good morning this hearing will now come to order good morning and welcome to today's research and science education subcommittee hearing on broadening the participation of individuals from under represented groups in stem fields in the last three years this subcommittee has held four hearings focused specifically on the barriers to increasing the interest and participation of women in stem today we want to get a better understanding of the unique apps obstacles faced by individuals from different racial cultural and social economic backgrounds and help to identify both common challenges and opportunities to widen the stem pipeline as many of you know we are in the process of examining the state of national science foundation programs authorized under the two thousand and seven america competes act with the goal of strengthening the n s a s research and education missions including programs related to broadening participation science an engineering have become steadily more important not only in our daily lives but also to the economic strength and competitiveness of the united states we have heard many times that we as a nation need to produce more scientists and engineers as well as a more stamina literate workforce to fill a growing number of technical jobs but we find it much more difficult to develop the well trained stem workforce we need if we continue to overlook the significant portions of the talent pool we need to do a better job of developing all of the stim talent the nation has to offer is specially because changing demographics mean that by the year two thousand and fifty fifty five percent of the college population will be from groups that are currently minorities studies show that regardless of background one third of all incoming freshmen plan to major in a stem field but the fraction of students completing stem degrees varies widely by race between thirty two and thirty eight percent of all minority students intending to pursue an undergraduate stim degree actually get one when you compare these numbers to the fifty eight percent of white students and seventy four percent of asian students who do successfully complete their undergraduate stem degrees it raises several concerns first we need to identify and address the preparatory cultural and institutional barriers faced by under represented groups but these numbers also remind me that the attrition rates especially in fiel like computer science or engineering are too high regardless of demographics i look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about what is working what obstacles remain where we go from here and how the federal government can help again i am particularly interested in any recommendations the witnesses may have about the broadening participation programs managed by the in a sense this is a particularly timely issue given the administration's f y two thousand and eleven budget in which they propose consolidating many of in assess existing broadening participation programs into a single comprehensive framework i think all the witnesses for being here today and i look forward to your testimony but you're now recognizes d in science technology engineering and math well we have had success with some of the federal programs targeted at attracting and retaining the students in stem the overall numbers are still discouraging strength ning stem education is a zent in a sense still to the future of american economic competitiveness and it's also essential to the future of the students involved because that's where the jobs will be and we must prepare our students for the jobs of the future the lack of under represented might minority participation in these areas is a great hindrance that must be remedied the national science foundation has requested almost eight hundred million dollars in fiscal year two thousand and eleven for programs with a specific focus or an emphasis on broadening the participation of under represented groups in stem education and research i'm curious to learn how program successes can be leveraged and what changes are needed for us to consider in particular the consolidation that has been proposed is a matter of concern to me and i think everyone i'm not automatically against a change it's just that i believe we have to carefully examine what this implies and what the likely results will be it is my hope that the witnesses testifying today will offer this committee insight into ways to better support if there are members who wish to submit additional opening statements your statements will be added to the record at this point at this time i would like to introduce our witnesses dr shirley malcolm is the head of the directorate for education and human resources program for the american association for the advancement of science dr lee should out is an associate professor of higher education as well as co director of the center for urban education at the university of southern an associate professor of physics and astronomy as well as the call director of the fisk vanderbilt masters to p h d bridge program at vanderbilt university dr david yarrow it is the president of the little bighorn college and chair of the board of directors for the american indian higher education consortium and lastly dr missy lane craft is the director of the south carolina advanced technological education national resource center at florence darlington technical college in south carolina welcome all as our witnesses should know we will each have five minutes you will each have five minutes for your spoken testimony your written testimony will be included in the record for the hearing when you all have completed your spoken testimony we will begin with questions each member will have five minutes to question the panel we will start with dr malcolm thank you for the opportunity to testify today on the critically important topic of broadening participation in science technology engineering and mathematics or stem with congressman errors announcing his retirement i would like to thank him for his strong and steadfast support for stem education i will focus my remarks on women minorities and persons with disabilities in stem at bachelor's level women are already near or above parity in most him fields except physics computer science and engineering even though the dr numbers have increased women are not present amongst him faculty at levels that might be expected in trying to understand the patterns of any group in any field it's important to look at the levels of representation as well as the trends over time the levels a bachelor's degrees for women generic and computer science are about the same around twenty percent but that twenty percent represents a slight improvement over the decade in engineering and a significant decline in computer science far below below its all time high of thirty seven percent in one thousand nine hundred four it's important to unpack the numbers in order to understand how to move them in the physical sciences if we look at minority participation it's driven by the chemistry numbers physics numbers remain low under