Student researchers aim to make STEM education more inclusive

The future of STEM education at Illinois State University is being shaped by seven sophomores known as the STEM Ambassadors. 

Coordinated by Illinois State’s Center for Mathematics, Science, and Technology (CeMaST) and originally funded by a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the group is conducting participatory action research to make STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education more inclusive, accessible, and equitable. The HHMI grant places Illinois State in a multi-institution “learning community” that seeks to identify barriers to inclusivity and successful strategies to promote inclusive learning environments. 

The latest release of the National Science Foundation’s biennial report Diversity and STEM: Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities acknowledges underrepresentation in STEM education and employment. That reality informs the Ambassadors’ work, but their push for inclusion goes even deeper than demographics. 

“There’s been concern about underrepresentation in STEM for a long time,” said Dr. Rebekka Darner, director of CeMaST. “Most often the onus has been placed on people who are not represented, like, ‘How do we change people to make them more prepared for STEM fields?’ But what’s different about this grant is they’re asking, ‘How do we change the STEM environment to be more inclusive?’

“That’s an important difference.”

The participatory action research (PAR) model also distinguishes the initiative from most previous efforts. PAR asserts that the people most impacted by research should lead the framing, design, methods, and modes of research projects.

The STEM Ambassadors are paid researchers who combine their peers’ experiences with their own to guide their endeavors. They work 4-8 hours a week and come together for a weekly meeting. They’ll remain in their roles for the duration of their four years on campus. STEM Education Specialist Matthew Hagaman mentors the group—the students consider him an unofficial eighth member—but the work of the STEM Ambassadors is almost entirely self-directed. 

“We’re definitely a mixed group of personalities, and I think that’s important,” said Rylie Swinford, an environmental science major from Bradley, Illinois. “Someone is always saying something that I would have never thought of because my brain doesn’t work that way, and I think that’s important for a group like us.”

One of the STEM Ambassadors grows fungi as a hobby. Another is involved in Gamma Phi Circus. Another goes to silent discos where people dance to synchronized music listened to on wireless headphones.

The Ambassadors are different in many ways, but they all share one thing in common: a drive to inspire positive change.

“We all bring those different things to the table: the places we’re from, the experiences we had in high school, things like that,” said Dominika Brzegowy, a biology teacher education major from Palatine. “We’ve talked a lot about our experiences and documented what our first year here was like.”

Wanting to understand Illinois State student experiences in introductory STEM courses beyond their own, the Ambassadors conducted 33 in-person interviews last spring with students who were asked what advice they’d give future first-year students, in addition to advice they’d give STEM faculty members, administrators, and advisors. 

“Through those four questions, we got to hear a lot of pain points,” said Hagaman. “But we also heard a lot of successes, too.”

Responses were tracked. Themes emerged. Student respondents advised future students to get involved and seek early interventions if they needed help. They also shared a desire for more communication with their advisors, confusion about administrators’ identities and functions, and concerns in navigating Illinois State webpages and multiple online learning platforms. 

“I think some of us assume that these students are tech wizards, but I don’t think that’s the reality,” said Darner. “They’re really good at using tech, but they’re not necessarily able to figure it out right away on their own because we throw a lot at them at the very beginning of their first year.

“In my opinion, we don’t have a great enough appreciation for all they’re being asked to do as soon as they arrive.”

The STEM Ambassadors pondered how they’d disseminate what they learned from the survey, and the idea of a FAQs-style website was hatched. The website, which is a work in progress, would include nearly 100 FAQs with some entries specific to STEM education and others helpful to students outside STEM disciplines. Links to campus resources would be included as well.

The STEM Ambassadors spent most of their first year in relative anonymity with very few of their Illinois State student peers or faculty members aware of their roles. That’s changed this year as they’ve responded directly to questions submitted by their peers and publicly presented their research. The latter included a panel discussion at the Inclusive Excellence in STEM Reception last November, which will also recognized the STEM Fellows, a group of Illinois State faculty members also striving to make introductory STEM education more inclusive. 

The Ambassadors have been interviewed for evaluation by the HHMI-formed learning community. Darner, the principal investigator of the HHMI grant, provides updates to the learning community. Hagaman has traveled to Virginia for annual meetings on the HHMI campus. Illinois State’s STEM Ambassadors are also sharing what they’ve learned with students at other schools; they began a partnership with a newly formed student group at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania, and they traveled to St. Louis last fall for an idea exchange with STEM Ambassadors from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

Illinois State’s STEM Ambassadors aren’t even halfway through their work. Future projects are to be determined, but the Ambassadors themselves will determine the methods and modes of that research. Last fall, they conducted a second survey of students and faculty to better understand indicators and impacts of student-faculty connections. They presented their findings in a panel at Illinois State’s University Teaching & Learning Symposium in January.

The CeMaST team is excited to see what the Ambassadors do next and hopes that the program is just as beneficial to the students as it will be to the University. Darner wants the Ambassadors to become “change agents in their respective disciplines, so that they can enable equity and inclusion more broadly—not just at ISU.”

The Ambassadors are passionate about the work. A desire to make long-lasting change—even though it likely won’t be felt until after they leave campus—was one of the primary factors CeMaST used in hiring the students. 

The experience has been especially impactful for Brzegowy, who plans to implement what she learns as an Ambassador when she realizes her dream of becoming a teacher. 

“We’ve been to high schools and college fairs, and you can see the hesitation in a lot of students when we ask them if they’re interested in STEM,” she said. “There’s a feeling that STEM is only for people with like really high SAT scores, and that’s just not the case. STEM not being accessible isn’t the discipline’s problem. It’s the people teaching it and making it available that aren’t making it accessible.

“Changing that is something that’s really important to me.”