NSF Award
2311267
With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Center project aims to coordinate and amplify the work of Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). Hispanic Serving Institutions play a unique role in promoting the participation and success of historically underserved groups of students in STEM education. However, the successes of individual faculty, staff and institutions can be further extended through increased infrastructure, new partnerships and amplification of HSI successes and HSI expertise. The UNIDOS center aims to further strengthen the impact of HSIs by providing members of the HSI community opportunities to learn from and build on each other’s work and form new partnerships that lead to innovations in HSI education. Additionally, the UNIDOS Center will impact current HSI faculty, staff and students by providing professional learning activities focused on proposal development, teaching, and leadership designed to foster increased student success through improved research, teaching, and programmatic activities. UNIDOS is a Center for HSIs by HSIs, with a leadership team and engaged partners that represent the diversity of Hispanic-Serving Institutions and the many groups they serve.<br/><br/>The Center will be led by experts from five institutions with established records in Hispanic/Latiné STEM student success: Florida International University; Valencia College; California State University, Sacramento; the University of Puerto Rico - Rio Piedras; and the University of Texas at El Paso. The Center’s larger leadership team also includes professional organizations: the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) and Excelencia in Education. The goals of the UNIDOS Center include: 1) Building connections by developing stronger synergies between HSI community members through organizing the HSI Program Awardee meeting, fomenting partnerships through technology and intentional networking, and deploying collaborative innovation sandbox meetings for participants to discuss bold ideas; 2) Building capacity by developing the community’s proposal development, leadership, and teaching capacity through proposal workshops and resources, a mentoring program, and faculty development on teaching; 3) Elevating HSI voices by hosting listening sessions with HSI community members, convene HSI Councils of Experts to platform HSIs’ expertise, and form Working Groups to design toolkits and resources on critical topics of HSIs; and 4) Facilitating communication by amplifying the work of HSIs through a comprehensive communication plan, including deployment of website, social media, newsletters, and a seminar series. Additionally, the social network analyses and other external evaluation will yield new knowledge on how HSI community members connect and collaborate with each other. This project is funded by the HSI Program, which aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education, broaden participation in STEM, and build capacity at HSIs.<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.
