Abstract: Technology is quickly evolving and continues to play an increasingly important role in our daily lives. Social, political, and ethical concerns about technology, including its applications in public surveillance, violations of individual privacy, and manipulations of voting behavior, have increased in recent years. These concerns disproportionately affect racially minoritized groups, as scholar Ruha Benjamin notes in her book Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (Benjamin, 2019), and Safiya Noble describes in her book Algorithms of Oppression (Noble, 2018). Benjamin and Noble illustrate not only how technology adversely impacts racially minoritized communities, but also how racism and sexism are embedded in the production of technology. One solution to this problem is to diversify the technology workforce. As researchers like Ebony McGee note, however, the climate for minoritized groups in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) is exclusionary and hinders their capacity to thrive and earn degrees in STEM disciplines.

Abstract: Student success programs have achieved demonstrated benefits in broadening participation in geosciences and other STEM fields. These programs typically require an application from potential participants despite known challenges in recruiting students from historically underrepresented populations. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an invitational recruitment strategy for engaging undergraduate geology majors in the Geoscience Pathways program at the University of Texas at San Antonio, a large public Hispanic-Serving Institution. The program aimed to improve the academic performance and career preparedness of these majors to facilitate their transition into the geoscience workforce. This strategy involved generating a pool of students who met program selection criteria, delivering personalized paper invitations that guaranteed participation to individuals in classes, and securing their commitment to participate after a program briefing. Using paper invitations to communicate with selected students gave higher response rates about attending the program briefing than using email to reach invitees. Of the students attending briefings, nearly 90% decided to participate, with their demographics generally matching those of their peers at the same educational level. Based on focus groups and surveys, receipt of personalized invitations also positively impacted the self-efficacy and motivation of participants. Results indicate that carefully planned recruitment processes are central to developing programs to engage populations that have historically participated less in geosciences and other STEM fields. Actively working toward the participation of all students of potential can help propel underrepresented groups into a geoscience career carrying increased motivation, skills, and experience to address the projected workforce shortfall.

Abstract: This paper presents an innovative approach, applicable to all research-based fields, that identifies and broadly engages future computer science researchers. The Computing Alliance of Hispanic Serving Institutions (CAHSI) piloted a national virtual Research Experience for Undergraduates (vREU) during the summer of 2020. Funded by an NSF grant, the goal of the program was to ensure that students, in particular those with financial need, had opportunities to engage in research and gain critical skills while advancing their knowledge and financial resources to complete their undergraduate degrees and possibly move to advanced studies. The vREU pilot provided undergraduate research experiences for 51 students and 21 faculty drawn from 14 colleges and universities. The Affinity Research Group (ARG) model, based on a cooperative learning model, was used to guide faculty mentors throughout the eight-week vREU. ARG is a CAHSI signature practice with a focus on deliberate, structured faculty and student research, technical, communication, and professional skills development. At weekly meetings, faculty were provided resources and discussed a specific skill to support students’ research experience and development, which faculty put into immediate practice with their students. Evaluation findings include no statistical difference in student development between the face-to-face and virtual models with faculty and the benefit of training as an opportunity for faculty professional growth and impact. This faculty development model allows for rapid dissemination of the ARG model through practice and application with weekly faculty cohort meetings, coaching, and reflection.

Abstract: Background: Noncognitive and affective (NCA) factors (e.g., belonging, engineering identity, motivation, mindset, personality, etc.) are important to undergraduate student success. However, few studies have considered how these factors coexist and act in concert. Purpose/Hypothesis: We hypothesize that students cluster into several distinct collections of NCA factors and that identifying and considering the factors together may inform student support programs and engineering education. Design/Method: We measured 28 NCA factors using a survey instrument with strong validity evidence. We gathered responses from 2339 engineering undergraduates at 17 U.S. institutions and used Gaussian mixture modeling (GMM) to group respondents into clusters. Results: We found four distinct profiles of students in our data and a set of unclustered students with the NCA factor patterns varying substantially by cluster. Correlations of cluster membership to self-reported incoming academic performance measures were not strong, suggesting that students’ NCA factors rather than traditionally used cognitive measures may better distinguish among students in engineering programs. Conclusions: GMM is a powerful technique for person-centered clustering of high-dimensional datasets. The four distinct clusters of students discovered in this research illustrate the diversity of engineering students’ NCA profiles. The NCA factor patterns within the clusters provide new insights on how these factors may function together and provide opportunities to intervene on multiple factors simultaneously, potentially resulting in more comprehensive and effective interventions. This research leads to future work on both student success modeling and student affairs–academic partnerships to understand and promote holistic student success.

Abstract: To identify and broadly engage the next generation of computer science researchers, the Computing Alliance of Hispanic Serving Institutions (CAHSI), an NSF INCLUDES Alliance, piloted a national virtual Research Experience for Undergraduates (vREU) during the summer of 2020. Funded by an NSF RAPID grant, the pilot provided undergraduate research experiences for 50 students and 20 faculty drawn from 20 colleges and universities widely distributed throughout the continental U.S. and Puerto Rico. The program used the Affinity Research Group (ARG) model to guide faculty mentors throughout the experience. ARG is a CAHSI signature practice with a focus on deliberate, structured faculty and student research skills development. At weekly meetings, Drs. Morreale, Villa, and Gates discussed and provided resources for specific skills that were appropriate at a specific point in time of a student’s research experience. Faculty mentors put skills development into immediate practice throughout their summer research program.