2024 Collaborative Network for Engineering & Computing Diversity (CoNECD)

In November 2021, a University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES), Bowie State University (BSU) and University of Maryland College Park (UMD) coalition was awarded a planning grant by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to develop pathways to STEM M.S. and Ph.D. degrees among Black, Latinx, and Native American students. All three schools are part of the University System of Maryland (USM), the state’s public higher education system. UMD is the state’s flagship institution and the largest provider of tech workers in the national capital region. It is sixth in the nation for the number of engineering master’s degrees and eighth for engineering Ph.D. degrees awarded to African Americans. Both UMES and BSU are Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs) with a majority of Black students. This tri-institution collaboration leveraged existing relationships as an opportunity to expand current efforts to broaden participation in STEM majors and careers between UMD and the two HBCUs in the state of Maryland. The goal of this coalition was to identify barriers to pursuing and earning STEM M.S. and Ph.D. degrees faced by Black, Latinx, and Native American students from the three institutions; to identify and cultivate internal champions and mentors who can help to overcome institutional biases; and to develop a framework for these institutions to work together in creating a pathway to graduate degrees that could be extended to other institutions.
In this presentation, we will describe the findings of our research. We conducted surveys and interviews and used the data to build an understanding of the student, faculty, and administrator perspectives of the graduate school climate at UMD; we performed the analysis of 2018-2022 UMD graduate school application, admission, and enrollment data. This work helped our team to: (1) identify Faculty Champions to support and advocate for the students; (2) to develop a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for STEM programs between UMES, BSU and UMD signed by all parties to facilitate sustained effort by our coalition; and (3) to identify Pilot Undergraduate Programs to serve as Pathways to Selected STEM Graduate Programs. We will describe the recommendations of the team with respect to curriculum alignment, early undergraduate research opportunities; holistic review of graduate applications; building a more inclusive and accessible climate at UMD, and continued partnership building among the three Maryland institutions.

Authors List: Yuanwei Jin, Rosemary Parker, Jacqueline Smith, Isabel Lloyd, Jennifer Johnson, Amida Koroma