ABSTRACT

This National Science Foundation Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) award to the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) will create a new educational program of self-advocacy to help students from underrepresented minority (URM) groups increase doctoral program completion in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. URM students enroll in and complete PhD degrees in STEM at a much lower rate than majority groups; they also often face what educational researchers refer to as ?climates of intimidation? within higher education and STEM. This project?s goals are to support students? empowerment, agency and authenticity for academic success and social integration into STEM. This will be accomplished with a training program that translates the evidence-based findings of the learning disabilities communities to promote self-advocacy and positively impact the retention and academic success of URM PhD students. This IGE will address whether teaching self-advocacy increases the academic success, social integration and general well-being of URM PhD STEM students, and thereby lead to improvements in doctoral degree attainment.

A comprehensive review of evidence-based practices for teaching self-advocacy within the learning disability communities found that there are three critical factors that, when combined, result in increased academic success: empowerment, self-awareness, and social justice. Self-advocacy has been shown to increase students? retention during critical transitions to post-secondary education or increase participation in learning STEM disciplines, while also increasing academic success. Thus, the research hypothesis is that teaching self-advocacy will result in improved academic success, improved social integration, and improved health and well-being for URM STEM graduate students at UIC, many of whom are first generation or low-income. The societal impact of this grant will be a successful graduate education program that is inclusive of URM students and that will inform on a broader scale how to increase participation of URM graduate students in STEM disciplines. It is anticipated that the translation of evidence-based educational practices from the learning disabilities communities will serve as a foundation for teaching self-advocacy to URM STEM graduate students, and further the translation of these practices to other student populations and fields at UIC and other institutions of higher learning that want to increase the academic success of their URM graduate students. This work will also add to the needed scholarship on the factors that impact resilience of URM STEM PhD graduate students and how self-advocacy affects their academic success and health/well-being.

The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

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