Addressing Diversity in STEM Education: Authenticity and Integration

2009 ◽  
Vol 1233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona M. Goodchild ◽  
Maria O. Aguirre

AbstractThis talk will reflect on the challenges of designing educational opportunities that broaden diversity in the ranks of future scientists and engineers. The speaker, who is Education Director at the California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will report on the design and evaluation of a program that integrates academic, career and social components to engage a community of undergraduates, graduate mentors and research faculty at UCSB. The program builds on key practices such as academic mentorship, community networking and early undergraduate research. Evaluation of this program, Expanding Pathways to Science, Engineering and Mathematics (EPSEM) indicates that it has been successful in recruiting and retaining students from under-represented (URM) groups into science, technology, engineering and math disciplines (STEM disciplines).

2015 ◽  
pp. 997-1019
Author(s):  
Reginald A. Blake ◽  
Janet Liou-Mark

The Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines have traditionally been woefully unsuccessful in attracting, retaining, and graduating acceptable numbers of Underrepresented Minorities (URMs). A new paradigm of STEM practices is needed to address this vexing problem. This chapter highlights a novel interdisciplinary approach to STEM education. Instead of being siloed and mired in their respective STEM disciplines, students integrate real world, inquiry-based learning that is underpinned by a strong foundation in mathematics and a myriad of other pillars of STEM activities. These activities include Peer-Assisted Learning Workshops, Mentoring Programs, Undergraduate Research Experiences, STEM Exposure Trips, Conference Participation, and Peer Leadership. This strategy enhances STEM education among URMs by purposefully connecting and integrating knowledge and skills from across the STEM disciplines to solve real-world problems, by synthesizing and transferring knowledge across disciplinary boundaries, and by building critical thinking skills in a manner that is relevant to their experiences and yet transformative.


1968 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 37-60 ◽  

V. H. Blackman’s academic career spanned an era during which botany became an experimental subject and the interpretation of plant behaviour in terms of contemporary chemistry, physics and mathematics was an exciting new prospect. In Britain during the latter part of the nineteenth century, as he himself remarked, classification was pursued with an enthusiasm which almost excluded other aspects of botany; a circumstance attributed to the expansion of Empire which gave access to many new floras. Blackman belonged to the generations of men whose schooling was entirely in the classical tradition but who yet became professors of science subjects. In the nineteenth century such men expected to teach and discuss every aspect of their chosen discipline and prosecution of research was not an obligation for the teacher; the incentive was curiosity and the reward intellectual. Vocational opportunities were limited to the small university community, the schools and the herbaria of the state institutions. The men who accepted these posts were usually characterized by a strict sense of duty, a high standard of integrity, and a respect for learning. In the university they had almost complete freedom of action and time to think. Blackman was a fastidious and somewhat shy man who maintained the exacting standards of such scholars. He was always immaculate in appearance, unfailingly courteous and never apparently hurried. He trusted his staff and students absolutely and in an effortless and perhaps unconscious manner exercised a remarkable and benign authority which served to impress on those who worked with him, to their lasting benefit, the value of his tenets. Vernon Herbert Blackman was born on 8 January 1872 at a house in York Road, Lambeth, near Waterloo Station. His father, Frederick Blackman, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., practised medicine in the area which included slum streets into which his sisters were not allowed.


2020 ◽  

This work originates from the conference organized by the Equity and Diversity Committee of the University of Florence and the National Conference of the Gender Parity Organisms of the Italian Universities held in Florence the 12th October 2018. The papers here collected illustrate the obstacles that women encounter in their academic career, especially in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The issues the volumes deals with are still worth taking into consideration considering that women represent only the 30% of the academic research staff at the world level and that only the 30% of women students choose STEM faculties.


Author(s):  
Reginald A. Blake ◽  
Janet Liou-Mark

The Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines have traditionally been woefully unsuccessful in attracting, retaining, and graduating acceptable numbers of Underrepresented Minorities (URMs). A new paradigm of STEM practices is needed to address this vexing problem. This chapter highlights a novel interdisciplinary approach to STEM education. Instead of being siloed and mired in their respective STEM disciplines, students integrate real world, inquiry-based learning that is underpinned by a strong foundation in mathematics and a myriad of other pillars of STEM activities. These activities include Peer-Assisted Learning Workshops, Mentoring Programs, Undergraduate Research Experiences, STEM Exposure Trips, Conference Participation, and Peer Leadership. This strategy enhances STEM education among URMs by purposefully connecting and integrating knowledge and skills from across the STEM disciplines to solve real-world problems, by synthesizing and transferring knowledge across disciplinary boundaries, and by building critical thinking skills in a manner that is relevant to their experiences and yet transformative.


