2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 317: Institutional Practices to Close the Equity Gap

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

The S-STEM supported program “Achieving Change in our Communities for Equity and Student Success” (ACCESS) in STEM started at the University of Washington Tacoma in 2018 and has supported 108 students over 6 cohorts. University of Washington Tacoma has been designated an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institution (AANAPISI) due to our high proportion of racial minority and first generation college students. The program is multidisciplinary across STEM majors including Mathematics, Environmental Science, Biomedical Sciences, Information Technology, Computer Science and Systems, Computer Engineering and Systems, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Civil Engineering, with Computer Science, IT and Engineering representing 65% of ACCESS scholars to date. Program scholars receive full scholarships for their first two years, and partial scholarships for their third and fourth years. We provide a summer bridge precalculus or research experience course, and project-based Introduction to Engineering or Introduction to Research courses in students’ first year. Individual faculty mentoring, an on-campus STEM living learning community,and quarterly Success in STEM seminar courses help scholars form a cohesive community through group mentoring, to promote a sense of belonging, identity, and empowerment in the STEM community. Our S-STEM program is distinctive in focusing on pre-STEM majors in their first and second years on campus to facilitate the entry into STEM majors, and we provide mentor training for ~30-40 faculty in teaching and mentoring diverse student populations, thus impacting all students in our majors.

Our goal was to evaluate how retention and academic success of our program scholars was impacted by the program, and whether this program helps to close equity gaps for students who identify as low socioeconomic status, underrepresented minorities, women or non-binary, or first generation in college . We also evaluated the impact of the program for students before, during, and after the Covid-19 pandemic. We compared our program scholars to a comparison group of students who met eligibility requirements but did not participate in the program. Overall, program scholars had higher first and second year retention, and significantly higher GPAs, particularly for individuals belonging to groups that are historically underrepresented in STEM. Retention was markedly higher for program scholars during the pandemic, suggesting that the program may have been particularly impactful for students as they endured the emotional and financial stresses of the pandemic.

Authors

EC Cline University of Washington, Tacoma [biography]

Associate Professor in Sciences and Mathematics, and Director of ACCESS in STEM, an NSF S-STEM supported program that supports students in natural science, mathematics, and engineering at UW Tacoma.
Dr. Heather Dillon http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4467-2306 University of Washington [biography]

Dr. Heather Dillon is Professor and Chair of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington Tacoma. Her research team is working on energy efficiency, renewable energy, fundamental heat transfer, and engineering education.
Amanda K Sesko http://orcid.org/https://0000-0001-7238-8962 University of Washington, Tacoma [biography]

Dr. Sesko received her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Kansas in 2011 and is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington Tacoma. Dr. Sesko is a stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination researcher. Her work focuses on how stereotypes guide judgments of, memory for, and behavior directed at individuals belonging to stereotyped groups. For example, in her primary line of research Dr. Sesko examines the processes and outcomes of intersectional invisibility—a form of discrimination characterized by not being attended to, remembered, represented, differentiated from others, or given recognition for contributions—experienced by individual’s with multiple stigmatized identities (e.g., Black women; Sesko & Biernat, 2010, 2018).
Marc Nahmani
Dr. Zaher Kmail University of Washington, Tacoma [biography]

Zaher Kmail, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Statistics at the University of Washington Tacoma in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences’ Division of Science and Mathematics. His general areas of research are in theoretical and applied statistics with a specialization in the design and analysis of experiments. His current research focuses on causal structure modeling, optimal design and its applications, multivariate analysis, and mathematics and statistics education. In addition to applied statistics, Dr. Kmail has published in a wide variety of fields including agronomy, engineering education, special education, student success in higher education, nursing, and environmental chemistry.
Joyce Dinglasan-Panlilio
Seung-Jin Lee http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1255-0619 University of Washington, Tacoma [biography]

Seung-Jin Lee, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington Tacoma. His research focus is on the life cycle sustainability of emerging technologies, such as transportation, biofuels, green buildings, and consumer products. His tools of research include life cycle assessment (LCA), industrial ecology, material flow analysis, energy efficiency, market diffusion models, reuse and recycling, and sustainable development. He has published in leading journals in sustainability and environmental engineering, including the Journal of Cleaner Production, Environmental Engineering Science, Waste Management & Research, Journal of Industrial Ecology, International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, Sustainability, and Resources, Conservation & Recycling. Prior to his position at UWT, he was an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan-Flint (UM-Flint). During his time at UM-Flint, he was the recipient of the Dr. Lois Matz Rosen Junior Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award (2017). He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Risk Management Research Laboratory in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Emily Cilli-Turner University of San Diego
Elin A. Björling University of Washington [biography]

Elin Björling, Ph.D. is a senior research scientist and affiliate faculty member in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering. She is the co-founder of the Momentary Experience Lab, leading creative, interdisciplinary projects in social robotics and virtual reality designed to improve mental health. She is also an experienced mixed-methods evaluator helping to measure and improve programatic outcomes.

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