Through a generous $4.9M grant from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, AAC&U has launched its newest STEM initiative, Teaching to Increase Diversity and Equity in STEM (TIDES). The overall goal of the initiative is to increase the learning outcomes and retention of students historically underrepresented in the computer/information sciences and related STEM disciplines.
It has become critical that STEM higher education reform efforts broaden the participation of women and underrepresented minorities, who not only represent a rich source of talent, but are also the fastest growing populations in undergraduate higher education. Recent data have identified that the most advanced mechanism for broadening the participation, retention and graduation of underrepresented groups in the STEM fields is not just significant pedagogical reform, but pedagogical reform that is culturally sensitive to the lived experiences of these populations.
Bryn Mawr College was awarded funding to 1) build instruction modules for computation in the physical sciences that enhance underrepresented STEM student interest and retention and 2) develop materials to support faculty in their adoption of culturally sensitive pedagogies needed to sustain the necessary changes in practice required for inclusive teaching.
Learning Modules are in the pdf folder, and the related IPython notebooks are in the notebook folder. Please feel free to download and use any of the materials. A good starting place is the Module Dependency Tree which displays how the modules are sequenced.
If you do use the materials, we have two requests.
First, please open and read the document Instructor's Guide. It gives an overview of the project and the documents provided here. An important part of the project has been to use pedagogical approaches that encourage and support the success of students with diverse backgrounds and experience of computation. Toward that end we have created and provided resources for conducting a Faculty Workshop on Increasing Diversity and Equity in STEM on your own campus. Please make use of these materials with your colleagues.
Second, please fill out and return to mmatlin@brynmawr.edu the "Module User Feedback Form" in the pdf folder. We'd deeply appreciate it, as will our funders!
- Priniciple Investigators
- Enhancing Computation and Information Science Learning Opportunities for Women Leaders in STEM - project description
- Featured by the Association of American Colleges and Universities
Thanks to the mybinder.org service, you can read the modules, execute the code, and generally explore the materials live, right now. Simply click on the following button to launch a Jupyter notebook in your browser, while running the code on a remote server:
