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Broadening Access to STEM and Geoscience through Support for the Whole Student
- 1. This work is supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) collaboration between the Directorates for Education and Human Resources (EHR) and Geosciences (GEO) under grant DUE - 1125331 SAGE 2YCSupporting and Advancing Geoscience Education in Two-year Colleges Broadening Access to STEM and Geoscience through Support for the Whole Student John R. McDaris – SERC, Carleton College Cathryn A. Manduca – SERC, Carleton College R. Heather Macdonald – College of William and Mary This work is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) by grants from the Division of Undergraduate Education to the InTeGrate Project (DUE 1125331) and to the SAGE 2YC Project (DUE 1122592, 1122640, 1122660, and 1122737)
- 2. Current Demographics SAGE 2YC 2002 2012 Change All BS Degrees 1,308,970 1,810,647 +38.3% STEM 415,983 589,330 +41.7% Geoscience 3,984 5,865 +47.2% Geoscience (Minority) 534 1,152 +115.7% Growth in BS Degrees: 2002-2012 Minority share of Geoscience BS Degrees: 2002 – 13.4% 2012 – 19.6% Minority share of college enrollment: 2000 – 29.2% 2011 – 38.8% Percentage of women (Geoscience BS) 2002 – 42.7% 2012 – 39.1% Based on data from: National Science Foundation - Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering and National Center for Education Statistics – Fast Facts
- 3. Many Kinds of “Underrepresented” SAGE 2YC • ethnic and racial minorities • women • cultural minorities • first generation college students • people with disabilities • veterans and active duty military personnel • people of low socioeconomic status • LGBTQ individuals • other groups that are not represented in the geosciences in proportion to their abundance in society.
- 4. Support the Whole Student SAGE 2YC
- 5. Supporting the Whole Student SAGE 2YC Jolly, E.J., P.B. Campbell, L. Perlman (2004). Engagement, Capacity and Continuity: A Trilogy for Student Success. A Report Commissioned by the GE Foundation. http://www.smm.org/static/about/ecc_paper.pdf Engagement: Having an orientation to the sciences and/or quantitative disciplines that includes such qualities as awareness, interest, and motivation Capacity: Possessing the acquired knowledge and skills needed to advance to increasingly rigorous content in the sciences and quantitative disciplines Continuity: Institutional and programmatic opportunities, material resources, and guidance that support advancement to increasingly rigorous content in the sciences and quantitative disciplines The ECC Model
- 6. SAGE 2YC Strategies for Stimulating Engagement Providing Research ExperiencesCreating a Sense of Community Engaging Societal Issues Info on Geoscience Careers
- 7. SAGE 2YC Strategies for Developing Capacity
- 8. SAGE 2YC Strategies for Supporting Continuity Practice Good Advising and Mentoring Support for Geoscience Transfer Students
- 9. Whole Student at Program Level Attract New Students: How does a program attract new students into college degrees which contain substantial geoscience content? Support through Graduation: What kinds of support structures are in place to help students be successful in reaching their degree? These could be, financial, academic, social, etc. Prepare for the Workforce: What are students being prepared to do when they graduate? What aspects of your program help them get there?