represented minorities improvement is actually being driven by women with under represented males under participating in all feels as well as in stem the numbers have been moving in part because of programs such as the national science foundation lou is still choli is for minority participation and the h b c you up as well as the more programs of the national institute of general medical sciences in the end i h persons with disabilities have been recognized by aaa as for about thirty five years as a community that does deserve special focus  intervention in stem education and careers were not able to present the same candidate as we are for participation of for this community as we did for women and minorities however the issues here deserve more focus as we consider how to support with education and training us veterans who are returning from combat in iraq and afghanistan with significant disabilities how did we get to this point with modest improvement without parity in batiste patients at the k twelve levels there are billions in policy at every level from the individual school and district to the state and federal government the initiatives have been proposed are steps in the right direction but by themselves are not enough we have to build out beyond schools to support learning not just education aaa us has experience in engaging community wide initiatives they're convinced that such approaches have merit but we have to be careful not to become fixated on the idea that you got to fix k twelve before you can move the numbers in stem we know too many examples of where that's not the case even with strong k twelve performance young women get lost to stem and even with inadequate k twelve preparation many minority serving institutions are able to move under represented minorities into stem so this is not a simple story college pathways differ for different from students from different population groups many students go to community college because of cost or geographic proximity these students have large enrollments of under represented minorities they play a significant role in the education of teachers and in the retraining of for the new economy in days when for segregated by law h b c u's were really the only options in higher education for many black students in the south but even as students have begun to exercise other options with regard to undergraduate education ajmi so use remain the baccalaureate origins institutions for black students who received stem doctorate between two thousand and three and two thousand and seven a number of institutions have been designated as hispanic serving except for those in puerto rico a few of these institutions have expressly were expressed we've established to address the political social and cultural needs of these populations producing leaders for stand made means we must pay attention to the doctoral numbers at present there is reason for concern about ph d production of domestic students period in all fields of engineering as well as in mathematics physics and computer science where in two thousand and seven temporary residence received over half of all doctors in those fields we've enjoyed progress at the doctoral level and beyond because of programs from the n s f such as advance and the ally as for graduate education professorial but moving ahead i want to  concerns the fragmented nature of the federal response that begs for coordination in s t c like level the scale of the resources that are exhibiting expended that do not approach the scale of the problems that are to be addressed the consolidation i believe is ill advised at this point we have something else that are especially difficult such as physics and computer science that warrants special attention and in the faculty and advancement issues we must be attentive to the fact that we need to diversify our faculty at the same time in order to accomplish the diversification of our student population thank you start by talking about the current situation the committee has taken up the issue of broadening diversity in stem fields in an era of urgent need to improve the nation's infrastructure and by mental sustainability security and manufacturing yet currently we are experiencing a loss of talent from stem as each year african american latino and american indian students start their college studies as stem majors but then leave leave those fields at higher rates and alarming numbers students across the country graduate from high school unprepared to do college level mathematics and experience debt in remedial classrooms in college the students have been most poorly served in their primary and secondary schooling are too often assigned the least well prepared teachers and colleges with the lowest level of resources so the question is what can we do about the scituate some work has already been done with funding from n s f and other federal agencies stem faculty administrators and counselors have built on research findings to develop model programs that help students navigate college and complete stem degrees these include supplemental instruction orientation summer bridge programs peer tutoring and intrusive advising however these practices do not go far enough most problematically there typically focus on fixing students rather than fixing instructional practices in stem they need to be supplemented with work at the core of higher education this means in classrooms through curriculum reform and through new pedagogy we know that active learning focused on real world problem solving engages students of all backgrounds research shows that african american latino and female students find added value in applying the scientific learning to problems of communities and society to encourage active learning and applied problem solving instead we need to invest in bold experiments that reorganize the curriculum and break down disciplinary silos but another major challenge must be acknowledged the racial climate of stem classrooms and programs is too often negative recent research documents that racial stigma and discrimination create significant barriers to the participation of under represented racial ethnic groups  stem to improve diversity we must use the tools of culturally responsive pedagogy to dispel the negative racial climate is created when students are treated as if they are all alike one factor that perpetuates this issue is that our stem teaching force is not as diverse as the student body we teach as we were taught and unwittingly reproduce harsh campus climate's that too often devalue racial ethnic diversity the new stem teaching for should have the cultural competencies to dispel any sense of racial the script discrimination bias or racial stigma this is impaired of the most important step n s f can take therefore is to fund interdisciplinary research of stem pedagogy and the racial climate of stem classrooms and learning environments scientists and social scientists can conduct studies together to determine the kind of professional development and support professors need to adopt new pedagogy change must come