Utilizing Equitable and Inclusive Design Principles to Promote STEM Identity of Community College Transfer Students

The University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), Workshops for Engineering & Science Transfers (WEST) 2019 program designed workshops for

students interested in chemistry, climate science, physics, and toxicology that focused on promoting the scientific identities by incorporating authentic ways for students to receive recognition from both peers and instructional facilitators, as well as allowing students to tap into their own personal interests and values.
 

This paper, Utilizing Equitable and Inclusive Design Principles to Promote STEM Identity of Community College Transfer Students, provides insights from the designed assessments. Mentoring was one example strategy - below is an excerpt from the paper:
 

"Mentoring is one strategy for cultivating STEM identity, as mentors link students to career resources and research opportunities, provide emotional support, foster mentees' confidence and science self-efficacy, and facilitate their valuing of scientific research (e.g., Atkins et al., 2020; Estrada et

al., 2018). In leading a relatively short activity, the main mentoring goal was to cultivate learners' STEM Identities through facilitation. During the PDP, we (as facilitators) were trained in design aspects and facilitation moves that, when implemented, helped foster learners' STEM Identity, including recognition by meaningful others to facilitate meaningful events in our activities to bolster learner confidence in STEM (discussed in 1.2). Additionally, since several of our activity facilitators identified with marginalized groups including first generation college students, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community, they could help serve as role models to learners from similar backgrounds."