2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The purpose of this paper and poster is to summarize results of a workshop grant funded by the NSF S-STEM program. During 2022-2024, the project team developed, implemented, and refined capacity-building virtual workshops for three cohorts of participants to gather and effectively understand and use institutional data as they develop their S-STEM proposals. The workshops focused on the institutional data components of the S-STEM program, as this is an area that the project team saw as a challenging and undervalued aspect, and thus were not intended as comprehensive S-STEM proposal development.

The virtual workshop series addresses challenges from both project development and practical perspectives, with the goal of enhancing participants’ ability to effectively use institutional data in their S-STEM proposals. The intended outcomes for the workshop participants include: 1) articulating awareness of how institutional data can be used to inform their project plans and S-STEM program goals; 2) developing a plan for using institutional student data in project development, including identifying relevant questions that the student data can help answer while also addressing the S-STEM solicitation requirements; and 3) drafting a plan for requesting student data from their Institutional Research and Financial Aid offices. Details of the workshop design and implementation are described in Chan Hilton (2024).

Each workshop series included three virtual sessions with the goal of enhancing the participants’ recognition of the value of institutional data to their S-STEM project goals and increase their confidence to gather and use this student data. A total of 177 participants from diverse backgrounds and institution types were recruited to three workshop cohorts (winter 2022, 2023, and 2024), including faculty and administrators with limited or no S-STEM experience. This paper summarizes the institutional contexts and prior NSF S-STEM experience of the workshop participants. It also summarizes the results of evaluation surveys implemented each spring after each workshop series.