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An Institutional Transformation Model to Increase Minority STEM Doctoral Student Success

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Conference

2019 CoNECD - The Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity

Location

Crystal City, Virginia

Publication Date

April 14, 2019

Start Date

April 14, 2019

End Date

April 22, 2019

Conference Session

Track : Graduate - Technical Session 7

Tagged Topics

Diversity and Graduate Education

Page Count

13

DOI

10.18260/1-2--31743

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/31743

Download Count

389

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Paper Authors

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Marcia Gumpertz North Carolina State University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-8170-1874?lang=en

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Marcia Gumpertz is professor of statistics at North Carolina State University. She serves as PI of N.C. State's NSF AGEP project, AGEP North Carolina Alliance: An Institutional Transformation Model to Increase Minority STEM Doctoral Student and Faculty Success. This is a collaborative project with North Carolina A&T State University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

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Rebecca Brent Education Designs, Inc

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Rebecca Brent is President of Education Designs, Inc., a consulting firm located in Chapel Hill, N.C. She is a certified program evaluator and a faculty development consultant. Brent received her B.A. from Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss., her M.Ed. from Mississippi State University, and her Ed.D. from Auburn University. She was an Associate Professor of education at East Carolina University before starting her consulting firm in 1996.

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C. Dean Campbell North Carolina A&T State University

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Dr. Dean Campbell has served as Assistant Dean for Academic Services in the Graduate College at North Carolina A&T State University since 2012. This role includes work as part of the AGEP Alliance NC leadership team.

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Maureen Grasso North Carolina State University

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Maureen Grasso former Dean of the Graduate School at North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia has over 16 years as a dean in graduate education. She worked with faculty and students to improve and enhance mentoring. Grasso was an active participant in the Council of Graduate School’s ”PhD completion project”, The Commission on “Pathways Through Graduate School and into Careers” and the Advancement Advisory Committee. She was a founding member of the CGS Advisory Committee on Advocacy and Public Policy.
Grasso served as President and Past President of CSGS and in 2009, She received the CSGS Award for Outstanding Contribution to Graduate Education in the Southern Region. She served on the National Academy of Sciences committee on “Revitalizing Gradute Stem Education for the 21st Century.”

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Yvette Maria Huet University of North Carolina, Charlotte

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Yvette Huet is Director of the ADVANCE Faculty Affairs and Diversity Office and a Professor of Kinesiology at UNC Charlotte. She has worked with and created a variety of workshops for faculty, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, and current and future leaders and provided professional development consultation to faculty. She has provided training at UNC Charlotte and other programs and institutions across the country, many with current or previous ADVANCE grants, that addresses best practices in recruitment, inherent bias, communication, mentoring and reappointment, promotion and tenure in the academia.

She graduated with bachelor’s degrees in Microbiology and Human Biology from the University of Kansas and a Ph.D. with Honors in Physiology from the University of Kansas, Medical Center. She went on to a postdoctoral fellowship at Monsanto Company in Chesterfield, MO and then to UNC Charlotte. She was tenured and went on to be a Full Professor in the Biology Department at UNC Charlotte, she has been Director of the Interdisciplinary PhD program in Biology as well as the Health Services Research Doctoral program. She was the Faculty Development Coordinator in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Interim Chair of Kinesiology. She continues as a Professor of Kinesiology and has been Director of the ADVANCE Faculty Affairs and Diversity Office for over 10 years. Her research is in the areas of Endocrinology, Reproductive Biology and Sexually Dimorphic Disease as well as on Mid-Career Mentoring.

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Keith A. Schimmel P.E. North Carolina A&T State University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-4048-7250

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Keith Schimmel is an Associate Professor of chemical engineering, Director of the Applied Science & Technology PhD Program, and Education Director for the NSF CREST Bioenergy Center at North Carolina A&T State University.

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Abstract

An Institutional Transformation Model to Increase Minority STEM Doctoral Student Success

Keywords: Graduate, Race/Ethnicity, Faculty

One of the major barriers to increasing the percentage of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty in STEM fields is the small number of URM applicants for academic positions. Recent studies have shown that African-American and Hispanic/Latinx students make up only 2.7% and 3.3%, respectively, of doctorates granted in STEM disciplines in the U.S. Additionally, the 2-year attrition rate of URM doctoral students is nearly 50%, substantially greater than the rate for non-URM students at most institutions. This presentation reports on an effort by an alliance of three North Carolina public universities to develop, implement, and test a model to improve these URM outcomes.

The project involves adapting and implementing research-based institutional change strategies that positively impact URM graduate students in STEM disciplines. Each participating department has a volunteer faculty member interested in URM success issues designated as a "AGEP-NC Faculty Fellow." The Fellow receives support and training on mentoring, the experiences of underrepresented minority students, and on fostering change. First, the Fellows introduce their departmental colleagues to best practices in supporting URM students in PhD programs. Together with their department head and director of graduate programs, they work with the faculty to understand graduate student pathways, identify practices and policies that promote success, and diagnose trouble spots. Based on this study of the graduate student experience in their own department, the faculty then develop a departmental diversity plan to build these insights into departmental practices and procedures.

This presentation will overview the project design for the 5-year program, share materials used in the Faculty Fellow training, and summarize preliminary findings from surveys regarding attitudes and perceptions of the faculty and graduate students in the Year 1 cohort of six departments. The project is supported by the NSF AGEP (Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate) program.

Gumpertz, M., & Brent, R., & Campbell, C. D., & Grasso, M., & Huet, Y. M., & Schimmel, K. A. (2019, April), An Institutional Transformation Model to Increase Minority STEM Doctoral Student Success Paper presented at 2019 CoNECD - The Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity , Crystal City, Virginia. 10.18260/1-2--31743

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