Dr. Orlando L. Taylor, Vice Provost for Research and Graduate Dean at Howard University and Dr. Terrolyn Carter, an alumna of Xavier University of Louisiana and Acting Coordinator of Howard's nationally recognized Preparing Future Faculty program, are leading the initiative.

Project Summary:

Learning Communities for STEM Academic Achievement (LCSAA) will focus on increasing the participation of African American students in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) through strategies to improve teaching and learning at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), which enroll approximately 13 percent and graduate approximately 23 percent of African American students, despite comprising only about 3 percent of all institutions of higher education.

These institutions, therefore, offer an interesting and exciting set of laboratories for addressing the issue of academic achievement in STEM fields, where African American students nationally have underachieved. The proposed project will connect HBCUs to the national “Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” community centered on the work of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Inter-institutional virtual faculty learning communities will select and pilot strategies for improving teaching and learning in their individual classrooms.

Data show that HBCUs have had a highly successful historical legacy of supporting African American student achievement, and research has indicated that their social contexts have contributed to this success. The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), meanwhile, has made an impact nationally on student achievement through innovative approaches focused mainly in the cognitive sphere. This project brings these communities together for the first time and allows both HBCU and SoTL methods to be further enhanced to improve academic achievement for African American students in both HBCU and traditionally White institutions.

The project objectives are...

...to improve African American student achievement (measured by increase in GPAs and graduation rates) in STEM fields;

...to increase African American STEM graduate school enrollment and merit-based financial aid (measured by graduate school enrollment and graduate financial aid receipt of students in courses involved); and

...to adapt, implement, and evaluate the success of STEM teaching and learning strategies derived from the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) and other sources, within the social, cultural, and academic contexts of HBCUs and to disseminate these adaptations to the higher education community generally.