Pilot program aims to diversify STEM fields
For decades, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields have been some of the most stubbornly homogenous worldwide. Women, minorities, and people with disabilities are particularly underrepresented in the workplace, a problem that originates in their lack of enrollment in STEM programs at universities.
A new pilot program at the University of Pittsburgh is hoping to reverse that trend by building a better pathway into these fields using existing pre-college programs that target students from the city. Harnessing the leadership of the University's five STEM-related schools, Pitt’s initiative is part of a broader plan by the National Science Foundation known as INCLUDES, which is helping to fund the initial two-year phase of the project.
In 2017, the NSF awarded 27 grants for INCLUDES. After the initial two years of development, the NSF selects candidates to move forward with additional awards for the next level, which involves developing a national model, says Alison Slinskey Legg, senior lecturer and director of outreach programs for the Dietrich School’s Department of Biological Sciences and principal investigator of the Pitt program.
“What we’re really focusing on is that for decades, universities – us included, as well as CMU and Duquesne – have made attempts at broadening participation in STEM,” says Legg, who runs a summer program for high school students who work in a lab full-time on current research projects at Pitt.
The problem with this and other similar programs is that even though students develop important competencies and help advance college-level research, those factors don’t count during the admissions process. Rather, the emphasis is placed on SAT scores, which are less predictive of success in STEM fields, Legg notes.
The aim of the Pitt project is to create pathways that travel from communities where underrepresented students live through the pre-college programs and then into undergraduate admissions. In addition to engaging more students, the project also wants to define the competencies necessary for success in STEM fields, credential those programs according to those competencies, and develop metrics that factor those into admissions decisions along with SAT scores and grades.
“What are the valid predictors of success in a STEM field, and how do you account for that in your admissions process?” is how Legg summarizes the program’s objective.
In addition to Legg, the project has four co-principal investigators and involves four existing pre-college programs: biological sciences, engineering, computing and information sciences, and health sciences. In total, five schools from Pitt are represented. An advisory board composed of different stakeholders will guide the work, including senior leadership from Pitt, Carnegie Mellon University, and Duquesne, as well as Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent Anthony Hamlet.
Carnegie Mellon and Duquesne faculty who run precollege programs at those universities are participating in case they decide to offer a similar process in the future.
“We hope that over time, this helps us to develop a network of urban STEM ecosystems that are all advancing this work,” Legg says.
The project follows four strategic initiatives:
- Modeling a community engagement framework by surveying current and past students to determine how programs are perceived and accessed;
- Developing a set of metrics for students and staff that identify what competencies are important for success in STEM fields;
- Aligning and credentialing each individual pre-college program to build a credentialing system based on those metrics; and
- Creating an admissions model that factors a student’s performance in a pre-college program when considering his or her application to the university.
The pilot also hopes to model a community framework that examines best practices for advertising pre-college programs, recruiting participants, measuring community impressions and determining how well the programs are meeting needs. Pitt is developing a “heat map” of where its pre-college programs are targeting students and where they aren’t.
The project’s ultimate goal is to perfect a blueprint that can be duplicated nationally, thus creating a collective impact that will result in meaningful change.
“Our biggest strength in having any success with this comes back to this idea of collective impact,” says Legg, who is excited to be working with colleagues who have been addressing the same problem, albeit from different vantage points, for years.
“It can be a little intimidating, but when I look at the team that’s been assembled, it’s exciting.”