2014 ◽  

Collection of abstracts from the sixth Annual Undergraduate Research Conference at the Interface of Biology and Mathematics. Plenary speakers: Joseph Tien, Associate Professor of Mathematics at The Ohio State University; and Jeremy Smith, Governor's Chair at the University of Tennessee and Director of the University of Tennessee/Oak Ridge National Lab Center for Molecular Biophysics.


Author(s):  
Joanne Pransky

Purpose – This article is a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned entrepreneur regarding the evolution, commercialization and challenges of bringing a technological invention to market. Design/methodology/approach – The interviewee is Dr Yoky Matsuoka, the Vice President of Nest Labs. Matsuoka describes her career journey that led her from a semi-professional tennis player who wanted to build a robot tennis buddy, to a pioneer of neurobotics who then applied her multidisciplinary research in academia to the development of a mass-produced intelligent home automation device. Findings – Dr Matsuoka received a BS degree from the University of California, Berkeley and an MS and PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She was also a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT and in Mechanical Engineering at Harvard University. Dr Matsuoka was formerly the Torode Family Endowed Career Development Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington (UW), Director of the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering and Ana Loomis McCandless Professor of Robotics and Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. In 2010, she joined Google X as one of its three founding members. She then joined Nest as VP of Technology. Originality/value – Dr Matsuoka built advanced robotic prosthetic devices and designed complementary rehabilitation strategies that enhanced the mobility of people with manipulation disabilities. Her novel work has made significant scientific and engineering contributions in the combined fields of mechanical engineering, neuroscience, bioengineering, robotics and computer science. Dr Matsuoka was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in which she used the Genius Award money to establish a nonprofit corporation, YokyWorks, to continue developing engineering solutions for humans with physical disabilities. Other awards include the Emerging Inventor of the Year, UW Medicine; IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Academic Career Award; Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers; and numerous others. She leads the development of the learning and control technology for the Nest smoke detector and Thermostat, which has saved the USA hundreds of billions of dollars in energy expenses. Nest was sold to Google in 2013 for a record $3.2 billion dollars in cash.


2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 135-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Gololobov

Ethnographic studies of youth subcultures, scenes and urban tribes often rely on insiders’ accounts, where researchers investigate a social environment of which they are presently or formerly members. This approach raises important questions about the positionality of the researcher, and the reflexivity, epistemology and ethics of an ethnographic investigation, as different roles and engagement with the field, as well as the very identity of the ‘field’ itself, no longer fit into the methodological framework of traditional ethnography. This article explores the difficulties that arise during ethnographic research on one's own social world. I was actively involved in the Russian punk scene before pursuing my academic career in England, and in the framework of a research project on post-socialist punk at the University of Warwick, I went back to study this milieu as a ‘field’ in two different sites in 2009 and in 2010. The article shows the complexity of researching one's own subculture and demonstrates that active discentring of the ‘knowing authority’ in studying one's own ‘tribe’ necessarily involves a transformation of its main research paradigms, where epistemological and ethical issues appear to be rearranged in a new way which radically affects the methodological foundations of such an investigation.


Pythagoras ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Murray

Over half of all students enrolling at a particular university in KwaZulu-Natal fail to complete a degree. This article is wanting to determine to what extent the marks they obtain for English and Mathematics at school impact on their probability of graduation at this university. In addressing this problem, other student specific factors associated with their gender, race and the type of school they have attended need also to be properly accounted for. To provide answers for this study, the performance of 24 392 students enrolling at the university over the period 2004 to 2012 was followed until they graduated or dropped out from their studies. A structural equation model was fitted because it allows one to separate a direct effect from that of an indirect effect. Gender, race and school background were found to be very significant with males, Black Africans and students coming from a less privileged school background having a smaller probability associated with eventually graduating from this university. Males tend to perform better than females in Mathematics, with females performing better males in English. More importantly, however, a single percentage point increase in one’s mark for English increases the probability associated with graduating from this university far more than would be the case if their Mathematics mark were to increase by a single percentage point. In the light of these mediated results, perhaps this university should be directing their efforts more towards improving the English (rather than mathematical) literacy of students entering the university.


PMLA ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 110 (4) ◽  
pp. 882-882
Author(s):  
Cyndia Susan Clegg

The association's most significant news is its change in name from PAPC to PAMLA to strengthen its identification with the Modem Language Association and to maintain the historic presence of classical languages. The association's ninety-third annual meeting will be held 3-5 November 1995 at the University of California, Santa Barbara, hosted by the College of Letters and Science with its Division of the Humanities, and cosponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the Department of Classics, the Comparative Literature Program, the Department of English, the Department of Germanic, Semitic, and Slavic Studies, and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Gerhart Hoffmeister, professor of German, is serving as chair of the local committee.


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