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HOWARD HUGHES MEDICAL INSTITUTE SYMPOSIUM:
Lessons Learned: Student Engagement and Faculty Buy-in Are Keys to Success
The fourth diversity symposium, held at HHMI headquarters in January 2008, brought together a cross-section of participants to share the lessons they had learned in several important areas—how to support and engage students, use data effectively, and encourage faculty and administration to buy into the programs' goals. The participants had attended one or more of the previous three diversity conferences.
In a plenary session on Monday, January 28, representatives from six institutions—Bates College; Kenyon College; University of California, Irvine; Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi; University of Delaware; and Emory University—described initiatives that had been influenced by ideas discussed at earlier symposia. "We all tried new things, came up against challenges, and then found ways to solve them," says Craig Woodard of Mount Holyoke College, a symposium organizer.
Supporting students
Luis Mota-Bravo, director of the University of California, Irvine (UCI) Minority Science Programs (MSP), emphasized the value of mentoring students to their academic success. MSP was built on an earlier program that included academic preparation and research experiences for undergraduates; in 2005, it incorporated intensive mentoring and career advising by program staff. That year, the numbers of URM students entering Ph.D. programs after graduating from UCI shot up from 1 to 2 students per year to 8 students in 2005 and 12 in 2006, decreasing slightly to 11 in 2007.
Another thing that Mota-Bravo says he learned is that the education and training of program staff is critical. "For the program coordinator positions, I have hired Ph.D.s," says Mota-Bravo. "The typical model of other programs is to hire a coordinator with a baccalaureate, not necessarily in the sciences. However, a coordinator with a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences is better trained to provide the right mentoring, motivation, and advice to students interested in pursuing a biomedical research career."
Getting faculty buy-in
Representatives of two colleges described successful ways to engage faculty in URM programs. Since many programs depend on faculty to teach courses, act as advisers to students, or host students in their labs to conduct research—often on a volunteer basis—recruiting faculty is a priority.
Pamela Baker, director of faculty research and scholarship at Bates College in Maine, helped start a six-week summer "bridge" program for URM students, a program designed to better prepare them for the transition to campus life and to college academic styles and expectations. Because Bates, like many private liberal arts colleges, has no summer semester, it was at first difficult to recruit faculty to teach summer courses. She discovered that having the course count toward a faculty member's teaching load for the year was more important than offering a stipend.
Gregory Buck, an assistant professor at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi, described some of the initial hesitation from faculty and administration when the Alliance for Minority Participation (AMP) program tried to introduce undergraduate research in 1994, before Buck joined the university.
Former dean Diana Marinez and professor Suzette Chopin solved the problem by convincing administrators to grant faculty release time from their heavy teaching loads. In addition, they hired new faculty members, including Buck, who were on board with the idea of having undergraduates conduct research. Buck and others wrote grants to purchase research equipment for the university and help put in place some of the infrastructure needed to conduct undergraduate research. "Faculty soon found that students can generate research that can be used in grants," says Buck.
Using data effectively
Patricia Marsteller, program director for the Hughes Undergraduates Excelling in Science (HUES) program at Emory University, says the biggest lesson she learned from the diversity symposia was to "use data to obtain institutional buy-in at the top and the bottom."
HUES provides a mix of academic and personal advice to URM students throughout their Emory careers. In addition, it includes a week-long summer institute preceding the freshman year to help prepare students for what lies ahead. Since its launch in 1995, the program has increased the number of URM students graduating in science fields from 3–4 percent to 10–12 percent.
By carefully tracking students and their accomplishments, Marsteller was able to convince Emory University administrators to start funding the program in 2006. With the remaining funds from the HHMI grant that had previously supported HUES, Marsteller will expand the program to include first-generation and socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Marsteller says the HUES program has undergone several changes as a result of the information provided at the diversity symposia, including expanding supplemental instruction for students, providing training for faculty on inclusive teaching and mentoring, and creating a "retention task force" for supporting URM students beyond the sciences.
Getting students to participate
Several speakers described programs that address URM students' social needs by decreasing the sense of isolation that often prevents these students from staying in science. The HHMI-funded NUCLEUS program at the University of Delaware provides URM students with "a network of support and an environment that will foster academic success," says associate professor David Usher. The program, which is open to all students with an interest in science fields, includes academic advice and supplemental instruction, as well as peer mentoring and tutoring. To encourage students to participate, Usher has started asking them to sign a contract requiring them to take part in various activities and, among other requirements, to maintain a 2.75 minimum GPA.
In addition, NUCLEUS provides summer undergraduate research activities at the University of Delaware for all the state of Delaware's minority-serving institutions, as well as Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.
Paula Turner, associate provost of Kenyon College, contends that programs structured as remedial courses discourage student participation. "It is important to keep the feel of the course as close to the genuine experience at the college," says Turner, who has been running a summer bridge program for 12 URM students for the past decade. "If it is not as engaging or demanding [as a regular course], they feel that you have done a bait and switch."
In addition to offering academic instruction, the Kenyon program involves students in peer study groups and facilitates their engagement with faculty—activities in which most successful students at Kenyon routinely participate. "We try to make all those elements part of the summer experience, so that these are habits that the students will get into," says Turner.
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