The AZ HSI Consortium is pleased to announce the Designing Change: Empowering Students to Innovate for Community Impact as an inaugural AZ HSI G.A.T.E. Funding Opportunities Awardee. After careful review from colleagues across the state of AZ, Designing Change: Empowering Students to Innovate for Community Impact was shown to be an effective program in stimulating and supporting equity-focused change and research that enriches our understanding of effective and culturally responsive practices for broadening participation in STEM at HSIs.
Please read below to learn more about Designing Change: Empowering Students to Innovate for Community Impact.
Project Abstract:
“Designing Change: Empowering Students to Innovate for Community Impact” describes a proposed transformative approach to recruiting Latinx/BIPOC high school students for engineering education. Engaging with Moll’s (1992) Funds of Knowledge and Paris’ (2012) Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies frameworks, the project team introduces culturally sustaining outreach and recruitment as a vehicle to reach historically underserved students in engineering education. We mobilize the existing Upward Bound TRIO and newly formed Engineering Mentors Promoting Outreach, Wellness, Education, and Respect (EMPOWER) programs in the Colleges of Education and Engineering to implement Designing Change.
- Arlett Perez, Educational Policy Studies and Practice, University of Arizona
Dr. Perez-Rios, PhD, is a college access researcher and practitioner. She has managed the Upward Bound TRIO program for the past seven years. This pre-college program supports potential first-generation, low-income students' eligibility and preparation for postsecondary education. Before her role as director of the Upward Bound TRIO program, she worked in Admissions and Early Academic Outreach, coordinating key initiatives serving lower-income, first-generation students. This work consisted of a systematic program about colleges for students and their families and a middle school student and their families seeking to facilitate their movement through high school into college in over 50 middle schools in Southern Arizona. Her deep understanding of the student's needs, as well as her institutional knowledge about college programming at the University of Arizona, positions her as an expert who can drive change in the capacity for impact in Upward Bound programming. Beyond her practical experience, Dr. Perez-Rios derived her dissertation research from her work and partnership with Upward Bound students. She has cultivated deep knowledge and scholarly contributions around the impact of relationship-based recruitment and outreach.
- Noel Hennessey, Office of Academic Affairs, University of Arizona
Noel Hennessey, PhD, is an education researcher and the founding director of the UArizona College of Engineering’s ENGAGED (ENGineering Access, Greater Equity, and Diversity) program suite. Dr. Hennessey earned her PhD from UArizona’s Center for the Study of Higher Education, and prior to her current appointment, worked in recruitment, leadership development, student success, residential learning communities in the College of Engineering. Her research focuses on understanding the impact of mentorship, experiential learning, and linked courses on student persistence and engineering identity development. Through various research projects and the ENGAGED program portfolio, Dr. Hennessey has been exploring the salience of non-normative/liberatory outcomes for historically underserved students in engineering education.
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