Broadening Access to STEM Workshop

Carleton College, June 25-26, 2009

Overview

Increasingly, the recruitment and retention of under-represented minorities (URMS) in the sciences has become a significant problem for many selective liberal arts colleges (SLACS). In response, the two-day hands-on workshop will seek to produce a some synthesis documents on specific strategies and for the design and implementation of comprehensive plans for increasing URM enrollment, drawing upon the successes, lessons, failures, and challenges of the attendees. The collaborative syntheses will be shared in a public fashion to form a foundation for understanding and grappling with URM issues, patterns of enrollment, and paths to institutional change.

This workshop is funded by the Mellon 23, a group of colleges funded through the Faculty Career Enhancement Program by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Workshop Goals

• Share with other colleagues successes, failures, trajectories and lessons learned about existing and past programs

• Discuss and produce group documents on best practices for specific strategies to broaden access to STEM fields (for public use)

• Make a draft plan for action by each institutional team for next steps in evolving a comprehensive program - in consultation with a small cluster of other colleges

• Produce a synthesis document on how to create a comprehensive plan for broadening access to STEM fields - something useful to us and others a liberal arts colleges (for public use)

People

Primary Contacts:

Arjendu Pattanayak, Carleton College, apattana@carleton.edu
Mary Drew, Carleton College, mdrew@carleton.edu

Other Workshop Leaders:

Trish Ferrett , Carleton College
Kate Queeney, Smith College
Jim Swartz, Grinnell College
Wendy Raymond, Williams College
Jeff Tecosky-Feldman, Haverford College
Cathy Manduca, Carleton Science Education Resource Center (SERC)

Participating Colleges:

Barnard College
Carleton College
DePauw University
Grinnell College
Haverford College
Scripps and Claremont Colleges
Smith College
Swarthmore College
Vassar College
Williams College