When students consider higher education, they often ask "Where should I go to college?" Meanwhile departments ask "Where do we find a more diverse faculty/student body?" These questions reveal how the nature of participation in higher education is fundamentally spatial and geographic. For underrepresented groups, research shows proximity to home and characteristics of place to have an even more significant impact on such decisions. Where universities are, where prospective underrepresented students or faculty are coming from, and the complex dynamics of geographic context influence the uneven and low participation of underrepresented groups. These underlying phenomena could be better understood through the lens of geographic research and strong disciplinary traditions focused on concepts of space and place. Yet, the predominant conceptual approach to broadening participation in higher education continues to be one of building "pipeline" relationships among educational institutions serving students at different stages -- from grade school, middle school, secondary, community colleges, undergraduate to graduate levels. However, this linear metaphor overlooks that such relationships actually occur in real places and at distances across space. As an intellectually diverse discipline encompassing traditions from GIScience to critical geographies and much more, geography is well positioned to contribute transformative insights about access and success in higher education for broadly defined underrepresented populations, including racial/ethnic minorities, women, persons with disabilities, and economically and socially disadvantaged or marginalized populations, oriented to the NSF's initiative to create a Science of Broadening Participation (SBP). In this project, 16 competitively-selected researchers, including senior scholars with advanced expertise and early career scholars with leadership potential and strong ties to underrepresented communities, will gather for a 3-day creative scholarly retreat. A collective research agenda focused on geography's diverse intellectual contributions to defining and developing SBP will inspire new research priorities, interdisciplinary collaborations, funding strategies, and innovative directions. The program will support small grants and a research and writing period to further develop contributions initiated for the retreat and explore new questions. Manuscripts will later be collected into a scholarly publication to be disseminated through extensive AAG venues and networks within geography and spatial sciences, the community of scholars engaged in the NSF's SBP initiative, and to other disciplinary networks.
This project will catalyze the geography and spatial science community to contribute a sophisticated disciplinary perspective to an emerging SBP by exploring spatial characteristics, place-based phenomena, geographic dynamics, and other geographical concepts for "Geographies of Broadening Participation". The design of the program includes a unique, structured professional development framework in which senior and early-career scholars collaborate. It presents the opportunity to better engage the valuable perspective of geography and the spatial sciences among many other disciplines that are driving innovation and relevance in developing a SBP, leading to improved understanding that can guide actions by departments, universities, associations, and other educational and scientific agencies to enhance the state of diversity and inclusion within higher education. The research can potentially advance scientific understanding of the factors associated with broadening the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM and beyond. It received support to stimulate research related to the Science of Broadening Participation. This project was supported by the Geography and Spatial Sciences Program as part of the NSF Science of Broadening Participation inititiave.
To remain competitive in a global environment, the US needs the full intellectual participation of an increasingly diverse country. Unfortunately, many of our brightest students, who are from demographic groups that are traditionally underrepresented in higher education in general, and in science and engineering fields in particular, continue to struggle with access to higher education. This research effort developed creative, new ideas about why this may be happening and sought to learn how the higher education system could better understand ways to broaden participation and inclusion of the nation’s full talent base. Typically, we think of higher education recruitment as a linear "pipeline" or "pathway" for students. Instead, this group of creative scholars were inspired to think of it as a rich landscape that understands where students are coming from and where they aim to go. Catalyzing Research on Geographies of Broadening Participation thus organized and inspired the geography and spatial science community to focus its unique disciplinary perspectives and significant scholarly capacity to address the following questions: How can geographic research inform the larger academic enterprise engaged in developing a Science of Broadening Participation (SBP)? How can geographic understanding and insights enrich efforts toward achieving diversity in higher education and the scientific workforce, particularly for geography and the spatial sciences? Nineteen researchers from various disciplines were competitively selected to participate in this project, including senior scholars with advanced expertise and early career scholars with leadership potential and strong ties to underrepresented communities. The design of the program included a unique, structured professional development framework in which this diverse group worked together. They attended a creative scholarly retreat, formed exploratory research and writing teams, produced white papers, developed studies, published research articles, and communicated in an online e-community around this theme. Each individual scholar team and the PIs and CoPIs brought different perspectives to advancing our knowledge about how the geographic concepts of space, distance, place, context, scale, region, movements, patterns and integration of systems relate to the problematic of access and success in higher education for broadly defined underrepresented populations, including racial/ethnic minorities, women, persons with disabilities, economically and socially disadvantaged or marginalized persons, and others. To share these results with the public and with other researchers, the project also produced a video short summarizing the concepts and a summary research agenda document. This important activity was designed to address, and is now positioned to substantially contribute to, a National Science Foundation initiative aimed at developing a "Science of Broadening Participation," leading to improved understanding that can guide actions by departments, universities, associations, and other educational and scientific agencies to enhance the state of diversity and inclusion within higher education.
