Douglass L. Henderson - US grants

The Wisconsin Alliance for Minority Participation (WiscAMP) represents 17-bachelor degree?]granting and 17 two?]year campuses located throughout the State of Wisconsin. The overall goal for WiscAMP is to double the number of underrepresented minority students (URM) who graduate with bachelor degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The overall goals for this alliance are as follows
1) To establish comprehensive programs that support and sustain URM students in STEM disciplines at each of the institutions in the alliance.
2) To develop partnerships between two and four year institutions that allows students to move seamlessly from one institution to another.
3) Increase the faculty and staff understanding of the barriers keeping URM students from staying in or moving through STEM majors.
4) To increase the overall rate of retention of URM students in STEM disciplines, especially between the freshman and sophomore years.
5) Decrease the amount of time to graduation for URM students in STEM.

This alliance will pursue the following four objectives:
1. Extend, expand, and maintain activities that support students throughout their STEM education. This alliance intends to develop comprehensive programs that support students upon entry into the institution and throughout their STEM education.
2. Extend, expand, and maintain partnerships between two and four?]year campuses that foster connections for URM students in STEM disciplines. Based on prior results the WiscAMP will build upon and expand collaborations that assist in the transfer of students from one institution to another.
3. Strengthen alliance?]wide activities that create and sustain relationships within and between institutions. The partner institutions are proposing to build stronger relationships by reinforcing and expanding alliance?]wide activities.
4. Continue to collect data that informs and guides programmatic efforts. Collecting, analyzing, and presenting data about our alliance is in itself transformative therefore this alliance will continue to collect aggregate data for the improvement of the evaluation process.

Intellectual Merit. WiscAMP spent the first 4 years forging partnerships and establishing processes for communication and collaboration across geographically dispersed and mission?]driven organizations. Based on prior results the Mid-level WiscAMP is proposes to support, strengthen and expand evidence?]based practices known to reduce the rate of attrition and time to graduation. A major priority for this Mid-level phase is reducing the rate of attrition between freshman and sophomore year and increasing the number of URM graduates progressing toward the professoriate.

Broader Impacts. WiscAMP will support both education of individual URM students and innovative programs at alliance schools to meet its goals. The short-term outcome will be an increase in the racial/ethnic diversity of students graduating with degrees in STEM majors from WiscAMP partner schools. The long-term outcome will be greater ethnic and racial diversity among academic and government leaders in STEM. WiscAMP could serve as model for other states in increasing the number of URM STEM graduates.

Dr. Douglass L. Henderson has been Chair of the Engineering Physics department since 2001. Prior to that, he served as Associate Dean of the College of Engineering from 1995-2001. Dr. Henderson has made significant contributions to mentoring of students and faculty, specifically underrepresented minorities, in engineering and the sciences from pre-college, undergraduates, and graduate students to young faculty. Dr. Henderson's innovative creation of the University of Wisconsin Graduate Engineering Scholars (GERS) program is the prime example of his dedication to mentoring students in the university environment, and diverse student populations in particular. The diversity program at the University of Wisconsin is intellectually robust and the GERS program in particular is a unique mentoring program that cuts across all engineering disciplines and connects to the physical sciences, biological sciences and mathematics. Dr. Henderson has graduated almost two dozen Ph.D. and fifty M.S. students of diverse backgrounds, a truly phenomenal record. With his outstanding record as GERS program director, as well as in his role as Associate Dean of Diversity at UW, he is the consummate mentor at all levels, from individual students to faculty and administrators to institutions. Dr. Henderson's efforts in creating the GERS program is unique, stands as a transformative organizational concept to address the recruitment, retention and graduation of under-representative minorities in the STEM fields, and is a great example for other major research universities to follow. The programs and activities that Dr. Henderson has developed in support of mentoring students of diverse backgrounds have broad impact in two ways. First, many consider the program to be the Gold Standard in engineering mentoring, in terms of how to successfully recruit and retain such students at a major Research-I university. It is being imitated nationally. Second, the GERS program has been a great example for how to improve their success in other areas of STEM, the biological sciences, the physical sciences, and the social sciences. Dr. Henderson has been the key individual at the University of Wisconsin in developing similar programs across the UW campus.

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.

The Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program assists universities and colleges in diversifying the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce through their efforts at significantly increasing the numbers of students from historically underrepresented minority populations (African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, American Indians or Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians or Other Pacific Islanders) to successfully complete high quality degree programs in STEM. The program also supports research in broadening participation in STEM.

The Wisconsin Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (WiscAMP) is a consortium of 13 public 4-year institutions, 4 private institutions (1 of which is a Hispanic Serving Institution), and one technical college. The STEM Pathways and Research Alliance will pursue the dual goals of 1) broadening participation in advanced STEM degree career pathways and 2) transforming WiscAMP institutions to support and sustain diversity across and throughout our alliance. Specifically, the alliance will increase the number of students completing their baccalaureate degrees in STEM by 75% by ensuring direct support for underrepresented ethnic/racial minority (URM) students to engage in STEM faculty-mentored research at all 18 alliance institutions and connect students with innovation and entrepreneurship experiences during the project period. A major research and evaluation component undertakes a series of studies to develop and test interventions to reduce gaps in retention and academic performance between URM and Non-URM STEM majors. The proposed research will establish what form of intervention matters (instructor focused, resilience focused, or peer-focused) with respect to URM student persistence and academic performance in STEM courses. Successful strategies will be widely disseminated throughout the alliance and nationally.

The proposed WiscAMP program and evaluation activities are based on established theories of institutional change, social capital, social psychology, and adult learning. The proposed series of studies will provide new and compelling evidence about what type of intervention can have a significant impact on disparities between URM and non-URM students in STEM courses. The research design capitalizes on the size, diversity, and engagement of the alliance institutions. The interventions will be easily disseminated and adapted to other institutions. As a STEM Pathways and Research Alliance, WiscAMP will make important contributions to the STEM workforce and the science of broadening participation. The proposed programs will significantly increase the number of URM students graduating with baccalaureate degrees in STEM and prepared to engage in STEM innovation and entrepreneurship, pursue graduate training, and transform the national and state workforce. The proposed research will provide easy to implement, adapt, and disseminate strategies thus helping institutions to support student success in STEM and transform the cultures of STEM disciplines to be more inclusive of the diversity that drives innovation.

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.