An Active Learning-based Educational Program for Hispanic STEM Students through Industry-University Partnership

California State University-Long Beach Foundation, Long Beach CA

Investigators

Abstract

With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM education: Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 1 project aims to train skilled Hispanic STEM students to address the diversity issues in human resource development in the state of California and the Nation. This will be achieved by increasing the qualifications and marketability of the students through creating a meaningful industry-university partnership. Employing the capacity of the program over the next five years, ~120 participating students will benefit from an active learning approach through conducting an applied research, guided by a team of mentors from both academia and industry. Furthermore, the program seeks to improve the retention and graduation rate of participants by (a) providing direct guidance from faculty mentors, (b) fostering motivation factor by enhancing their qualifications towards their future employment, (c) providing financial support to minimize the negative impact of their socioeconomic challenges. Furthermore, the faculty mentors will benefit from an opportunity to expand the scope of their research beyond their traditional scholarly activities. From a technological/economical point of view, the program aims to contribute to the advancement of industrial partners by providing low-cost solutions to their challenges. Moreover, the industrial partners will have access to the low-cost state-of-the-art instrumentation in the faculty mentors’ research laboratories and in the shared facilities of the university. The enterprises will also benefit from having direct access to a skillful and well-trained workforce. In addition, this program will contribute to the various societally important growing problems i.e. environmental and energy related challenges, telecommunication and transportation infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing. This project will provide insight into effective program design related to the employment and retention of Hispanic students in STEM fields. The industry and university mentor-partnership design will contribute to understanding of the role that mentorship plays in Hispanic students’ persistence in STEM fields. Moreover, the proposed activities in this program will lead to a better understanding of the impact of the joint mentorship (from a holistic point of view) on Hispanic students’ success, both academically and professionally. More specifically, the impact of individual components of the program on students’ success will be assessed, which will in turn provide insight into the development of best practices related to mentorship. The program will also advance knowledge about the effects of teamwork on Hispanic students' academic success, as well as their overall personal and professional developments. The curriculum and workshop materials will be posted on the program website to be available for the public use. Knowledge generated from the evaluation and conducted research will serve as a foundation for building effective departmental or college wide cooperative programs that fulfill institutional goals of time to degree and student engagement. These findings will be presented in national conferences and will be published in peer-reviewed educational journals. The 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 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.