NSF Project: Measuring Institutional Change Across Diverse HSIs

NSF Project Description:

The Measuring Institutional Change Across Diverse Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) is a workshop series aimed at assessing institutional change specific to HSIs as they chart a path toward servingness and serving their communities. Creating effective change in student outcomes is not independent of how change occurs throughout the institutional environment. The project participants include scholars and practitioners across the United States who work at or study HSIs. The metrics proposed through this workshop series will be used to assess change throughout the university structure related to research development and success; faculty engagement with STEM curricular change and students; faculty success measures; STEM student success measures; community engagement; and diverse cultural engagement and recognition. Our work aims to recognize the diversity of HSIs and how that diversity will impact how institutional structures and outcomes change.

The goal of this proposed conference is to develop a series of measures that reflect institutional change specific to HSIs. In order to improve the likelihood of institutional success of HSIs, this conference aims to develop a consensus definition of institutional change specific to the goals of the HSI Program and then a set of measures to reflect successful change. In the ideal, the measures will be developed with respect to the diversity of institutional types (Nuñez et al. 2016) and focus on outcomes related to:

1. Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

2. Faculty Success

3. Institutional Transformation

4. STEM Student Success: Sense of Belonging, Degree Completion Metrics, and Meeting Basic Needs

5. Community Engagement

The specific aims of the project are to operationalize a framework for Servingness developed to conceptualize institutional changes necessary to improve educational attainment for the diverse student population at HSIs. The conference will specifically develop and test measures of change for: Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity; Faculty Success; Institutional Transformation; STEM Student Success: Sense of Belonging, Degree Completion Metrics, and Meeting Basic Needs; and Community Engagement. We expect that the identification and use of change measures will serve as a roadmap and self-assessment tool for institutions in improving the likelihood of Latinx STEM degree attainment at HSIs. The work will be disseminated broadly through conference participation, publications, and testing of proposed measures at a diverse group of HSIs around the U.S. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims.

 

NSF Award Abstract

Operationalizing the Servingness Framework: Metrics for Institutional Transformation at HSIs

Conference: 2023 Alliance for Hispanic Serving Institution Educators

Presenters: Beth Mitchneck, UArizona & Barbara Endemaño Walker, UCSB