#WeHBSeeU: Examining the Impact of a National Social Marketing Campaign in STEM on Broadening Participation and STEM Identity Development

The Historically Black Colleges and Universities - Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) is committed to enhancing the quality of undergraduate STEM education and research at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in order to broaden participation in the nation's STEM workforce. Accordingly, HBCU-UP supports the project from the Quality Education for Minorities Network (QEM), which aims to implement a strategic social marketing campaign to shift social perceptions, STEM identity development, and public discourse regarding STEM innovation generated by Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The project will leverage social marketing to mitigate or eliminate documented barriers that potentially stifle broadening participation in STEM, and public awareness of STEM innovations at HBCUs. The project goal is to develop a digital dissemination platform for HBCU STEM innovation that increases the public’s awareness of HBCU STEM research and innovation while examining the impact of the platform’s social marketing campaign on STEM identity development and scientific epistemological thinking. The three objectives are to (1) increase the public perception of HBCU research and STEM innovation, (2) explore self-reported perceptions of STEM Identity, and (3) capture scientific epistemological thinking about STEM in the general public. Over the course of three years, this project will explore strategic social marketing campaigning on HBCU STEM innovation and research by exposing the public to digital streaming content, community viewings and colloquia, and listener determined podcast topics. By investigating the relationship between scientific epistemology and STEM identity with STEM-oriented social marketing campaign that highlights STEM innovation at HBCUs, the project has the potential to engage the hundreds of thousands of content consumers in discourse around STEM innovations and science topics and reveal the impact of intentional dissemination on broadening participation in STEM. 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.