Manuela Romero, Ph.D. - US grants

PROJECT SUMMARY
What is the intellectual merit of the proposed activity?
Wisconsin (WI) is a state with a rapidly changing ethnic and racial demography. The number of Hispanics has more than doubled in the last decade to over 200,000, there are over 400,000 acres of American Indian tribal lands, and 25% of the nearly one million residents in the large urban area around Milwaukee are African American. While not counted in tallies of underrepresented minorities for this proposal, WI also has the third largest population of Hmong in the United States, a group also underrepresented in higher education. This proposal would establish the Wisconsin Alliance for Minority Participation (Wisc-AMP)through the NSF Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) Program. Wisc-AMP brings together 21 public and private institutions of higher education in Wisconsin committed to collectively doubling the number of underrepresented minority students (URMS) receiving baccalaureate degrees in science and engineering majors. Wisc-AMP partners are also committed to the more fundamental goal of transforming the culture of our institutions to support and sustain diversity at all levels. The University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) will be the lead institution. Few universities can equal UW-Madison's capacity to enroll large numbers of students or match the breadth and depth of its cutting-edge research rograms in science and engineering. Through individual interviews, data gathering, and document analysis, it was determined that the support provided through LSAMP would be best leveraged in two ways: 1) address retention and persistence of URMS in science or engineering majors at UW-Madison by expanding and improving on successful models already in place and 2) build the alliance. The initiatives at UW-Madison focus on several aspects of academic enhancement especially in the gatekeeping courses with new efforts to tutor not only those struggling but those who can be pushed to excellence as well as an enhanced summer research experience that encourages undergraduate students to share personal experiences and scientific inquiries with a network of peers and trains graduate students to be more effective mentors to undergraduate URMS. Alliance building involves several efforts aimed at developing a Network of Champions at participating sites as well as a Small Grants Program to facilitate collaboration and encourage individual partners to customize initiatives to their local environments. Wisc-AMP will be administered jointly by the Diversity Affairs Office and the Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute in the College of Engineering at UW-Madison. A Governing Board consists of Provosts/Vice Chancellors/Presidents from Wisc-AMP partners, students, an industry representative, and selected academic and community leaders in education and research. Increasing the recruitment and retention of URMS in science and engineering with the goal of transforming the institution involves buy-in from many departments and units. Therefore, at UW-Madison, the Provost is the principal investigator and two well-respected faculty members are co-principal investigators, faculty in prestigious positions are members of an internal Advisory Committee, staff who have been in the trenches working on the issues and administrators from the Admissions Office and the Registrars Office who are at key student entry points are involved as co-investigators or advisors. Formal evaluation of Wisc-AMP will use quantitative and qualitative methods to identify if and how well the goal of the program is met and which aspects of Wisc-AMP work.

What are the broader impacts of the proposed activity?
As the United States becomes an increasingly diverse society, it is imperative that institutions of higher education train a similarly diverse workforce. NSF has publicly proclaimed its commitment to broadening opportunities and enabling participation of all citizens as essential to the health and vitality of science and engineering. By investing in efforts to increase the number of URMS graduating with baccalaureate degrees in science or engineering, this proposal directly aligns with NSF's goal. Project innovations will be disseminated locally through meetings, discussions, and presentations; regionally through the alliance structure; and nationally through publications in scientific journals, proceedings of scientific meetings, and participation in annual LSAMP meetings. The results of Wisc-AMP's formal evaluation can be used to continue or re-direct proposed efforts and to advise developing alliances on successful and unsuccessful elements of each initiative.

College of Menominee Nation (CMN), together with the University of Wisconsin Madison and the
University of Wisconsin Platteville, is applying to the National Science Foundations Science, Tribal
Colleges and Universities Program (TCUP) Pre-engineering Education Collaborative grant to strengthen
CMN?s capacity to establish CMN as an Associate Degree granting engineering program of distinction. .
The CMN PEEC: Providing for the Education of American Indian Engineers collaborative project
proposes the following objectives:
 To build CMN?s capacity and infrastructure to sustain a Pre-engineering Associate Degree Program.
 To implement a Pre-engineering program of distinction.
 By September 2015, to graduate at least twenty students from CMN?s pre-engineering program and
transition into U.W. Madison?s and U.W. Platteville?s engineering programs.

Project Intellectual Merit: This project recognizes and embraces diversity and the role Tribal Colleges
play in coordinating demonstrative research on increasing the participation of underrepresented minorities
in STEM fields. Tribal Colleges are key contributors to the body of knowledge on American Indians.
Project research, data, and outcomes focused in the ultimate outcomes of increasing the number of and
performance of American Indian students in engineering, leading to increased numbers of American
Indians in engineering careers, will provide key nationally recognized research. This collaboration will
develop, apply and assess evidence-based practices shown to increase the participation of
underrepresented minority students in science and engineering. Furthermore, the partnership between
CMN and its UW partners is tailored to establish robust connections between institutions that will serve as
a model for the engineering community in general and other minority-serving institutions as we assess,
document and disseminate the success of this process.

Project Broader Impact: This project will build upon the research of previous STEM activities, continuing
the investigation of essential research in discovering and understanding how Tribal Colleges and the
unique strategies they implement promote education in minority students. The project further advances
the research of American Indian undergraduate education in engineering and contributes to the global
body of knowledge in underrepresented minority engineering education. The short term outcome of this
effort will be to increase the knowledge, understanding and interest in engineering among students in
rural populations, with emphasis on the American Indian population of Northern Wisconsin. The long
term outcome will be an increase in the participation of American Indian students graduating with degrees
in engineering. This will ensure that the voices, perspectives and talents of a population that is so
underrepresented in engineering have an opportunity to contribute to the development of the engineering
profession.

The Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program assists universities and colleges in diversifying the STEM workforce through their efforts at significantly increasing the numbers of students successfully completing high quality degree programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Particular emphasis is placed on transforming STEM education through innovative recruitment and retention strategies and experiences in support of groups historically under-represented in STEM disciplines: African-Americans, Alaskan Natives, American Indians, Hispanic Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Native Pacific Islanders.

The Wisconsin Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (WiscAMP), led by the University of Wisconsin(UW)-Madison, consists of 13 four-year UW campuses (Eau Claire, Green Bay, La Crosse, Madison, Milwaukee, Oshkosh, Parkside, Platteville, River Falls, Stevens Point, Stout, Superior and Whitewater); 4 private (not for profit) schools (Alverno College, Beloit College, Lawrence University and the Milwaukee School of Engineering); and 2 two-year institutions (Madison Area Technical College (Madison College) and UW-Rock County, 1 of 13 UW-College campuses managed as a single institution in the UW-System).

As a senior alliance, WiscAMP capitalizes on its momentum toward achieving the twin goals of broadening participation in advanced STEM degree career pathways and transforming WiscAMP institutions to support and sustain diversity across and throughout the alliance through the following program objectives: (1) doubling the current number of URM students who graduate with STEM baccalaureate degrees, (2) doubling the current number of WiscAMP students who enter STEM graduate programs, and (3) tripling the number of STEM faculty in the alliance who adopt evidence-based broadening participation practices in their research mentoring and/or classroom instruction. Undergraduate students, including community college students, participate in STEM recruitment and retention interventions such as faculty-mentored undergraduate research, graduate school preparation, summer research experiences, including international experiences abroad as appropriate. Faculty are involved in producing evidenced-based broadening participation research to increase the body of knowledge in retaining underrepresented minority students in STEM fields.

The Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program assists universities and colleges in diversifying the STEM workforce through the development of highly competitive students from groups historically underrepresented in STEM disciplines: African-Americans, Alaska Natives, American Indians, Hispanic Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Native Pacific Islanders. The goal of the LSAMP Bridge to the Doctorate (BD) Activity is to increase the quantity and quality of STEM graduate students from underrepresented populations, with emphasis on Ph.D. matriculation and completion. BD programs implemented in the nation's institutions of higher education contribute to addressing one of the objectives in NSF's 2014-2018 Strategic Plan, namely to "integrate education and research to support development of a diverse STEM workforce with cutting-edge capabilities." Since national security and economic vitality of the United States require a highly trained domestic STEM workforce, institutions engaged in the most advanced levels of research and innovation must do their part to train tomorrow's leaders in STEM. The Wisconsin LSAMP BD (WiscAMP-BD) Program builds on the growing diversity of undergraduate students who are completing their Baccalaureate degrees in STEM. The strategies employed by the WiscAMP-BD Program will contribute significantly to increasing the diversity of leaders in academia and the STEM workforce, thereby helping the nation to remain globally competitive.

The WiscAMP-BD program is based on established theories of identity development and integration, adult learning and career development, and institutional change and has the following objectives:
1) To recruit and enroll a cohort of twelve students into any of the 54 STEM doctoral programs at UW-Madison;
2) To pair each of the students who are strong candidates for graduate study and are underrepresented in STEM with faculty mentors who are engaged in cutting-edge research and committed to mentoring students from underrepresented populations;
3) To establish a community of practice for WiscAMP-BD students to support the development of eight core competencies and their persistence to the doctoral degree.

A goal of the Tribal Colleges and Universities Program (TCUP) is to increase the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) instructional and research capacities of specific institutions of higher education that serve the Nation's indigenous students. The PEEC-II track provides support for studies or educational research conducted by institutions that have had earlier Pre-Engineering Education Collaborative (PEEC) awards. The intent of PEEC-II is to capture, analyze, and disseminate the impact of these awards on the participating institutions, faculty, or students, and their communities. PEEC and PEEC-II are partnerships between TCUP and the Directorate for Engineering.

The College of Menominee Nation (CMN) and the University of Wisconsin Madison (UWM) will build on the results of infrastructure and partnership development funded in their initial PEEC award to strengthen the pathways for students working to earn a bachelor's degree in engineering. They will address the intriguing question of what factors affect American Indian student educational both decisions to start and motivation to complete a degree in engineering. The project has three aims that include 1) addressing environmental support for Native students at UWM, 2) building student self-efficacy in areas relevant to engineering degree completion, and 3) improving understanding of how Native American student values influence educational and career development decisions.

The intellectual merit within the collaborative proposal is the investigation of evidence-based interventions for both students (e.g., self-efficacy development, skills training) and institutions (e.g., bias training for faculty). The project will also investigate the impact of student values on career development decisions, something that could change national models of how these decisions are supported and understood. This is on top of the development of the capacity to support American Indian students seeking and earning bachelor's degrees in engineering. The broader impact of the project is the potential increase in the number of American Indian students earning engineering degrees, increased awareness of STEM (particularly engineering) careers amongst American Indian K-12 students through outreach activities, and the clear potential impact of this model of student/institution interventions and how they may affect understanding of Native American decision making related to STEM careers.