Eleanor W. Close

Background: Evidence-based and student-centered instructional methods hold the promise of transforming undergraduate STEM education and simultaneously solving the dual challenge of STEM workforce needs and inequities within STEM. The Learning Assistant (LA) Model was created to reform curriculum, recruit teachers, and inform discipline-based education research. Numerous studies have shown positive impacts on students and Learning Assistants (LAs) in terms of retention and pass rates, learning outcomes, attitudinal shifts, and emotional support. Several studies have explored demographic differences and found that LAs help close the gap in retention rates for women and first-generation students. While short-term effects have been well documented, the long-term effects on students’ college retention and completion rates have not been widely studied. We gathered information about LA-adopting institutions identified on the Learning Assistant Alliance website and from individual higher education institutions’ websites. Combining this information with the College Scorecard Database for four-year U.S. institutions allows us to examine student retention and graduation rates after these institutions have adopted the LA model and look for differences in both the student and university characteristics included in the dataset. We are interested in determining if there is a difference between LA-adopting and non-LA-adopting institutions in terms of their student outcomes. Results: These LA-adopting institutions have larger enrollments and are more likely to award graduate degrees. Students in LA-adopting institutions are more likely to be younger with lower percentages of females, first generation, and Black students. No significant differences in the percentages of Hispanic students or in the average costs per student were observed in our study. Using regression analysis, we find LA-adopting institutions have significantly higher retention and completion rates. Conclusions: Since LA-adopting institutions have different characteristics than non-LA institutions, these differences should be considered in future studies examining the impact of the LA model. After controlling for these differences in our study, we find that institutions with the LA model have 4 to 15 percentage points higher college completion rate and they have better outcomes for Hispanic and Black students. These findings suggest that increasing the adoption of the LA model may contribute to reducing inequity in STEM.

In our research we invite multiply-marginalized physics students-Black, Indigenous, Women of Color and LGBTQ+ women-at Hispanic Serving Institutions to participate in semi-structured interviews about their experiences in physics. Interviewees were asked about their perceptions of their physics environments, available support systems, and how they would describe a physicist. Participants from Texas State University described multiple positive impacts from the Physics Learning Assistant (LA) Program. We analyze these narratives using the Critical Physics Identity framework to see in what ways LA participation overlaps with participants' racialized and/or queer experiences studying physics. We present a case study of a single participant, focused on the ways in which the LA Program provided her access to relational resources (aspects of relationships that impact one's connection to physics) and ideational resources (aspects of an idea that impact one's connection to physics), and how these resources supported her identity negotiation and positive physics identity development.

Culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) seeks to improve equity in instruction and leverage students’ experiences by promoting academic success, cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness. We examine instructors’ perceptions of student identity to understand the ways undergraduate mathematics instructors are enacting or experiencing barriers to enacting CRP. Interviews with ten mathematics faculty at Hispanic-serving institutions identified two potential barriers to enacting CRP: first, instructors’ hesitance to communicate about student identity, especially with respect to race and gender; and second, instructors holding epistemologies that mathematics is culture-free. Despite these barriers, almost all interviewees implemented the academic success tenet of CRP. These barriers may prevent instruction around cultural competence and sociopolitical consciousness, which are the two tenets that most capitalize on students’ informal knowledge, identities, and cultural experiences. Changing discourse by taking more risks in conversation and inviting a more diverse range of people to the undergraduate mathematics community are potential ways to address these barriers.

Educators and researchers often use research-based assessments before and after instruction to measure the efficacy of courses. Limited resources exist for interpreting assessment results, particularly for attitudinal surveys. We present analyses and representations created with data from 192 introductory physics courses that educators and researchers can use to provide a context for interpreting results from the Colorado Learning Attitudes About Science Survey. The provided data came from the online Learning About STEM Student Outcomes platform and from the scientific literature. The representations include scatter plots of pretest and post-test scores and distributions of effect sizes. Educators and researchers can use these representations to show how courses compare to the larger database before and after instruction. Results almost always associated physics courses for nonscience majors with shifts to more expertlike attitudes, whereas this was the case for approximately one-third of introductory physics courses for science majors.

Historically, research on "underrepresented" students in physics is conducted primarily at Predominately White Institutions and has focused on two separate identities: gender or race. Because of this, the unique intersections experienced by Women of Color (WoC) has been largely ignored. In addition, research on the experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender or Queer (LGBTQ+) physicists in a collegiate setting is virtually non-existent. This paper will present common themes in the idea of who does physics through the lens of WoC and female LGBTQ+ physicists currently or recently enrolled in a Physics Program at a large Hispanic Serving Institution. Participants engaged in semi-structured interviews and were asked questions about their perceptions of their physics environments, available support systems, and how they described a physicist. The analysis employs the theory of Intersectionality and examines the narratives through a critical race and queer lens to fully understand the lived experiences of our participants.

Existing research on underrepresented/minority students focuses mainly on gender or race/ethnicity and ignores the intersection of identities of women of color and the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ+) students. This research is also typically conducted at Predominately White Institutions. A large number of physics degrees earned by racial minorities have been earned from Minority Serving Institutions. This project examines the personal narratives of women of color, LGBTQ+ women, and women who exist at the intersection of these identities at Texas State, a Hispanic Serving Institution, to better understand the systems in place that helped them succeed through their physics degree. We define success to be recognition of self as a physicist and completion, or being near completion, of a physics degree. Participants reported that widely shared discussions around equity, department structures supporting collaboration, and a culture of teamwork helped them achieve success together