Nurturing a Community of Praxis among Grant Leadership: Supporting STEM Faculty/Educators’ Mindset Shifts through Student Centered Reflexivity
- Conference
- Location
-
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
- Publication Date
-
June 22, 2025
- Start Date
-
June 22, 2025
- End Date
-
August 15, 2025
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
-
Faculty Development Division (FDD)
- Tagged Topic
-
Diversity
- Page Count
-
5
- Permanent URL
-
https://peer.asee.org/57009
Paper Authors
Janet Rocha Arizona State University
Janet Rocha, Ph.D, is the Associate Director of Research at the Center for Broadening Participation in STEM (CBP-STEM), Arizona State University. Her leadership vision involves the sustained development of mindsets and behaviors that centers students in the decision making process. She is responsible for uplifting institutional agents’ assets and strengths while enhancing their diverse toolkits through personalized professional development opportunities that will continue to nurture student-centered initatives across their respective institutions.
Justin A Estevez Miami Dade College
Justin Addison Estevez is a STEM Grant Manager at Miami Dade College, where he has successfully managed grants for three years. In addition to this role, he serves as the Experiential Learning & Eastern Hub Coordinator for the ALRISE Alliance, contributing as a co-author on a recently awarded half-million dollar NSF grant. A first-generation college student, Justin earned his BA in Economics from St. John's University and CUNY Queens College while funding his own education.Before his current position, Justin spent eight years as an asset manager for the second-largest property management firm in New York City. He also owns and operates a small business. His diverse experiences in both corporate and higher education allow him to effectively act as a boundary broker, facilitating collaboration between industry and educational institutions. Justin identifies as a bi-racial Latino and is passionate about enhancing Latinx representation in STEM and fostering meaningful partnerships that benefit students and the community.
Genesis Lastrella-Quicho
Abstract
Work-in-Progress (WIP) Research Paper: Through a Community of Praxis (e.g., reflection and action) this counter-space brought together leaders from a federally funded project to critically reflect, analyze, and implement the “Seed to Flower” (S2F) framework into action, which comprises of six principles: consciousness, student-centeredness, data-powered insights, asset-based framing, boundary brokering, and reflexivity. The grant leaders, hereafter referred to as coordinators, work directly with faculty and educators within their Hispanic Serving Institutions to assist and guide their grant efforts, including implementing a Student-centered experiential learning program for STEM students. This session focuses on one of the various tangible tools used in the grant to improve the student-centeredness of an EL program, known as the Student Centered Reflexivity worksheet (López & Rocha, 2024), guided by the S2F framework. This collaborative action research will highlight the coordinators’ journeys, where they examine their grant experiences by engaging in critical self-reflection moving from awareness to action to achieve collective transformation with their faculty/educators. In this session, we will present preliminary findings where the audience will learn how these coordinators engaged with the following: (a) unpacked, identified, and facilitated their understanding of the S2F framework; and (b) identified strategies to incorporate with their faculty/educators to improve the student-centeredness of experiential learning (EL) programs. This interactive session will provide the opportunity for attendees to engage with the Reflexivity worksheet and discuss their initial reactions to the S2F framework. The session will conclude with a few examples of student-centered strategies for the audience to consider in their STEM initiatives to enhance STEM pathways for students.
Rocha, J., & Estevez, J. A., & Lastrella-Quicho, G. (2025, June), Nurturing a Community of Praxis among Grant Leadership: Supporting STEM Faculty/Educators’ Mindset Shifts through Student Centered Reflexivity Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada . https://peer.asee.org/57009
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2025 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015