- 10. Whole Student at Program Level MSI Total Institutions Those with “geo-like” degrees HBCU 107 18 17% HSI 367 120 33% Tribal College 32 12 38% 508 150 30%
- 11. The Website Survey 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 Soil Science Paleontology Oil and Gas Technology/Petroleum… Oceanography Natural and Physical Sciences Mineral Engineering Marine Science Hydrology and Water Resources Geophysics Geology/Geoscience/Geological Science Environmental Sustainability Environmental Science Environmental Geology Environmental Engineering Earth System Science Earth Science/Geoscience Education Earth Science Earth and Planetary Science Earth and Environmental Science Civil and Environmental Engineering Atmospheric Science and Meteorology Number of Degrees Distribution of Degree Program Titles AA AS AAS AST BA BS Minor/Cert Unknown Degree Type
- 12. The Website Survey 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 Physics Interdisciplinary Geo/Env Engineering Chemistry Biology Number Distribution of Academic Units 0 5 10 15 20 Water Resources Management Oil and Gas Technology Geology/Geoscience/Geological… Geography and Geo*/Env* Geography Environmental Science/Studies Earth, Space, and Environmental… Earth, Space, and Aviation Science Earth, Environmental, and Geospatial… Earth Systems Science and… Earth Science Earth and the Environment Earth and Planetary Science Earth and Environmental Science Earth and Atmospheric Science Number Geo/Env Academic Units 0 5 10 15 20 25 Technology STEM (2 or more of S,T,E, or M) Science and Environmental Policy Science Physics and Geo* Physical Science Physical and Earth/Env* Physical and Biological Science Natural Science Natural Resources Math and Physics Interdisciplinary Programs Biology and Geo*/Env* Arts and Sciences Agriculture and Environmental Science Number Interdisciplinary Academic Units
- 13. Program Profiles
- 14. SAGE 2YC Program Profiles Attracting Minority Students: • Both kinds of institutions do Outreach to High School teachers and students but MSI report doing so at almost twice the rate. • MSIs report a larger emphasis on Career Options available in the geosciences than non-MSIs. • Both types of institution use Introductory Courses to attract new majors. Supporting Majors: • Funding and Academic Support are reported more often by MSIs but are strong for both categories. • Sense of community and Mentoring and Advising are reported more often by non-MSIs but are strong for both categories. Preparing Students for Careers/Higher Degrees: Research Opportunities are use by both kinds of institution, but MSIs report more extensive use than non-MSIs. In addition: • MSIs report an emphasis on Internships and Real-world Experiences, and Courses Teaching Specific Skills. • Non-MSIs report an emphasis on Networking and Recruitment Events, and Comprehensive Curricula.
- 15. SAGE 2YC Questions? SAGE 2YC Supporting the Whole Student serc.carleton.edu/sage2yc/studentsuccess/whole_student.html InTeGrate Supporting the Whole Student serc.carleton.edu/integrate/programs/diversity/whole_student.html This work is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) by grants from the Division of Undergraduate Education to the InTeGrate Project (DUE 1125331) and to the SAGE 2YC Project (DUE 1122592, 1122640, 1122660, and 1122737)
Editor's Notes
- Need 10-13 slides (13 minutes + 2 minutes questions)
- Here you can see some basic enrollment statistics from the National Science Foundation and the National Center for Education Statistics. Note that NSF considers “geoscience” to include atmospheric sciences, Earth sciences, and ocean sciences. It is unclear where environmental science falls in their classification, but it may be included under Biology. On the surface, these numbers look encouraging. Over the decade between 2001 and 2011, the total college enrollment went up from roughly 10 million to roughly 13 million; an increase of about 30%. All of these categories of BS degrees grew by a larger percentage than enrollment. And the minority share of Geoscience BS degrees went up by over 6%. But the total minority enrollment in colleges went up by almost 10%. So we’re growing but still falling behind in graduating minority students. Another interesting feature of the data from this decade is that the percentage of women entering geoscience has dropped by almost 4 percent. It is unclear if this due to a flood of new male graduates or women moving to other disciplines or some combination of both.
- But race/ethnicity is only one measure of diversity. There are many ways students can be “diverse” in our programs. Diversity of culture, diversity of race or ethinicity, diversity of experience, gender, sexual orientation… If we want to change the perception of STEM in general, and geoscience specifically, as the province of old white guys, we have bring in voices from all segments of society and all walks of life.
- The reasons why any student doesn’t enter and succeed in STEM are various and can include things like underpreparation in science and math, family pressures or expectations, or the lack of a recognizable role model in their discipline. Many of these factors are complex and interrelated. It isn’t feasible to create programs that address each issue separately or support each student population individually. But initiatives with a holistic approach have shown success in supporting all students through to graduation, particularly those with significant obstacles. These programs support the Whole Student, going beyond just what happens in the classroom.
- The ECC model was formulated by Jolly and others in 2004 and has three critical components. - Engagement - Capacity - Continuity Each of the three components are necessary but not sufficient to ensure that students persist in STEM disciplines. It’s the combination of the three that creates the right conditions for their success.
