Engaging and Empowering Diverse Populations in BME
Joint Academic Nurtureship for Underrepresented Students (JANUS): Tiered mentorship structure for Miami Dade County Foster Youth at the University of Miami
Associate Professor University of Miami, United States
Introduction:: Only 3.9% of BS degrees in STEM are awarded to Black students and only 1% of BS degrees in STEM are awarded to Black female students. Further, less than 5% of foster youth successfully enter and graduate college (STEM or non-STEM). The long term effects of this acute underrepresentation hinder financial upward mobility, and contribute to financial instability and poverty later in life for students of color. Furthermore, the disruption of learning during the COVID-19 pandemic will have greater negative impacts on minority student learning, which may be compounded by the documented increase of substance use and domestic violence in minority communities. Programs that positively impact the number and proportion of Black/African American students entering STEM careers will benefit the overall diversity in the US labor market, where there is a shortage of qualified domestic workers to fill vacant STEM-related positions. The overall goal of our program is to mitigate the effects of systemic racism and inequality in the educational, academic, and scholarship outcomes of Black students at both the Undergraduate (UG) and high-school (HS) levels. While factors contributing to this inequality are multi-faceted and complex, our tiered mentorship program at the University of Miami addresses two specific roadblocks disproportionately faced by Black students who wish to pursue and excel in STEM careers:
1. At Miami-Dade public HS level: Insufficient exposure to the world of STEM careers
2. At UM UG level: Lack of an inclusive structure that actively promotes students to secure funded research opportunities in STEM labs
Materials and Methods:: Through a 100k/year support from the University of Miami, we launched the Joint Academic Nurtureship for Underrepresented Students (JANUS) program right after the summer 2020 anti-racism awakening in the country. Now with 2 iterations of the program, we have created an effective an inclusive structure that actively promotes Black Undergraduate (UG) students who come from disadvantaged K-12 education and training to secure funded research opportunities in STEM labs. Since committing to unpaid research internships is a privilege often not available to socioeconomically disadvantaged UG students, JANUS removed this critical barrier to entry (through a $15/hour stipend), ensuring successful outcomes these UGs. Further, these UGs then served as 1:1 mentors to Black high school (HS) students who were recruited from the Miami Dade County foster care system (through UM’s First-Star Academy, led by Miami Law School, and Dr. Kele Stewart, who has been working with rising 9th graders to provide a holistic college prep program for youth impacted by the child welfare system), and Black high schoolers from the Booker T. Washington Senior High School (through UM’s INSPIRE-U program, led by Dr. Wendy Cavendish). To maximize the available resources, 100% of ULINK funding has went directly into the support of UGs (stipends, professional conferences), HS students (stipends), and outreach activities (supplies), with no salary support for PIs, staff or admin.
Results, Conclusions, and Discussions:: Perhaps no issue regarding student research is more important than increasing inclusion and diversity within our labs and providing equal access to research and publishing opportunities for all students. STEM “representation problem” occurs at every level: Underrepresented populations are less likely to participate in high-impact practices as college students, less likely to be undergraduate co-authors on peer-reviewed scientific publications, and ultimately, less likely to enter and complete doctoral programs. JANUS 1.0 was instrumental in setting up an initial architecture for our tiered research internship and mentorship. We set up several de-novo structures such as mentor-training modules (to prepare UGs for their conversations with foster care high schoolers), engagement enhancing group activities, daily log of interactions as well as lab visits, lab book etiquette, providing laptop computers to high school students, meal and transportation plans, figuring out access with UM security (especially for high school scholars at the medical school labs), periodic surveys during the program, and after the program to measure success.
In our first year, we had 12 JANUS UGs and 12 JANUS HS scholars, and the ‘graduates' had extremely favorable internship and job related outcomes. Importantly, almost all 12 high school graduates went to college (typically 50% foster youth finish high school, and 3% of former foster youth obtain a college degree). The foster youth were all hosted in different UM labs over the past year, and mentored 1:1 by their UG mentors followed by a concluding Career Day.
We assessed the impact on the Black UGs ((a) Immersive research experience that leads to better learning, (b) Technical and soft skills that lead to better professional outcomes, and (c) Mentoring experience that helps build perspective and self-confidence), Black HS students ((a) Exposure and access to demystify college, STEM, and scientific careers, (b) Constant contact with a direct mentor whose name, face, voice, and experience they can associate with, (c) Spark love for research, discovery, sciences, and hands-on learning), and the academy ((a) A culture of belonging for Black scholars @ UM, (b) Extend UM’s impact beyond its campus, (c) Sustain the model of paid internship + tiered mentorship).
Acknowledgements (Optional): : We have been amazed by the collective – and in many cases collaborative – excitement, passion, and deep thought that so many colleagues around the university (as evidenced by the diversity of disciplines represented by host PI labs) have put into training UGs, conducting meaningful research with them, opening their lab doors to HS mentees (especially right after labs reopened after COVID-shutdowns), and providing valuable feedback to JANUS PIs on best practices for engagement and impact. These efforts have clearly paid off.
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