As attention grows towards the disparities and underrepresentation of minoritized groups within undergraduate STEM education, there is a need for understanding how university calculus program stakeholders perceive the issue of increasing diversity. Calculus is a subject crucial to many STEM disciplines, and thus can play an outsized role in…

The need for addressing global and societal problems is stronger than ever, as demonstrated by the UN Sustainable Development Goals and National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges. However, engineering undergraduate students rarely get to experience engaging with the associated real-world projects and challenges. This has the potential to…

United States policy aims to bolster a declining interest in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), professions. This disinterest is especially notable in women, Latinx, Black and Indigenous people who make up first-generation Americans attending college. Removing barriers for those under-represented in the STEM professions…

Female students, Latinx students, first-generation students, and transfer students often feel uncomfortable in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) environments. However, some departments have been making progress in changing that. Guided by double consciousness and person-environment fit theory, we investigated the lived…

While more underrepresented minorities (URMs) are graduating with their PhDs, especially in the biomedical sciences, many leave the academy for non-academic related jobs (e.g., government, nonprofits, industry, etc.) instead of pursuing faculty positions. This is a problem because faculty racial/ethnic diversity impacts URM student recruitment and…

This qualitative research study explores student perceptions of how they build relationships with faculty, including factors that facilitate or undermine these relationships. Building such relationships is an important part of mentoring. Interviews with students reveal the importance of both innovative institutional supports and faculty…

Understanding first-generation African American students' experiences in their journeys to graduating from a 2-year community college is key for educators, staff, and college administrators to best serve the students in this demographic. The problem addressed by this descriptive qualitative study was that first-generation African American students…

This study investigates the influence of instructor mindset on student perceptions. Due to the need for increasing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) student retention and the issue of underrepresentation of minority groups in STEM disciplines, we also examined whether instructor mindset impacts underrepresented students more…

Shortage of highly-skilled STEM workers, lack of critical technical skills, and persistence of underrepresentation are key problems for our nation's future. The Arkansas Summer Research Institute (ASRI) incorporates novel approaches to broaden participation in STEM, research, and data analytics, especially among URM students (over 50% of ASRI…

This study highlights an undergraduate-mentored research experience called the Holistic Foundry Undergraduate Engaged Learners (FUEL) program that is guided by the Renaissance Foundry Model. The authors review literature related to co-mentoring and co-learning models, make connections between the Foundry-guided, Holistic FUEL applications and…

The transfer pathway from community college to university holds promise for advancing equity in STEM because it is followed by disproportionately high numbers of underrepresented students. Among the challenges these students face is cultivating belonging in multiple institutional settings. By combining belonging and validation theories, this…

Previous research exploring the lived experiences of marginalized groups of students in STEM at community college settings is limited, despite the fact that community colleges have the potential to create pathways to 4-year engineering degrees and diversify the STEM workforce. This study explored what underrepresented students in STEM valued most…

Background: In addition to the benefits of a diverse faculty, many institutions are under pressure from students and administrators to increase the number of faculty from historically excluded backgrounds. Despite increases in the numbers of engineering PhD earners from these groups, the percentages of Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino…

As the field of music education explores ways to mitigate barriers for underrepresented populations along the path to becoming a music teacher, the experiences of first-generation college students (FGCSs) in music teacher education programs warrant exploration. The purpose of this narrative study was to explore the lived experiences and…

Student-faculty (S-F) interactions that are conducive to students' learning can help reduce the retention and graduation gaps in higher education, especially for college students from underrepresented and underprivileged backgrounds. The aim of the study was to explore students' perceptions of their interactions with faculty, and the subjective…