The Pitt STRIVE Program: Adopting Evidence-Based Principles "The Meyerhoff and PROMISE Way”

Abstract

According to the Science and Engineering Indicators 2018 report, racial and ethnic minority groups, including Blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians or Alaska Natives, have low levels of participation in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields both compared with other groups and compared with their proportion in the population. Much of the research on underrepresented minorities in STEM draws from a deficit model, whereby researchers attribute the lack of diversity in STEM education or a STEM career, to a STEM education pipeline problem whereby leaks start in preschool and continue through the highest levels of education. Less research has focused on the extent of institutional change necessary to support academic success, the building of partnerships, or the possibility of replicating effective practices that have worked at other institutions. While a limited number of institutions have developed successful models, expanding the reach of these achievements continues to be a critical challenge for today’s colleges and universities. This study focuses on one such partnership and model of replication. Two programs that demonstrated success in increasing the number of underrepresented students pursuing and completing STEM doctoral programs are housed at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). The Meyerhoff program has demonstrated over 30 years of unmatched successful recruiting, retaining, and transitioning underrepresented undergraduate STEM scholars to graduate programs all over the country. The PROMISE Program, an NSF AGEP funded program which began in 2003, provides graduate programming with special emphasis on historically underrepresented persons to increase the number of Ph.D. graduates who pursue faculty positions. Many argue that the success of these programs cannot be replicated at other universities and that a unique set of circumstances are what makes these programs successful in their missions. To test this notion, in 2015 the University of Pittsburgh was awarded an NSF AGEP-KAT award to adapt and adopt strategies and practices of the aforementioned programs. While there are differences between UMBC and the University of Pittsburgh, we feel that the adoption of the principles of the programs provides a framework to replicate these successful results. The goal of this paper is to identify the evidence-based principles that contribute to the continued success of the Meyerhoff and PROMISE programs housed at UMBC and illustrate the alignment of these principles within our institution to create and adapt a baseline by which the success of the University of Pittsburgh’s AGEP program (the Pitt STRIVE Program) can be assessed.