at the institutional level so as prominent educational leadership to enable this changes the development of rigorous and comprehensive evaluation strategies is needed these must include evaluation of student outcomes a program of fact of this and reaching performance benchmarks as well as evaluation of faculty development and organizational change processes change cannot be limited to individual institutions as the majority of latino students are and all the community colleges today to improve the participation of hispanic students  structural reforms most cross the boundaries of two year colleges and four universities to allow students to transfer and earn bachelor's degrees and graduate degrees in addition hispanic students are heavily enrolled in hispanic serving institutions funding that enhances the mission focus and hispanic serving focus of these institutions will have a central role to play in improving latino in the participation in stem in closing let me affirm that we do not face an aspirations gap among african american latino and latino and american indian students for participation in stem we have an opportunity and an education gap notably we have the tools to close that gap if we have the will i have no doubt that our investments in diversity in stem will be repaid through greater productivity and innovation is been my privilege to address this committee i thank you for your attention to my remarks and i'll be happy to elaborate on my comments or my written testimony in response to your questions thank you very much thank you congresswoman fudge ranking member ehlers fellow physicist i might add and members of the subcommittee i'm kevin stass an associate professor of astronomy at vanderbilt university and adjunct professor of physics at fisk university as well as co director of the fisk vanderbilt masters to p h d bridge program i'd like to focus my remarks this morning on the need for more american citizens earning ph d s in stem fields and the role of the federal government in furthering that  it is in the nation's interest to sustain a vital pipeline of americans earning doctoral degrees and stem fields these pay ph d s represent our national brain trust in science and engineering they are the leaders of our world class laboratories the principal investigators of is the teachers and role models for subsequent generations of america's explorers it matters that these future stand leaders reflect the face of america yet today as you heard from dr malcolm less than half of all d s awarded in the u s good citizens of the united states and u s citizens who are under represented minorities comprise only four percent of all stand ph d s awarded by u s institutions we are very effectively training the st leaders for the rest of the world one consequence is that we have very few american minorities on the stem faculty at major research universities even with an immediate five fold increase in the production of minority stem ph d s we will not achieve parity relative to the s population for another thirty years this is no time for gradualism it is with this imperative that the fisc vanderbilt masters to p h d bridge program was initiated six years ago as a stem faculty led collaboration between fisk venerated historically black university and vanderbilt a major research university both in nashville tennessee since then cisco has become one of the top ten producers of physics master's degrees among all u s citizens and no institution awards more master degrees in physics to black u s citizens in two thousand and nine just five years after its inception the fifth venerable bridge program graduated its first speech the overall the program's retention rate is ninety two percent and vanderbilt is on track to award between five and ten times the number of minority ph d s in physical sciences as our peer institutions our most recent cohort alone represents a one hundred percent increase in the national production of minority p h d s rufus's one of our key strategies  actively scout out american students with unrealized potential for stem careers this idea of scouting talent for laboratories the way we do for athletic teams represents a departure from business as usual for vanderbilt which like most universities has traditionally relied on metrics such as g r u scores to rank its ph d applicants but in the globalised twenty first century american students are simply being outperformed on these metrics by their peers from china india and other nations who apply to our laboratories in large venable program we get to really know our students by completing a two year master's degree at fisk under the mentorship of fifteen venerable faculty the students have a chance to show what they're made of excelling in our tough graduate courses making discover our laboratories and demonstrating the traits we seek in promising young scientists creativity entrepreneurial spirit grit these are the traits that sting wish american students from their peers around the world and which will always be at the heart of our global leadership and competitiveness but the bottom line is that faculty leaders dedicated to diversity and stem are the single most important gradient in our success the intense is one on one student mentoring that is so central to this venerable model depends absolutely on faculty who already shoulder extensive demands in the form of teaching managing world class laboratories and produce intentional returns on federal r and d investment we do it because we view diversity in stem as a national priority for reasons that are at once strategic moral competitive even patriotic stem faculty are also entrepreneurial people who respond to federal incentives in r and d funding a promising example is the n s f career awards these are among the most prestigious it's that it that a stem faculty member can receive requiring both cutting edge research and what n s f calls broader impact which explicitly includes broadening participation as a goal and i said career awards to several of us at vanderbilt have been instrumental in launching our careers helping us to secure tenure and catalyzing the fisc vanderbilt bridge program's success authorizing other federal agencies such as nasa deal we to adopt and assess broader impacts language or something like it would be a powerful way for congress to incentivize and reward the stem faculty and other researchers who lead the nation's broadening participation charge mr chairman thank you for the opportunity to testify today be happy to answer any questions from miles it territory larger than the speed of rhode island in the early one nine hundred eighty s microbes stablish little the corn cart with the goal of creating a lasting tradition of higher education for a good path into the future for the crow people i am proud to say that i am a product of microbes commitment to higher education as a student i graduated from little bighorn college as a faculty member i taught a call or two later after earning advanced degrees i became an administrator now as president a little bit corn color it is my responsibility