Hi all!

Below are the readings for the journal club/ tag-up on Wed Aug 21. 

We are focusing on best practices for undergraduate research experiences as a way to engage and retain students from minority backgrounds in STEM fields. We’d like to discuss how to extend these experiences to more students from diverse backgrounds, and - drawing on Spark’s expertise in K-12 - explore how to build a pipeline into research, reaching students before they enter college.

This discussion will be informed by one paper and two program websites.

1a) Please read pages 1-9 of Pender, M. et al, 2010: The STEM Pipeline: The Role of Summer Research Experience in Minority Students' PhD. Aspiration. This paper provides a good overview of the current research on SOARS-like programs, and used data from the Meyerhoff Program (see 1b) for its analysis.

1b) Next, check out the Meyerhoff program. It is well recognized as a model for successful program design for broadening participation in STEM.

http://umbc.edu/meyerhoff/about_the_program.html

You could explore the website in depth, but please review at minimum the program’s key components.

http://umbc.edu/meyerhoff/program_key_components.html

2) Discussion: Are there benefits in extending the undergraduate research/ mentoring program model to the pre-college and K-12 community? What would that look like?

For ideas and discussion points, please review the STEMPREP project at the Distance Learning Center as an example of a K12-College mentoring program. Note that the website has links to brochures and videos.

http://www.thedistancelearningcenter.org/

Have time for some more reading?

An interesting NY Times article on reaching students as young as in middle school as a way to increase minority enrollment in college. 

Nice quick summary paper and argument for engaging students at the high school level: Russell et al., 2007: Benefits of Undergraduate Research Experiences.

For more ideas you could review a successful program run in Puerto Rico. This program sends us pre-college students every summer to do research at NCAR.

http://ccce.suagm.edu/Pre_College/index.asp

For more background reading on minority participation and recommendations on strategies and program design, you can read in a 2011 National Academies of Science report: Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America's Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads.

Meeting notes

Spark Tag Up Summary, Undergraduate Summer Research Internships and Minority 21 August 2013

Wendy’s notes, with enhancements by the meeting lead, Rebecca Haacker-Santos

• A question was asked as to whether SOARS models the Meyerhoff approach and the answer was that it seems that most of the successful programs figured out the most important elements fairly independently AND that they are documented in the 2004 BEST Report.
• We discussed that a common “criticism” of diversity focused bridge programs with SRIs (Summer Research Internship) is that perhaps only the very best students are picked and they would be successful anyway. Actually research shows that even highly talented students from diverse backgrounds have a higher chance of dropping out of the pipeline than students from majority backgrounds.
• We discussed pros and cons of how early one could/should start internship programs with points like, if you start earlier, perhaps girls are still in the pipeline before opting out, if you start too early, or late, they or other minorities might not yet or still see themselves as having a career in science.
• Bec shared with us that it is known that minorities and 1^st generation college students are often lost in the pipeline at transition points because they don’t know how to navigate them and don’t have the help they need. This is a success of SOARS because it invests a lot of energy in assisting with transitions, especially undergrad to graduate school! Bridges are important. We discussed this in terms of some of our own experiences too.
• A question was asked as to how many students leave SOARS and why. The numbers are very low (retention rate is 92%). If they do leave is usually because they discover that research is REALLLY not for them. Even less commonly, they leave because they do not meet expectations.
• Wendy pointed out the part of the paper that said that moving students from the “periphery” to “full membership” of the science is called out as important and that we at Spark can apply this concept to our proposals and work in all our efforts including formal and informal ed. Student opportunities of all types contribute to bringing students toward membership and seeing themselves as scientists.
• Given the 13 key components of the Meyerhoff program, we wondered which of the 13 would/should be applied at different grade levels, and what could even be afforded if we extended SOARS-like opportunities to earlier ages (like the Distance Learning Center which starts in 7^th grade.) We didn’t answer this, but agreed it should be looked at!
• We discussed the importance of a pipeline for student opportunities (and again not losing students at transitions.) ACTION: We agreed we should all work more toward identifying and promoting pipelines for students from our contact with them in middle school potentially through ASP!
• “Race to the Top” states also don’t have fleshed out plans for a pipeline, and we should get involved!
• Teri pointed out the new push by the “Colorado Legacy Foundation” and ACTION: Emily C-A said we should get absolutely get engaged. Teri will share more info through this wiki.
• We discussed both recent success of former SOARS protégés now in their own institutions having leadership roles and standing up SRIs.
• We agreed this is AWESOME AND, we agreed we need to have a role in somehow keeping these groups connected, and support institutional buy in which is critical to their long term success.
• We shared that it is known that minority students are known to have been less attracted to geosciences because it isn’t as obvious how to give back to their communities like say, medicine. However, this is changing with environmental impacts felt more on both rural and poorer urban communities (e.g. climate impacting communities).
• We readily agreed that SOARS has an exciting story to tell and ACTION: it’s time again to get our results documented in the literature with an evaluation and peer reviewed publication, preferably with outside authors.