- “Engagement” is the awareness of, and interest in, STEM fields as well as the self-motivation to succeed in them. Supporting Engagement includes issues such as: Geoscience Careers – Many students, especially those at two-year colleges, are looking for a good-paying, high-status job that will enable them to support their families. Geosciece and STEM have many such opportunities that we can share with them as a way to keep them engaged. Societal Issues – Many of today’s students are motivated to solve big problems facing humanity. Geoscience knowledge is central to many of these issues. Sense of Community – Building a sense of community in your department or program can help students feel like they belong in science. Undergraduate Research – Research experiences are a great way for students to learn the culture of science and develop valuable (and marketable) skills.
- “Capacity” refers to skills and knowledge needed to successfully advance to more rigorous levels of study. The geosciences abound in real-world, interdisciplinary problems that help students learn how to think like a scientist. Academic support systems are also crucial, from tutoring centers, to faculty familiarity with issues facing English language learners, or strategies for countering stereotype threat and solo status. All of these efforts increase students’ capacity for success.
- “Continuity” refers to institutional/programmatic systems that support student advancement in STEM disciplines. For example, good advising is essential if students are to know about, much less use, the academic support systems that exist on your campus. And Mentoring programs, whether form or informal, greatly strengthen the growth of students as professionals in the sciences. And Strong support for transfer students provides bridges between institutions which can offer the best chance for a successful transition between schools.
- Switching gears a bit, what does Supporting the Whole Student look like at larger scales? In thinking about working at the programmatic level, it’s helpful to recast things some. From this new perspective, Student Engagement can be thought of as Attracting New Students to the program. Supports that help students successfully complete degrees are analogous to ensuring continuity. And making sure that students are prepared to be productive members of the workforce is a capacity-building activity. The literature has suggestions for the kinds of departmental practices that contribute to these different components. But we were interested in knowing more about what kinds of activities were going on in institutions currently.
- The first piece of this effort was to know the lay of the land. Given that one of the objectives of InTeGrate is to broaden access to learning about the Earth to students from traditionally underrepresented groups, it made sense to start by understanding how students learn about the Earth at Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). So in the summer of 2013, I downloaded the federal listings of Historically Black College and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges – those being three well-defined, easily accessible sets of MSIs. After that, I applied some brute force to the problem – I went to the website for every institution on those lists. Just over 500 in total at the time. I was looking for degree programs with a significant geoscience content. Not just traditional geo degrees in traditional geo departments, I wanted to find programs that were what I thought of as “geo-like” – environmental science, soil science, meteorology, sustainability, oil and gas engineering, etc. All those things require Earth science knowledge, but may not be located in Geology departments. What we found was 150 different institutions with at least one “geo-like” degree program. Which was surprising given that the common wisdom is that since these schools often don’t have geoscience departments they probably don’t have geoscience degrees.
- Digging into the degrees more, we found that there are indeed geoscience degrees. And Environmental science degrees and lots of others as well that require significant knowledge about the Earth. Here you can see the distribution of degree titles and levels that we found. Geo and Enviro dominate the picture, but they aren’t the only game in town.
- So what is the source of the surprise or disconnect? We looked at where these degrees are located and found that there are a number of traditional geoscience departments in these schools (predominantly in HSIs as it turns out). But there are more “geo-like” degrees being offered in non-geo or interdisciplinary departments which might be completely invisible if we are expecting the name of the academic unit to be a good proxy for whether or not there is a geo-like degree present at an institution
- To better understand the nature of these programs, InTeGrate conducted interviews with schools in each group, focusing on their strategies for attracting, supporting, and preparing minority students for careers in the geosciences. These interviews were used to create profiles of the institutions for the InTeGrate website. In addition, participants at a 2014 InTeGrate Broadening Access to the Earth and Environmental Sciences workshop also completed program profiles for their institutions. Which gave us a final collection of 34 profiles encompassing 16 from MSIs and 17 from Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs).
- We used a qualitative analysis approach that involves a constant comparison method to identify emergent themes and here you can see some of the results.
- All of these resources and many others can be found on the project websites listed here. Thanks to NSF for funding these efforts and thanks to my colleagues in both projects for their continued amazing work.