NSF Award
2231940
The Historically Black Colleges and Universities - Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) provides support to strengthen STEM undergraduate education and research at HBCUs. Using the Fine and Performing Arts as vehicles for teaching STEM provides opportunities to engage a broader audience of undergraduate students. Florida Memorial University seeks to innovate curriculum design and institutional change to increase recruitment and retention of HBCU students in STEM fields. As a step towards the advancement of integrated Arts and STEM instruction, this planning project brings together a collaborative interdepartmental team to execute a set of activities to establish the foundation for full development of a Center for STEM Academic Excellence through the Arts. The project aims to assemble a team to unlock effective pathways for a seamless and cohesive institutional paradigm shift in teaching STEM through the Arts. This planning project aligns with the goals of the HBCU-UP program in building opportunities to increase the number of HBCU undergraduate students in STEM fields.<br/><br/>This project aims to co-design a plan to identify the most appropriate Arts and STEM courses for integration and co-teaching, explore co-teaching models that pair Arts and STEM faculty for teaching traditional STEM courses with modified pedagogy, identify designs for teaching concepts of algebra, calculus, and chemistry in non-math/non-chemistry courses, and plan curriculum based on gamification principles that heighten student engagement. Student feedback will be incorporated in the plan through formal assessments. The project is consistent with the institution’s unified immersive experiential learning plan for increasing the number of prepared, competitive, and employment-ready graduates who enter the workforce as scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians or pursue STEM graduate education and research careers. The institution aims to use the lessons learned from the planning activities to develop an implementation proposal submission.<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.