to keep the building the path and to try my people broadening student participation in programs i'm pleased to comment on efforts to overcome these barriers to tribal colleges and create a free recommendations on strategies for improving federal agency support to ensure that all americans including the first americans can succeed institution simply put american incredibly far colleges and universities are young geographically isolated poor and almost unknown to mainstream america our institutions are also extraordinarily effective  revitalisation and change so much so that we have been called higher educations best kept secret travel colleges are planting seeds of hope for the future sustaining native languages cultures and traditions and helping to build stronger crevel economies and governments yet the oldest tr and culturally base holistic and supportive the education system must address the whole person mind body spirit and family in only a few short decades travel cards have grown from very humble beginnings to thriving academic centers little bit in addressing the higher education needs of american indians much work and many challenges remain of all groups in the u s american indian students have the highest high school dropout rates in the country less than half of all american indians high school students actually graduate  pursue higher education in this most often through tribal colleges which like other community colleges are open admission institutions in addition to offering preparation and testing public colleges face challenges with remediation developmental education on average more than strong partnerships with their case with twelve feeder schools where i work in office who are in a safety programs to engage young students early on and consistently in community and culturally relevant science and math programs however most of our stem programs operate on soft competitive funding and prior to n s f teacup most tribal colleges were unable to secure the resource needed to build high quality stem programs we simply were not able to complete pete successfully in simp rogan sponsored by n s f and other federal agencies beginning in fiscal year two agencies can work with our institutions to overcome barriers to broadening participation however outside the program and assist broadening participation effort has not been entirely successful throughout our history states in may so institutions have taken advantage travel colleges and are students adding us after a proposal is completely developed has increased dramatically d c in fact we simply are not competitive in n s f sponsored grants competitions because our institutions like the funding needed to hire experience researchers and that could support staff including grant writers and system professionals another problem facing the size and remoteness of our institutions how many students are they going to be able to impact is a common question for a small institutions our response how many native students are in mainstream university science articulate with funding commitments there are going to t c s that score programs should be held accountable to work with travel college just as they work with state supported public institutions my written testimony includes several other recommendations which we would be pleased to discuss with you at your conclude this morning by saying that we are grateful mr chairman for this opportunity to share our story or successes and our needs with you today we look forward to working with you to achieve voter participation in stem degree programs she were we are successful business thrive lives are changed for the better and personal financial success impacts entire families and the national economy today i will share information about the two year technically community college environment which our work results from national science foundation funding that has brought the participation in stam changed lives for the better and supported economic development i will also suggest a place in the academic pipeline that apple eve is in need of major improvement if we are to hope to further broaden participation in s community and technical colleges enroll more than eleven million students we educate the most diverse students in higher education we are the primary educators of highly skilled stem technicians these technicians are the nation stamp practitioners they are critical to global competitiveness our country needs more technicians than it does scientists or engineers the ratio generally ranges from three technicians to one scientist or engineer to sometimes as many as twelve to fifteen technicians to one scientist or engineer and this particular photo you see dr morgan host of the radio programs technician and biotech nation ared bad national public radio with willard cooper willie is an engineering technology graduate of florence darlington technical college in as a career as an engineering technician with a sob cutting in welding in florence south carolina he was on the program with oct at an n s f advanced technological education or a t v conference in washington eighteen months ago when he is married he has four dollars daughters he's in the south carolina national guard he was deployed to iraq while he was in engineering technology program he returned to the program graduated and now he's been tapped for off candidate school of the national guard and he's been deployed again this time t funding from the national science foundation has enabled us to prepare faculty to teach more effective ways using industry type problems and teamwork and this picture you see technology gateway class of students who had to learn to use math physics technology and communications effectively to solve a problem and to build this model of their solution for a class presentation stem programs that our institutions support economic development graduates are ready for both the workplace and college transfer diversity in program says it's improved with the n s f funded initiatives this photo is of shelton ford he's a civil engineering technology student at florence darlington techies now graduated he was working for an architect and he was designing the steeple on the church you may be able to see it on his computer monitor he was justifiably proud of his work but the big smile you see on his face because he had just gotten engaged that day in addition to increase diversity graduation rates soared with our n s f initiatives gains were attributed to placing an emphasis on retaining stem students at the beginning of programs where most dropouts occur the graduation rates improved from fifteen percent to forty percent after the change we changed the way we top first year of engineering technology courses and this picture you seen the tastes of the cluster oliver she completed civil engineering technology degree at florence darling technical college her bachelor of science degree in engineering technology francis marion university she's currently on the road in a graduate program in project management at we're now in george african american success rate