The HBCU-UP project at Spelman College is a program for Advancing Spelman's Participation in Informatics Research and Education (ASPIRE). The project will include faculty development and research activities, curriculum development activities and student support activities in support of the overarching ASPIRE project goal: to improve the quality of STEM majors through innovative, interdisciplinary Informatics education and research activities.

The curricular activities include the development of Informatics modules for introduction into STEM courses and development of new Informatics course. The modules will be included in Physics and Chemistry courses, as well as in first year seminars which will impact all STEM students.

Supplemental Instruction will be implemented to address the needs of eleven bottleneck courses which various departments have identified based on grade distribution in those courses.

Underlying the curricular and supplemental instruction activities are faculty development and research activities, which aim to increase faculty knowledge of informatics, and develop collaborative interdisciplinary informatics research teams of faculty and students.

Project Report

Overall, NSF-HBCU-UP funding to develop the ASPIRE (Advancing Spelman’s Participation in Informatics Research and Education) has improved the quality of training for our students by increasing informatics education and research opportunities. While Spelman has a long and outstanding track record of success in the STEM disciplines, historically Spelman students were not specifically trained for computer-based quantitative interdisciplinary education and research fields. Since the beginning of the award period, Informatics courses and modules have been offered and Informatics related research has been conducted by Collaborative Interdisciplinary Informatics Research Teams (CI2RTs) and others. These activities have led to an increase in informatics-related research activity. As a result of the project, we are producing a population of students equipped to take advantage of the rapidly emerging field of Informatics. With over 1000 students impacted, these numbers represent our contribution to producing a new generation of interdisciplinary informaticians and practitioners who will be prepared to analyze, organize, data mine, and visualize the exponentially growing data and information being generated in diverse fields such as biology, chemistry, physics, and environmental science. Further, we find evidence in the number of research projects related to Informatics as presented at the Annual Spelman College Research Day increasing from four to over fifty over the span of the project. Other project goals involved improving student performance in STEM courses. We revamped our peer-tutoring program. A 50% pass rate was used to identify bottleneck courses that need supplemental instruction. Under the directed peer-tutoring program, we can report the following: About 783 STEM students were supported each semester An 82% pass rate was reported for all tutor supported courses Taken together, ASPIRE support has produced: 1) a sustained culture of research, 2) scientific research publications, 3) scientific research and science pedagogy presentations, and 4) informatics related coursework. Further, our STEM student performance has improved, especially in previously identified bottleneck course with high fail rates. The courses with the most improvement showed the closest alignment between supplemental instruction and the course itself. Knowledge gained from the implementation of the project is guiding the developing of current and future programs so the accomplishments from ASPIRE can be sustained at Spelman College and disseminated to interested partners in higher education. The ASPIRE Project has been instrumental in enabling transformational strategies to strengthen and enhance STEM teaching and learning and to improve student access and retention in STEM areas. Overall and overwhelming, we have descriptive statistical and inferential statistical data that show that the ASPIRE program had a significant impact on students in a variety of areas--to include the following: 1. Confidence in ability to do scientific research, 2. Comfort in carrying out research methods, 3. Comfort in performing library research and analyzing data 4. Comfort in doing calculations for the scientific context.

Agency
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Institute
Division of Human Resource Development (HRD)
Application #
0714553
Program Officer
Claudia M. Rankins
Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
2007-09-01
Budget End
2014-08-31
Support Year
Fiscal Year
2007
Total Cost
$2,539,248
Indirect Cost
Name
Spelman College
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Atlanta
State
GA
Country
United States
Zip Code
30314