Meet the PRISM team:
Rebekah Dupont (PRISM PI), Augsburg University, Joann Pfeiffer, Century College, Renu Kumar, Minneapolis College, and Karen Anderson, Normandale Community College
In December 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OTSP) released a national vision for our Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM) ecosystem. Accompanying this vision was a fact sheet describing “Actions to provide holistic and lifelong support for learners, teachers, workers and communities to participate in and contribute to science and technology.” [1] The very first item on this list is the National Science Foundation Scholarships in STEM (NSF S-STEM) program.
In March 2021, the NSF invited proposals for a new funding mechanism within the S-STEM landscape, research hubs to support collaboration across multiple S-STEM projects and stakeholders in support of a common objective. The PROSPECT S-STEM Research Hub explores one such objective: how to best support successful STEM student pathways from 2-year (2YR) institutions to degree completion at 4-year (4YR) institutions. PROSPECT comprises 9 current NSF S-STEM projects including PRISM.
The PRISM & PROSPECT leadership team is grateful to be a part of PROSPECT and wanted to share an overview of our efforts to date.
Unpacking the Acronyms
PRISM stands for Partner Relationships to Increase STEM Momentum and is the name of our Track 3 S-STEM project. PROSPECT stands for Practices and Research on Student Pathways in Education from Community College and Transfer Students in STEM and is the name of our S-STEM Research Hub. PLC stands for Professional Learning Community and is our framework for collaboration. We intentionally chose Professional instead of a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) in recognition of the critical contributions of key stakeholders involved with transfer policies and programs, including professional academic advisors, financial aid officers, student affairs professionals, institutional researchers, and other administrators.
The PRISM Project
PRISM has four scholar cohorts in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area of Minnesota: Augsburg University, Century College, Minneapolis College, and Normandale Community College. The University of Minnesota is a fifth collaborating partner leading knowledge generation activities for PRISM. The PRISM & PROSPECT leadership team is composed of Rebekah Dupont (Augsburg), Joann Pfieffer (Century), Renu Kumar (Minneapolis College) and Karen Anderson (Normandale Community College). Janet Morales of Augsburg supports the team in her role as STEM Programs grants coordinator.
Efforts to Date
During year 1 of PROSPECT, the team focused on two areas: academic advising and institutional research.
In order to build a common understanding regarding academic advising across partner institutions and to identify differences in local contexts, the team developed a set of common questions about advising STEM students and preparing students for transfer. Each leadership team member consulted with their respective academic advising teams to ask these questions and then the responses were compiled.
1. Tell us about the advising model at our school. We want to describe in a way we can share with others in our cross-institutional team. Are there different individuals who are officially responsible for helping the students with academic advising? What are titles and roles (staff, faculty, peer).
2. How do you advise STEM students? What are specific roles or structures related to STEM students?
3. Are there positive aspects or challenges related to STEM transfer pathways, from your experience?
4. Tell us about your advising load and the different way that this is measured? Do you have an assigned load of students, and in particular STEM students? What else can you tell us about your advising load in practice?
These themes emerged from the responses from our academic advising colleagues.
- Though there is no one shared advising model at the four PRISM institutions, generally STEM students do work with a dedicated STEM advisor or counselor. Advising is done by professional staff advisors, faculty mentors/counselors, TRIO-SSS staff, or a combination of these individuals.
- Advising caseloads are large. Advisors recognized that providing students with opportunities to explore careers and their vocation was beneficial to designing their course plans, but often were limited in their time with students. While academic advising is not an official role for most faculty at our community college partners (and thus prohibited), providing mentorship related to career exploration could contribute positively to student success and provide synergistic support to the work of the professional staff advisors.
- Advising challenges related to STEM majors can vary. Computer science was identified as a major that is sometimes more challenging to advise in relation to transfer pathways because of the variability in computer science 4YR degree programs and because students sometimes perceive that 2YR institutional technology associate’s degree programs will lead naturally to bachelor’s degree programs in computer science, when in fact, they often do not.
