2025 Collaborative Network for Engineering & Computing Diversity (CoNECD)

Agriculture & Nutrition for Girls While Encouraging Leadership & Stem-Enrichment (ANGELS) Program

Presented at Track 7: Technical Session 1: Agriculture & Nutrition for Girls While Encouraging Leadership & Stem-Enrichment (ANGELS) Program

The Agriculture & Nutrition for Girls While Encouraging Leadership & Stem-Enrichment (ANGELS) Program was held at the University Tennessee at Chattanooga in the Summer of 2023. This program was funded by the US Department of Agriculture’s Women and Minorities in STEM (WAMS) program (Award #2022-04279). The goal of the ANGELS Program is to complement traditional and non-traditional STEM-education with experiential agricultural, nutritional and project management activities to help create a successful middle school to college pathway leading to STEM-related careers.
Project Directors accomplished the goals by delivering an interactive STEM curriculum with complementing experiential agricultural, nutrition, and problem-solving activities for six weeks. Fifteen (15) middle school girls were exposed to accomplished females in STEM-related fields through speaker workshops. We also hosted a STEM from Dance Workshop called “Breathe” that included building a lung model and introduced a participant-led, choreographed dance routine that was performed for the parents after the ANGELS Summer Pilot concluded.
The effectiveness, feasibility, and acceptability of the ANGELS Summer Pilot was assessed through summative and process evaluations by an external evaluator using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Summative evaluation results indicated an increase in respondent’s perceptions of being in an environment that is supportive of science careers. Participants perceived that learning about nutrition and food security was the most important takeaway from ANGELS, while learning about and exploring different types of colleges helped them to develop bonds with new people. The ANGELS Summer Pilot provided opportunities for adults and students to improve their communication skills and deploy conflict resolution techniques.
The ANGELS Enrichment Program commenced in the Fall of 2023 providing project management tools and techniques that encouraged a participant-developed project that addressed food security issues. Teams worked together to identify areas in need, determine the most practical items to place in their meal kits, and successfully deployed the ANGELS Thanksgiving Meal Project. Additional lessons learned and recommendations for future summer bridge programs were developed while navigating the day to day interaction with fifteen middle school girls.
As a result, we recommend repeating the pilot but on a smaller (4-week) scale and with a focus on STEM education by introducing the ANGELS Beta Summer Camp. This Summer Camp will commence in June of 2024 to emphasize the need to encourage proper social interactions as educators during the teaching and learning processes while adhering to the ANGELS Program’s original goals. During the ANGELS Beta Camp, we will expand participants’ social and mentor networks. Additional pre- and post-assessments will help us determine their engineering identity and engineering communal values. This CoNECD presentation will discuss the importance of connecting academia and the community as it relates to diversity in education.

Authors

Dr. Sandra C Affare http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9530-2102 University of Tennessee at Chattanooga [biography]

Dr. Sandra C. Affare is an Adjunct Professor in the Engineering Management and Technology Department at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC). Teaching at UTC is a surreal opportunity as she obtained a B.S. in Engineering and MBA with a concentration in Production and Operations Management there. She earned a doctorate in Industrial and Systems Engineering with a concentration in Engineering Management from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
Dr. Affare served as a Project Engineer and Project Manager at Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) where she managed research and development projects for TVA’s Transmission Technologies and eventually became a Senior Compliance Analyst until retirement in July 2014. After retirement, Dr. Affare was a project management consultant in transportation and logistics for a few years until she began her second career in higher education.
As an engineering professor, her research focuses on increasing the number of women in STEM with an emphasis in minorities in Engineering. Over the past 3 years at UTC, Dr. Affare has established the reputation as the go to person with respect to multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary grant collaborator as it relates to STEM. Dr. Affare served as the Co-PD on the USDA Grant mentioned. The Program Director is UTC Biology Professor and Agronomist, Jose Barbosa. Her fellow Co-PDs were Drs. Angelique Ramnarine (Math Professor), Melissa Powell (Nutrition Professor), and Marissa McElrone (external evaluator).
Marissa McElrone University of Tennessee at Chattanooga [biography]

Dr. Marissa McElrone is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in the Department of Health and Human Performance. She teaches courses and advises students in the Master of Public Health Program. She earned her doctoral degree in Nutritional Sciences with an emphasis in Community Nutrition at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She also holds Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Certified in Public Health credentials. Dr. McElrone's research explores and addresses cultural, socioecological, and behavioral factors related to disparities in nutrition/food security and health equity among diverse populations who have been historically and/or presently marginalized through community-based interventions and policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) change approaches. Her training and expertise include: development, implementation and evaluation of community and public health nutrition interventions, local and federal nutrition assistance programs, culturally responsive approaches, and qualitative research.
Dr. Rachelle Pedersen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8530-9071 Texas Tech University [biography]

Rachelle Pedersen is an Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction (Emphasis in Engineering Education). She has a Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction from Texas A&M University and a B.S. in Engineering Science (Technology Education) from Colorado State University. Her research focuses on motivation and social influences (e.g. mentoring and identity development) that support underrepresented students in STEM fields.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on February 9, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on February 11, 2025

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