutions. More than a dozen additional colleges have asked about how to establish HSTEM initiatives on their campuses. The 2020 HSTEM conference will help the HSTEM program leaders to develop shareable HSTEM program resources, develop new partnerships and implementation models, design plans to evaluate HSTEM impacts on students and faculty across institutions, and explore strategies for sustaining the initiative. As their student populations become increasingly more diverse, colleges and universities are interested in strategies and interventions that can increase the success of all students. HSTEM initiatives have the potential to engage a critical mass of students, faculty, and staff in seeding inclusion principles throughout higher education institutions. Because they promote the ability of faculty, students, and staff to learn together and share experiences, HSTEM courses and pedagogical practices enable conversations about diversity and inclusion across traditional boundaries. Students become co-creators of knowledge alongside their instructors and institutional changes can be aligned with student needs and experiences. The 2020 HSTEM Conference will convene HSTEM leaders and student partners from Yale and Brown Universities, Amherst and Williams Colleges, and the University of Utah. Conference sessions will refine and standardize strategies for assessing the success of HSTEM programs, determine how to best implement the program across different institutional settings, and lay the groundwork for sustaining the program and expanding it to other institutions. After the conference, participants will collaborate to increase access to HSTEM resources by establishing systems and tools for national dissemination and contributing to a publicly available online repository. Conference participants will also formulate guidelines for other institutions to adopt the model and work to develop a more formal network of HSTEM institutions. The conference structure is designed to accomplish these goals via the following components: workshop sessions to engage in analysis of shared and unique features of HSTEM models across partner campuses; panels of student HSTEM partners to reflect on future opportunities to enhance the HSTEM model to better serve student success needs; an external keynote speaker who is a nationally recognized STEM inclusive pedagogy expert to ground and expand the conversation; and visioning sessions with regional diversity and inclusion experts to consider how to sustain, assess, and expand the HSTEM initiative. This project is funded by the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources. 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.