HSI Pilot Project: Institutionalizing a Teaching and Learning Excellence Community of Practice focused on First-Year Student Success in STEM

With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 1 project aims to develop a new Teaching and Learning Center in Manhattan College’s (MC) Kakos School of Arts and Sciences called the Center for the Engagement of the Manhattan College Community in Scientific Inclusive Teaching (e=mc2:SIT). The goal of the Center is to build and institutionalize a sustained faculty community of teaching and learning excellence within the science faculty focused on the success of all MC's first-year STEM majors, including those from Hispanic and other groups underrepresented in STEM. The impact of the Center programming will be measured by faculty adoption of best-practices in classrooms and changes to success, retention, and persistence to graduation student outcomes. The professional development opportunities provided by e=mc2:SIT will include: (1) A year-long program to engage faculty teaching first-year, STEM gateway courses in professional development to learn about, implement, and assess scientific and inclusive teaching practices in their classrooms, (2) Supplemental Instruction (SI) peer-to-peer facilitated content review in all first-year, gateway courses, and (3) professional development opportunities to work with first-year students. The First-Year Experience (FYE) course is designed to provide first-year students with skills to enhance their academic success. Data collection for evaluation of the faculty adoption of best-practices and the impact on student success will occur through the tracking of enrollment/withdrawal data, student grades, individual faculty interviews, survey responses, classroom observations, and annual site visits to assess fidelity of program implementation and to identify opportunities for continuous improvement. It has been well established in the literature on retention that there is a major attrition point for students immediately following their enrollment in undergraduate gateway STEM courses. MC's e=mc2:SIT program will engage faculty in professional development that will ultimately result in enhanced student success as measured by a decrease in STEM gateway course drop/fail/withdraw rates, enhanced first-year student retention rates, and persistence to graduation in four to six years. The aim of this project is to broaden participation within the professional STEM workforce. 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.