| NSF Org: |
DBI Division of Biological Infrastructure |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 12, 2016 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | September 12, 2016 |
| Award Number: | 1649161 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Sophie George
DBI Division of Biological Infrastructure BIO Directorate for Biological Sciences |
| Start Date: | October 1, 2016 |
| End Date: | September 30, 2019 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $299,975.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $299,975.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
201 PRESIDENTS CIR SALT LAKE CITY UT US 84112-9049 (801)581-6903 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
75 South 2000 East Salt Lake City UT US 84112-8930 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Eddie Bernice Johnson INCLUDES |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.074 |
ABSTRACT
This innovative research project promotes the progress of science, enhances the national STEM workforce, and benefits society by helping to overcome the challenge of broadening participation of those who are underrepresented in STEM fields. Although many programs designed to broaden participation exist, few individuals in "STEM-disenfranchised" populations -- individuals who feel alienated, marginalized, or incapable of participating in STEM -- choose to make use of these opportunities, due mainly to their own self-identities. This project's focus is on three STEM-disenfranchised groups: 1) adults who have been recently released from incarceration; 2) youth who have been released from juvenile custody; and 3) refugee youth, and builds on existing science education programs. The research team will establish the "Alliance to Strengthen the STEM Tapestry (ASSiST)" -- with members from academia, workforce agencies, NGOs, and government agencies -- to explore how individuals who have an identity prematurely tied to failure in science might benefit from novel interventions that promote a shift of self-identity to becoming science learners, which will then lead them to explore STEM education and job training resources that already exist. Three novel interventions will involve drama activities, story- telling, and ecological restoration projects. This bold approach is designed to help these populations interweave their diverse ways of knowing with STEM workforce, higher education, and to become science-aware citizens, which will enhance U.S. leadership in STEM. ASSisT will create a strategic plan that can be interwoven with those of other NSF INCLUDES Alliances, and identify pathways to distribute outcomes to a national level. This work will provide pathways to bring other groups that are disenfranchised and who -- if motivated and directed -- could strengthen the STEM workforce and education tapestry.
Investments to broaden participation in science in the USA have supported abundant programs and resources, but few individual in "STEM-disenfranchised" populations -- individuals who feel alienated, marginalized, or incapable of participating in STEM -- choose to make use of these opportunities, due most significantly to their own self-identities. The proposed "Alliance to Strengthen the STEM Tapestry (ASSisT)" will carry out research on novel interventions that are designed to lead these individuals to avail themselves of the science education and training resources that already exist. The initial focus is on: 1) adults who have been recently released from incarceration; 2) youth who have been released from juvenile custody; and 3) refugee youth. Using a collective impact approach, ASSisT will carry out early-exploratory research to investigate how the project's novel interventions -- 1) ecological restoration, 2) story-telling/autoethnography, and 3) devised theater -- might shift participants towards self-identification and subsequent involvement with the STEM community. The Intellectual Merit of our approach is grounded in social science research, specifically, identity theory, social cognitive theory, and resilience theory. Using a one-group pretest-posttest design, qualitative research techniques will identify which elements are most critical to foster change, e.g., perceived competence in STEM subjects, congruence of self-perception with those in STEM, mastery of STEM workforce skills, and/or the importance of being a STEM-aware citizen. Broader impacts relate directly to NSF's call for greater STEM participation of women and underrepresented ethnic and socioeconomic minorities with impacts on the initial 30 cohort members for this pilot project. ASSisT will: create a common agenda; recruit cohorts of each STEM-disenfranchised group; design and implement research to test novel interventions; populate a STEM opportunities map; evaluate and analyze outcomes; articulate a strategic plan that can be interwoven with those of other NSF INCLUDES Alliances; and identify pathways to disseminate outcomes and benchmarks to a national level.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
In 2016, the University of Utah (UU) received funding from to create the “Alliance to Strengthen the STEM Tapestry (ASSisT)” project. The NSF INCLUDES program encourages utilizing collective impact approaches (through a common agenda, shared measurements, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communications, and backbone support organizations) to broaden participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics at scale. The ASSisT project focused on two “STEM-disenfranchised” groups—adults recently released from incarceration (hereafter, “adults”), and refugee youth —and provided them with experiences aimed at positively influencing their STEM identity. These experiences included ecological restoration, applied theater and narrativeintervention. The project engaged five adults and 20 refugee youth in ecological restoration programming at a local community garden and along the Jordan River, and in applied theater at the UU. A small sub-set of each group (three adults and six refugee youth) also participated in narrative research near the end of the participants’ time in the program. The project also engaged a broader Alliance of representatives from a wide range of organizations in the greater Salt Lake City region to initiate the creation of a “tapestry” of STEM opportunities in the region.
The project was successful in truly broadening participation in STEM, through engaging different groups of audiences in innovative programming. The project faced significant hurdles in working with these populations and learned a great deal about how to recruit and retain the participants, and how to develop and implement programming that works for these audiences. The data show that the programming had a positive effect on both the adult and refugee cohorts’ self-efficacy with regard to science, on their confidence and communication skills, and on their view of themselves as being able to do science and contribute to society. One of the key reasons the project was able to have these impacts was due to the participation of faculty and project leaders in an equal way, learning alongside participants in both the ecological restoration and applied theater portions of the programming. In addition, the research findings that emerged from the narrative intervention work about curiosity, and the negative memories connected to curiosity for these audiences, is likely of interest to the broader field, and worthy of further investigation. Finally, the creation of the Alliance as a result of the program is important infrastructure for future work with STEM-disenfranchised audiences in the region.
Last Modified: 01/27/2020
Modified by: Nalini Nadkarni
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