Developing and Studying a Research Experience Pathway to Improve Undergraduate Life Sciences Education at a Rural Hispanic Serving Institution

New Mexico Highlands University, Las Vegas NM

Investigators

Abstract

With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 1 project aims to increase persistence of life sciences majors through the critical transition from lower to upper division coursework. The project is led by New Mexico Highlands University, a rural Hispanic Serving Institution. Reflecting national trends, this university notes significant loss of students early in their college years. These loses may result in part from incompletely understood psychosocial factors that affect first-year college students’ decisions to pursue and persist in STEM majors. To help fill this knowledge gap, the project team will examine how students’ science identity, sense of belonging, and science self-efficacy affects their educational decisions. The project aims to increase student success through a pathway of high impact research experiences starting with a summer bridge program and extending through the upper division curriculum. The research pathway is intended to include all students and to reflect diverse student interests. A novel component of the project is the opportunity for undergraduate interns to partner with different community organizations to design course-based undergraduate research experiences for introductory life science courses. The project aims to provide a testable model for creating early undergraduate research, community, and near-peer experiences that support development of students’ sense of belonging, identity, and self-efficacy within life sciences programs. The project will develop a student research pathway with early, integrated, and culturally informed research experiences within the STEM community designed to increase success for life sciences majors. Over five years, the project will measure the impacts of community-based culturally informed research experiences on the success of life sciences majors. The project will focus on examining the roles of student-developed interests, understanding, and appreciation of science in student persistence and success. The project will use student interviews to identify project activities that effectively promote and support student engagement in science. This project will build capacity in effective teaching and mentorship for STEM faculty at New Mexico Highlands University and community partners by providing biannual equity and inclusion training workshops. Research pathway activities will start with incorporation of internship-based classroom undergraduate research experiences (ibCUREs) into all introductory life sciences courses. To develop ibCUREs, community STEM partners will collaborate with faculty and rising sophomore students in a Summer Science Challenge Academy, a rising junior summer internship program, and the development of ibCUREs that embed student voices and cultural perspectives. This project will result in the creation of a culturally informed and community-based STEM research pathway model that might be applied to other STEM education programs. More than a thousand first year students will participate in the ibCUREs in introductory life science courses, thus enhancing the quality of their STEM education. At least 150 sophomores and juniors will participate in other components of the project, including the Summer Science Challenge Academy and internships. This project will generate new knowledge about how to increase retention and persistence of undergraduate STEM students, particularly Hispanic students and rural students who comprise a large proportion of the student population at New Mexico Highlands University. 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.