9623943 Gomez-Rodriguez The Puerto Rico Alliance for Minority Participation Phase II joins 14 universities, National Laboratories and local industry to increase the quality and number of Hispanic BS degrees in SMET conferred by PR-AMP institutions each year by a total of 1,425, growing from the current 2,646 to 4,071. Up to 2/3 of these will be low-income and/or first generation college students. PR-AMP universities conferred 1,896 BS degrees in 1993, which represents 23.7% of the 7,995 degrees conferred nationally to Hispanics, making PR-AMP institutions a key resource for producing Hispanic SMET graduates. Through PR-AMP Phase II, about 32,000 student participants are expected to benefit from the PR-AMP program. Institutional effectiveness and efficiency will be optimized to increase the average graduation rates of PR-AMP institutions from the current annual rate of 32% to 60%. PhDs in SMET conferred to BS graduates from PR-AMP will increase from the current annual average of 48 to 83. The thrust of PR-AMP Phase II activities will target the undergraduate component of the SMET pipeline, as major systemic strategies are already in place on the island to address the pre- college (PR Systemic Statewide Initiative) and graduate (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research-EPSCoR) levels. Building on those strategies piloted and found effective in Phase I and creating new initiatives to address all key aspects of the barriers to SMET education, Phase II will develop the following core strategies: changing the teaching/learning culture, faculty attitudes and curriculum though the curricular revision of SMET curricula to incorporate effective teaching strategies bases on an inquiry approach to learning and effective classroom assessment method, with emphasis on gatekeeper and bottleneck courses; faculty, industry and peer mentoring program to provide SMET students with a network of academic and social support; strengthening undergraduat e research with emphasis on local graduate research centers, National Laboratories and industry internships; stipends for low-income SMET students to address financial need and stimulate participation in the PR-AMP process; incorporation of multimedia technology in the learning process; special bridging component, with pre-college to college engineering program and an undergraduate to graduate transition program; a teacher preparation program to improve the competence of future SMET teachers; and the development of an institutional research and strategic planning capability to measure variables that indicate the value-added in terms of student outcomes and institutional effectiveness and efficiency.