in engineering technology we increased from fifteen to thirty nine percent with our programs the gains resulted from proved teaching methodology that specifically addressed learning styles through team working class  special activities for female eighty students under represented students experienced a sense of belonging made to keesha right she completed agree in computer technology florence darlington tech and is currently completing her bachelor's degree in computer science a coastal carolina university industry sponsored student internships have been a big part of our program full time enrollment and own time graduation can be rare for community and technical college students who must work while attending college and both are major retention factors in the state industry paid internships encourage full time and roman internships also augment learning broad economic benefit results when students transition from minimum wage to how wage employment these students were making it working forty hours  away making minimum wage when they started their industry internships they could cut back to twenty hours a week with a knew how wages they were making in this picture you see sean jackson inbred tendo working at hand of south carolina where they make all terrain vehicles and personal watercraft scholarships promote on time graduation high grades improved attention we were able to reduce the time to graduation for our engineering technology students from three point eight years to two point two years through a combat and change in the way we taught our program and the scholarship support the lab the students to be full time the national science foundation supports our text our scholarships through the s t m program today this program has a ninety five percent graduation rate the story doesn't stop here at f t t c success strategies and educational materials developed with n s f funding are nabbing used in twenty five states and the district of white county has school in cleveland georgia through our partnership with the national dropout prevention center clemson university we're now looking at our teaching and learning strategies as dropout prevention strategies for high schools these students you see in the picture on the verge of dropping out of haskell they had already failed at the science portion of the georgia exam once and were not attending school regularly we provided them with stem based hands projects that answer a question why am i learning this every day they had fab cohorts of students in the program now the success right on the same acres exam in georgia was eighty five percent for the for the first cohort they got one hundred percent in fall of two thousand and then with the fifth significant change of challenges remain in broadening participation the two girls you see in this photograph attended our colleges summer technology camp what will happen to them will they be underprepared students will they struggle with success in stem when they reach college according to the a c t in two thousand and nine only twenty three percent of our students graduated from high school that were tested were college ready if they are under prepared will they be disappointed to fan that in our remedial programs that they have to required to participate and that there's no relevant stam in those courses under represented students face not academic and academic hurdles first generation students when they attend college may not understand that textbooks are no longer distributed by the district but have to be purchased and it happened i says they may not understand that there's no cafeteria that provides free or reduced price lunch is their own their own now also for transportation and they haven't learned the habits of success they didn't take rigorous has school science and math and they haven't been predict for success of to do well on placement tests when they come to the college as more advantage students have been the bottom line is that we're losing many potential stem students after they enter college but before they actually get to begin their degree programs lengthy remediation that is not related to their major discourages program completion this particular photo is the s t of stam science technology and engineering is needed much earlier in the college experience current practice and remediation omits these three important subjects very technology students patrick cannon and blake wallace are working on a robot in class students not yet ready to enter the curriculum could benefit from similar experiences the major challenge in broadening participation in stem may be that under represented populations in stem are most likely to also be under prepared for success and stam community and technical colleges lacson aged resources and incentive to reform and on to stamp programs science technology and sharing faculty need to be involved and there are already a scarce resource in our institutions research based teaching methodology work with plenty of research that shows that the faculty struggle to use teaching methodology that were not the way they were taught faculty development is needed is that comes from our n s f funding show changes can be stimulated with targeted funding initiatives the n s f a program has been a phenomenal catalyst for improvement in technician education nationally and should be used as a model for improving in infusing the science technology and engineering into courses that address the needs of under prepared students done well this could significantly significantly broaden participation and stam perhaps more than any other single improvement in higher education ms crap you can you know wrap up stem success stories include the ones like the gal in the middle of this picture pamela sansbury pamela was saved early she came to the college wanted to do cosmetology said she wanted to do hair we discovered she had math ability and directed her to engineering technology instead today she is a national trainer for robotics manufacturer a be a very successful looking after her three daughters thank you thank you before we begin our question recognize this budge for five minutes for the first the questions thank you very much mr chairman and thank all of you before i get to my first question i would like to say to dr stats that i think that the collaboration you have with  is fabulous if we are talking about engaging young people especially minorities to collaborate with a school that is full of minorities who already understand the rigors of what what a an education really is about i think is phenomenal so i just want to congratulate you for your work thank you and i'd love to see more people do the same kinds of things my first question is to dr that out dr dowd you referenced a report that found many faculty  senior leadership don't buy into increasing access to in success in stem education for minority and low income students additionally you cited research that in for size african american students participate in education with an acute awareness of the dynamics of race and racism in their lives in short