Toward Racial Equity in STEM

Many moons ago, before there was a thing we called the pandemic, I was part of a team who helped write MCC’s Title V/Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) grant. Dr. Nora Reyes led the grant-writing team and many faculty and staff members contributed dozens of hours to put together a proposal that would be meaningful to our students, faculty, and staff. One of the goals of the grant, called SENDAS (Students and Employees Nurtured and Developed for Academic Success), is to “Increase persistence and completion rates through enhanced integrated student support targeting advising, academic support, and co-curricular programming.” I am thrilled to be working with the SENDAS team to provide boot camps, study groups, and other support mechanisms for Hispanic and other students interested in STEM and Computer Science. This effort is being led by Allison Berkman, who teaches mathematics and is now working full-time to coordinate SENDAS boot camps.

Why is this goal so important? During Fall 2020, nearly 32% of MCC students identified as Hispanic. This growing demographic is the primary focus of the SENDAS grant and MCC owes these students an engaging and equitable student experience. Across the nation and at MCC, there is a performance gap for racially minoritized students in STEM. Of note at MCC, Hispanic students are less likely than their white, non-Hispanic counterparts to succeed in introductory courses such as chemistry, computer science, and physics. The SENDAS grant seeks to bring about equitable outcomes for Hispanic and low-income students by intentionally engaging with them throughout each stage of their academic pathway.

Last semester, as part of my doctoral studies, I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Laura Rendón, who has spent a lot of time researching and writing about Hispanic students in STEM programs of study. In the interview, Dr. Rendón highlighted the power of relationships in helping our students:

So, I think that also one of the things that faculty and staff need to understand is that there are some unwritten assumptions that are very, very strong that need to be dismantled. And this requires some thought and reflection among faculty and staff. I would say that one of them is that what students need to do to succeed is just pull themselves up by the bootstrap. You know, this is tough love. [...] It's these mental constructs that become actualized into our everyday practices and policies. So, we need to look at what are the assumptions that are guiding our work with students. And that is one of the assumptions that needs to be shattered and replaced with a new assumption, and the new assumption is that relationships matter, that validation matters, that our students will do much better when they find that at least one person, hopefully more, in that institution cares about them, engages them in a meaningful way, and helps them to move along with their college career.

The power of validation and the role of relationships is especially important for the students who do not think they belong at MCC. Our students need us to be the “validating agents” that Dr. Rendón described in her original work on validation theory. As I think about the relationships I have forged with students during the pandemic, I hope that they would consider me to be that one person who cares about their success and who will be there for them along their MCC journey. I hope that they know they are Thunderbirds and deserve to fulfill their college dreams. I cannot wait to return to campus to interact with students in person because I believe there will be even more opportunities to validate our students. I am grateful for the faculty who have already embraced the work of SENDAS. We have to do this work together. We have to do it for the community that has entrusted us to educate future thinkers, creators, scholars, leaders, and doers.

Reference

Rendón, L. I. (1994). Validating culturally diverse students: Toward a new model of learning and student development. Innovative Higher Education, 19(1), 33–51.