We are a collection of faculty who are part of the PROSPECT S-STEM research hub (Practices And Research On Student Pathways In Education For Community College And Transfer Students To STEM, all representing track 3 S-STEM projects which involve partnerships with multiple institutions, so we all focus on using institutional partnerships to better support low-income STEM transfer students.
We have a lot of experience with different institutional contexts and addressing a variety of challenges and barriers in administering track 3 S-STEM projects
We want to share some of our advice and lessons learned, which we’ll organize around:
Pre-planning
It’s in the details
It’s in the relationships
It’s about recognizing and valuing expertise
Pre-planning
The challenges of recruiting students
Minimizing burdens for applying but still getting useful information
Students who don’t fill out FAFSA because they don’t think they would qualify for any financial aid
Maybe engage with others at the institution who recruit students to help them better encourage students to apply for FAFSA
How and what to track about the Scholars: to show the S-STEM is effective
Especially figuring this out in advance, so you can plan for it
For reporting to NSF but also for own knowledge about what is working
Research/knowledge generation piece (for track 3) is a big piece that folks could benefit in learning from others
Evaluation vs researcher dissemination: big topic; acknowledge the overlap, and talk about how to work with your evaluator. Different successful models
Have conversations early on about how this will work, especially if you don’t usually do education research
Minimize burdens on Scholars by coordinating research & evaluation instruments
S-STEM REC has some webinars, on knowledge generation, which was helpful when finalizing a proposal. Presenter shared metaphor of one ATM that you go to (where your data is): evaluator and researcher are asking different questions and get data from the same source
Planning for turnover
100% of the S-STEM projects we represent had to deal with turnover: in PIs, mentors, even institutions, as well as administrators: dept chairs, deans, etc.
How are you documenting project knowledge?
How do you ensure relationships and connections are robust and not fragile--multiple folks connected
It’s the Details
Where are meetings?
Zoom, or rotating across campuses/partners for in person meetings
When2Meet to collect availability
Who sets the agenda?
Agenda/notes are shared documents; everyone is welcome to contribute
Running notes are in one same document so people can easily find previous notes
How are meetings run?
How do people’s voices get heard? How can folks contribute to the meeting (talking, typing in chat, typing in notes document, etc)?
Where are the documents and how can people access them?
It can be really hard to access documents in shared folders across campuses
We’ve been using Google Drive and Box (for sensitive data) to store our data
Some institutions have restrictions on certain file sharing
Establishing relationships with: financial aid office, scholarships, advising (multiple points of contact on both sides); building trusting relationships
Collect survey data during a seminar (with food)
It’s the Relationships
Did folks know each other from prior grants? Build the trust across the team, particularly when bringing new folks on board. Find the people who are going to do the work because they have a passion, and will keep the ball rolling, even in the face of challenges.
Not just someone who gets assigned to a task; find the right people and connections to other offices. Relationships with business offices and other supports.
And, we say again: ensure you have multiple points of contact on both sides of relationships, to be able to sustain connections through turnover
It’s About Recognizing and Valuing Expertise
Structure flexibility: (Q but no A) getting the scholars to participate in the activities at the level we would like since we can’t make it required; can we offer a class? Those who participate get a lot out of it, but we can’t make them all attend...
Engage the Scholars in co-planning the seminars
Variation: not all community colleges are the same; how does a project with multiple institutions have common structures that also can be flexible enough to adapt for unique institutional contexts?
E.g. Century used existing scholarship application (one application for multiple scholarships) so could be part of that. But the others couldn’t do that. The PRISM team could agree on common application pieces, but how students applied was different based on institutions . Also getting to know who else does something similar, such as recruiting, and how to involve those people. How to tap into engagement on campuses and use that to support what you are trying to do.
E.g., we all want something that does X, but figure out what each institution needs to do X (budget wise, structures, people, etc)
Pose questions about what college/ universities can do to be good partners and bring in different perspectives
Asset-based thinking: it’s easy to evolve into university is the “leader” or “better” than community college. Have events on all the campuses. See all partners as bringing value and strengths to the partnership
Have part of the evaluation occur at each institution
How do you structurally make times to involve partners? Does each partner have a PI?
How do you learn about the differences/unique contexts of the partner sites?
If you haven’t worked in an environment, there’s a lot you don’t know
Look up partners’ academic calendars; plan events that consider those calendars; figure out majors and such