- STEM students are encouraged to meet early and often with their advisors, though generally, they are not specifically required to meet. Meeting with one’s advisor is generally considered the best way to stay on top of course sequencing, to ensure all prerequisites are taken at the appropriate time, and also to strategically plan for the transferability of any course work taken.
The team also worked with institutional research liaisons at all four cohort institutions to develop data transfer and usage agreements (DTUAs) between the three 2YR institutions (Century, Minneapolis College and Normandale) and the 4YR institution (Augsburg). Being new to this process, membership in PROSPECT was beneficial, as the team was able to learn about examples of DTUAs from another PROSPECT S-STEM project. The DTUA process involved consulting with multiple stakeholders at all institutions including review by legal counsel. The institutional researchers from all four cohort institutions met multiple times to provide their professional expertise, which greatly improved the finalized versions. All DTUAs have been completed and officially signed.
The institutional research liaisons are currently working on the first data pull. We are tracking their questions and suggestions as they arise. The institutional research liaisons will implement queries for academic progress data for both current scholars and all students who would have been eligible to apply. While some students identify major pathways and thus can be easily identified as STEM-intending, others need to be identified through their course-taking patterns. The cross-institutional discussion of how best to identify S-STEM eligible students is very relevant to how we think about recruitment efforts in addition to the creating this data set.
Lessons Learned
Starting up large-scale collaborations is a learning process and often involves trying lots of things that don’t necessarily work right away. These approaches contributed positively to our efforts so far.
- Remember the platinum rule. Rather than collaborating with partners the way you would like, try to collaborate with partners in the way they would like. For example, during our development of our Data Transfer and Usage Agreements, we made the decision to use Box.com as both our secure data repository and our mechanism for secure file sharing. During our meetings with our institutional research partners from the community colleges, they shared that they all use an alternative platform for secure file sharing. Since this idea came up during a Zoom meeting with all partners represented, we were able to quickly adapt our plan to this improved approach, which saved our institutional research liaisons time and effort of adapting to a different platform.
- It’s not the report, it’s the relationship. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “It's not the destination, it's the journey," reminds us to take time to exchange a mindset focused on outcomes with one focused on process. Taking time to invest in professional relationships is critical to creating a strong foundation for collaboration. For our team, this has meant discussing and consulting about how best to build trust across different institutions and across the varied stakeholders including students, staff, faculty, and administrators. For example, after writing a summary of our advising conversations, we asked our advising partners to review, edit, and approve the summary before we shared it more broadly.
- Projects thrive when they have an identified, skilled and resourced project manager. For teams that cross different institutions and roles (e.g. faculty and staff), finding meeting times and managing agendas and project documents can be a real challenge. The role of our Grants Coordinator has been critical to finding meeting times that work for everyone, sharing out meeting notes and recordings, and managing multiple revisions and reviews of documents by stakeholders across different institutions.
Next Steps
During the coming project year, the team is planning to hold an advising panel, where our faculty mentors can hear the perspectives of STEM professional advisors and transfer admissions counselors and then discuss how to integrate synergistic practices into PRISM faculty mentorship. The team also plans to develop a transferology workshop for scholars and faculty mentors to increase knowledge of how to check courses for transferability to different 4YR programs.
The team of institutional research liaisons will meet further to guarantee comparable implementation of the queries. During our summer PRISM professional development day, we plan to share out our progress as well as provide the opportunity to learn about other data analysis efforts related to STEM transfers in Minnesota.
The team hopes to continue to remember that building trust takes time, effort, and intentionality and to seek equitable partnerships by valuing perspectives of all participants, seeking input from stakeholders, respecting that different institutions have different local contexts, and making joint decisions. Participating in PROSPECT has already expanded our toolkit for achieving this as we do this work. Together, we look forward to contributing to the S-STEM vision (NSF 23-536) “that all Americans, regardless of economic status, should be able to contribute to the American innovation economy if they so desire.” [2]
References
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/12/12/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-bold-multi-sector-actions-to-eliminate-systemic-barriers-in-stemm/
[2] https://beta.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/scholarships-stem-network-s-stem-net