NSF Award
1820981
This Alliance brings together three Historically Black Universities (HBUs) with the goal of developing, implementing, studying, evaluating and disseminating a model focusing on career development for historically underrepresented minority (URM) early career STEM faculty at HBUs, who will become tenured and promoted faculty. The AGEP HBUs Alliance works with faculty who are writing and submitting research grants to external funding sources; engaging in visiting faculty positions at US Department of Energy National Laboratories; working with experienced STEM faculty mentors across the country; and participating in mock pre-tenure review processes. While the model work is through partnerships between Tuskegee University, Oakland University, Jackson State University, and Tennessee State University, the project is creating a model that will be applicable to other Historically Black Colleges and Universities.<br/><br/>This alliance was created in response to the NSF's Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program solicitation (NSF 16-552). The AGEP program seeks to advance knowledge about models to improve pathways to the professoriate and success of URM graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty in specific STEM disciplines and/or STEM education research fields. AGEP Transformation Alliances develop, replicate or reproduce; implement and study, via integrated educational and social science research, models to transform the dissertator phase of doctoral education, postdoctoral training and/or faculty advancement, and the transitions within and across the pathway levels, of URMs in STEM and/or STEM education research careers. This Alliance is also funded by the NSF's Historically Black Colleges and Universities - Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP).<br/><br/>One of the research components of the Alliance is the team's investigation of URM early career faculty's perceptions of how they fit in their positions because of the interaction between institutional variables and the junior faculty's perceptions of their institutions. <br/><br/>The AGEP HBUs Alliance team will work with external consultants at TMT Group, Inc., to conduct formative and summative evaluations. They will also engage an Executive Board of institutional administrators and leaders, as well as an external Advisory Board. The boards will provide feedback to the Alliance team and suggest adjustments to the project's management, to the research, and to the model development, implementation, testing, evaluation, dissemination, sustainability and reproduction potential.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
