Pre-Alliance Planning: Working Together ? Adelante!

St Mary'S University San Antonio, San Antonio TX

Investigators

Abstract

The Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program assists universities and colleges in their efforts to significantly increase the numbers of students matriculating into and successfully completing high quality degree programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines in order to diversify the STEM workforce. Particular emphasis is placed on transforming undergraduate STEM education through innovative, evidence-based recruitment and retention strategies, and relevant educational experiences in support of racial and ethnic groups historically underrepresented in STEM disciplines: African Americans, Hispanic Americans, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Native Pacific Islanders. These strategies facilitate the production of well-prepared students highly-qualified and motivated to pursue graduate education or careers in STEM. The need for cultivating STEM talent has been well established. For the United States (U.S.) to remain globally competitive, it is vital that it taps into the talent of all its citizens and provides exceptional educational preparedness in STEM areas that underpin the knowledge-based economy. American students from diverse ethnic groups are underrepresented in STEM fields,and represent an untapped resource for the STEM workforce in the U.S. St. Mary’s University, Our Lady of the Lake University, Trinity University, and the University of the Incarnate Word, all Primarily Undergraduate Universities (PUIs) in San Antonio, aim to form a new Louis Stokes STEM Pathways Implementation-Only (SPIO) Alliance to increase the number of STEM baccalaureate and graduate degrees awarded to students that are underrepresented minority (URM) in the STEM workforce. Three institutions participating in the pre-alliance planning project are Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs). This project will focus on identifying the causes of “leaks” in the STEM pipeline by first designing a collaborative and normalized metric to track student cohorts, identifying data gaps, and conducting a needs assessment among the Alliance students to identify barriers to URM student retention in STEM. Planning activities will include several workshops over the 18-month period. This Pre-Alliance Planning project seeks to ultimately increase the preparedness of URM students in STEM fields and increase their retention, through the evaluation of potential interventions and identification of student perceived barriers to retention. With regards to analyzing retention data, the Alliance will develop a plan, which will be disseminated through the higher education landscape, to document student retention in STEM majors beyond the first year and to track URM STEM majors who enter graduate/professional school. The major outcome from this project will be the development of metrics, an evaluation design, and assessment methods to aid in development of the full alliance proposal. Dissemination of project results have the potential for customization and application to other PUI and MSI institutions in the nation. Support for this project is jointly provided by the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation and the Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) Programs in the Division of Human Resource Development (HRD) and the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE). 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.