you've seen that racial stigma and discrimination are barriers to the participation of under represented racial ethnic groups in st courses among many other concerns this information clearly demonstrates that the need for more diversity in faculty i firmly believe in the power of role models after all you can't be what you don't see  so students don't see scientists that look like them they have a hard time in visioning themselves a scientist however dr malcolm stated that despite the observed increase in the number of ph d s awarded to minorities there was not a corresponding increase in the number of minority faculty members my question is as we work to increase the number of racial and ethnic minorities receiving ph d s how can we simultaneously encourage them to teach racism in the sense that there's racism can be understood as social processes where we create hierarchies and in the case of racism we use race as a category by which to assign those racial heart those social hierarchies can in consideration of entry to the faculty we see in the numbers very low participation on the part of latinos and african americans as he stated mentoring is extremely important and mentors and role player can play a very important role as role models but in addition they can be active in understanding how to direct their students doctoral students included to resources that they need to gain programs that research universities are fairly narrow understanding how to navigate those pathways is difficult and without the assistance of a role model and mentor to engage actively in problem solving and to direct students towards those institutions tend to recruit from peer institutions and therefore if you're not receiving your degree from one of the institutions that happen to be within the peer group it's very difficult to break in now there are ways to overcome that for example by taking a post doc in a prestigious institution it is possible to overcome some of that but part of it relates to the fact and i think that the advanced program really found this out is that there are really processes within institutions around hiring of faculty that aren't that don't necessarily work to expose the most diverse group of people to put into the pool to begin with african americans for example are more likely to say that they want to teach and go on to the faculty the question is whether or not we actually have the pathways that can help them to move from the identification to the recruitment to the actual hire and that is a complex process that involves in many cases the judgments of the existing faculty as well as efforts that might be made in order to really reach out beyond the usual suspects to identify people who may be available and highly qualified to go into that applicant pool thank you and just last question quickly if you if you could i remember reading in someone's testimony that there is a belief that debt is a deterrent for minorities wishing to pursue graduate degrees and stem and i just want to know is there a lack of financial support and is it the most significant barrier to students ability to pursue advanced degrees anyone in collaboration with dr lindsey malcolm of the university of california at riverside at the center for urban education we studied the effects of probably one of the most important or the funding of scholarships and fellowships is the most important thing that an subtend do addition to what i focus on in my remarks which is aging and scholarship on active learning thank about barriers to increasing the number of under represented minorities in science technology engineering and mathematics feels and to a dent in the strategies for bringing more under represented minorities into the science technology engineering and mathematics workforce we don't have this report yet and yet we are now looking at the reauthorization of american peace and i would like to get from you the specific policy directives that regard to the need to have a broader impact criterion actually applied more across the board i do think that this has made a difference within the the the n s f i was well the science board and actually a member of the criterion committee  at that time and i do think that it tends to reset the culture in the institutions i do think that we have issues with regard to not only debt at the undergraduate level believe have issues with regard to graduate school d debt tends to be highest among those groups that really can actually least afford it but i would say that it isn't just about fellowships and traineeships how the kind of money one gets is actually does matter when money is actually associated with the training process that is that you have research assistant chips and the like it gets you in tree into the lab the key to the door and the relationship with the mentor that is likely to be deeper and yet we basically are less likely to see african americans reporting that they are getting for example research assistant chips men in many cases the faculty will choose who to use those resources to support their international students because they do not carry the same requirements as the traineeships and fellowships do with regard to u s citizenship now i think that there are all kinds of issues around the the notion of  it's raising a real problem i do think that there are also issues to relate to the lack of diversity among faculty we are seeing research that says that it matters at least for  recent research that came out last week about african american faculty and it's a fifth and the effect of african american faculty on african american students encouragement support and retention him so i think that as a whole panoply of things some of that cause costs new resources some of that don't they just require different behavior and really the will to actually do things in a different  way i will echo dr malcolm's echo of my recommendation to to to authorize other federal funding agencies to adopt something like and assess broader impacts language i see myself as a front lines researcher  somebody who runs a lab and works one on one with students and i for personal reasons reasons bring a strong commitment to diversity and stem but what i see among my colleagues is that many of them who may not be able to  initially relate to the broadening participation charge for personal reasons they nonetheless are very entrepreneurial people and they see the broader impacts mandate from n s f they want the prize of an n career ward they want to bring in the the resources that are needed to build and sustain a world class laboratory and so they learn pretty quick how to effectively respond to broader impact and to broaden participation in my written testimony i elaborate on the notion of not only requiring performance benchmarking to show the impact of programs on producing additional students with degrees but also diagnostic benchmarking in order to use best practices in ways that can be applied to understand the organizational and structural changes needed within institutions and that respect we can also require what's called