HSI Pilot Project:Diversificadas y Valientes (DIVAS) in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Environments

With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 1 project aims to increase the self-efficacy of Latina STEM Students. Even though Latinas account for 9% of the United States population and have enormous contributions to the country's labor force, studies exploring their potential in STEM-related fields are limited. More importantly, interventions to tackle the gendered social norms that Latinas encounter to follow STEM careers with a focus on measuring their self-efficacy in mathematics, are basically non-existent. To fill this gap, the project proposes to scale up a prior intervention study focused on female STEM undergraduate Latinas that demonstrated that online mentoring and social networking increased their self-efficacy, motivation, and intentions to persist. To tackle the low numbers of Latinas in STEM the project aims to (1) study in-depth the STEM female undergraduate students’ self-efficacy levels, focusing on their math self-efficacy across the curriculum; (2) create a hybrid community including mentoring sessions and mentor-mentee groups to connect professionals and undergraduate students across STEM fields through a network of higher education institutions; and (3) create an online toolbox/website for empowering Latinas. The framework for this project design is Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory (SCT) which demonstrates the reciprocal connection of human cognition, behavior, and environment to determine the ability to self-beliefs when performing tasks and activities. The project will determine key principles that positively impact the perception of females' role, knowledge, and experience in STEM academic and professional pathways with a strong emphasis on what works to increase the mathematics competencies of our students. This will be a living experiment where the DIVAS community will support each other and strengthen the Latinas' participation in HSIs. The project will directly train 90 DIVAS and impact more than 1,000 Latinas via the utilization of the website/ toolbox. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims. 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.