process benchmarking whereby institutions look to peers and  change their practices in order to achieve the performance benchmarks that are desired and for american indians i think for us the lack of capacity to go out and go after pursue these types of grants have been a detriment to us but we also lack of role models historically but that is changing through this process and the more american indians that go into the stem fields provide opportunities and seeing that you know others like us have gone on to be successful and i was here i saw with us that originally it was there because of a lack of resources to go after these types of grants making people aware of it but that those things are changing for us thank you you know the general not recognize dr ellis thank you mr chairman and i apologize for dashing out but i had to give a talk to a group of students downstairs who are holding a poster session and  it's really heartening one of them happened to be from my district that it was kind of amusing because he has done some astrophysical work looking at galaxy clusters and so forth and just flying the will very likely existence of dark matter in the universe and i find that really interesting that a high school student i guess he was beginning college student could do research of that  magnitude because the data is all there and on the internet and he was you know it's not exactly nobel prize winning but it's a very serious work and it's really heartening to see young people tackling those problems trouble relating to some of the problems that people have i have a i had my own set of problems when i when i was to college because i had been homeschooled dude illness and i was completely maladjusted which you still see occasionally have questions or probably wouldn't be in congress but in any event it's a tough girl for minorities to come out from there so their situation where they are and minorities it's for many someone mention the the problem i think it was you surely something about males under represented in certain areas and if you don't have the right role models and you don't have the right experiences as a child sometimes it's very difficult and we don't place enough emphasis on that i would love to get a set of tinkertoys and lincoln logs to every child born in the country male or female and have them have that experience of assembling things making things and especially making things run the hands of the doctor does use determinant and i wanted to have you amplify on you talked about the need for a new assesses within the classroom settings and other learning environments whereby professors gain a sense of their studious development as learn years and asked the question of themselves and other students each day what have you learned here today  emphasis is not on some one of evaluation with testing only but also on what students learn to do this professors need a set of skills that are not only content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge but also race knowledge  this way instruction can take account of the fact that learners are always in the process of developing new identities new identities as college students new identities ciliated with racial ethnic identification and new identit scientists which is so important in terms of the passion for learning ok that's that's helpful something i was absent from a discussion when talking about minorities no mention of total numbers within the college population now that does not mean that there aren't issues with regard to americans who are patricia paid in these fields we are not for example necessarily finding them in leadership roles even though we find them among the faculty and we find them getting the degrees and they're not necessarily asian americans are not necessarily a monolithic group you have the hmong filipino for example that the where those numbers and pacific islanders may look a lot more like under represented minorities while korean japanese and chinese may look different so i think that this notion of desegregation and unpacking the socio economic and i think that the the real issue is that this is such a complex picture it almost has to be looked at department by department community by community and really do in order to really understand how to actually meet individual students needs and that's i think the the plea that dr doubt is making that we've got to get underneath a lot of this but in in cases where there are where there is a strong sense of of family push and support for certain fields we see most students oftentimes moving into those fields in at the same time you will see that the asian american student populations are not necessarily in the social and behavioral sciences fields in the same level that they might be in areas such as engineering a computer science when i was when i was teaching at berkeley we had an range it's a turkish university that we would exchange or we would take some of their students at least at the master's level and perhaps a ph d working with them in the lab directly it was really struck by how lack of certain things in the background makes it difficult things that you might not think of but for example they they had never worked on a car no i don't regard working on a car being a mechanic is crucial to becoming a physicist but they had no idea how to deal with equipment how to handle it and i just realized we really had to go back to step fields of study in certain professions in the sciences they're not necessarily under represented in the are but as dr malcolm pointed out that's not true among different ethnic groups so asian students are also important in this discussion understanding the differences and using the of racism operating in the system of creating hierarchies within our society and testing does that so when we overemphasize asians as a model minority that's also i would say damaging towards the participation of asian students the panel how these changes were implemented dr de out described part of what we are doing which includes a lot of the formative assessment strategies often we teach from application the scenery rather than the traditional theory the application this helps the student understand why they're learning something and creates a need to know we found that if you create a need to know then they become very inquisitive and they want to learn more and you can actually teach them how to learn how to but you know there's a lot of lip service given to self directed learners and that that sort of thing and but how do you make that happen and this is one of the ways in which you do that giving a real world problems to solve teaching them how to work in teams teaching a problem solving process so that i mean essentially we are having to prepare students today for to work in technologies that haven't yet been invented to solve problems that we don't know we have yet and you said that they're also implementing these across country with many many other institutions yes it started with a collaboration among the technical colleges in south carolina and then it's you know piece by piece we've spread it across the country and they're saying i would think the same sort of improvements where you can get the teachers to actually change their teaching methodology so you do get these improvements yes and dr doubt in your testimony you state that there are certain pathways to stem bachelor's degrees that just aren't necessarily part of that process from the community college that there should be what i read into a greater access into the matriculation route toward a bachelor's degree why is this is there anything that can be done to improve that access it seems to me that if community colleges are the the can the campus of choice  should we have those bridges to bashford stem degrees that could advantage the student yes improving transfer and improving articulation i think really important part of this equation for increasing numbers of of hispanic students earning bachelors as well as graduate degrees in stem i believe that faculty collaboration between two your college faculty and university faculty in developing curricula and aligned programs and degrees is very important and also providing encouragement to states to allow community colleges to offer degrees in stem fields in community colleges is also important well bachelor's degree hiring new generation of faculty who can engage students in this area i noted that we did a lot to move up the president's push to provide more community college assistance  respond to that dilemma in a way that allows us to offer the space and cultivate the two year degrees and bridges to the four year all all of you as a panel or most of you if not all made mention of some sixty to ninety percent of students enrolled in community college as requiring or participating in remedial programming is there something that should be done in the remedial layer that exercise that courage is stem connection so something that we should be doing beyond what's being done now that would really advance that craft is that pointed out what i've found is that the total remedial studies are typically breeding anguish and that there is no science engineering or technology there and those other three topics are never taught in the context of stamp and st careers and i think that can make a huge difference for the students so anyone else on the panel have a comment that started out the mathematics curriculum in remedial or developmental education is highly segmented into skill based study so that for example the california community college a student would need to take three to four classes in mathematics before they earn any degrees that will count towards transfer for a bachelor's degree this can take years so dismantling this process of a long segmented skill based study into curricula that that are connected to careers occupations and actual problem solving would be beneficial to shorten the length of time needed to earn degrees and to engage students so where should the push come then to make those improvements to make those reforms happen should it be left to the individual states or should there be some sort of incentive program from the feds what would make that come around in a way that really feeds stem i think that on itself focus on transformative initiatives focus on pedagogy and curriculum reform will provide the incentive for colleges to work together to reshape their curriculum and i do believe that that's important dr malcolm let me let me underscore that this that in a perfect world there would be no need for remediation but the world  not perfect i do think that we do have to continue to look at k twelve and what is actually happening at the high school level i think that the the points that have been made about the fact that the mathematics instruction needs to be grounded in connected to something that is real so that students really get it about why you have to do this as well as having pedagogical strategies that actually support their learning but i think that we haven't really explored the limits of technology in terms of being able to develop things that really are online where students can can support their own learning a lot more a have a way of beginning to kind of first of all figure out where their deficiencies might be and then working to being able to work together in order to address them so i think that this is something that once identified as a problem that there is an opportunity to really dismiss for mentation and some sharing in order to try to get over it mr chairman over over my time if i could just close with one related question is there enough dialogue between community colleges and the pre k through twelve setting are they feeding back what they're seeing and then hopefully inspiring some sort of reforms in that pre k i think the elementary setting is is one that really needs to advance science and tech and especially with you know some of the students that really realizing that that technical side of the elementary setting i'm concerned that we really have not had the kind of mathematics instruction period that we need it has been heavily focused on getting past the next test as opposed to being able to actually use it in real world settings i am hopeful that with the with the the kind of standards conversations that are going on now that states that people who have responsibility from k through postgraduate will have conversations about what the expectations are about what students will need to go from one level to the next some of the states are setting up these councils so there is this kind of of conversation that goes beyond but i agree funding can be used to encourage faculty at all levels k twelve community colleges and universities to come together and to think about how is math best taught what is the mathematics pedagogy that is appropriate to new technologies including online mediated learning and currently those boundaries are pretty hard in terms of little collaboration across sectors and i think that incentives to collaborate are needed  to this idea of understanding the pathways that students take as they move through the various stages and steps in the higher education system when we created the fisc vanderbilt masters to p h d bridge program it was specifically data driven it was incredibly in lightning for me to learn not only the very very important role that historically black colleges universities and other minority serving institutions continue to play in educating  r talented minority students in stem but specifically to learn that if you look at the different pathways that minorities in stem and their non minority counterparts take on route to a ph d in stem they're very different a non minority student will traditionally take the path where you earn a baccalaureate degree of institution a and then a master's degree or perhaps forego the master's to be altogether and a ph d at institution b one transition under represented minorities stem on the other hand are fifty percent more likely to take a pass that is baccalaureate degree to institution a terminal master's degree at institution b and then a ph d at institution c and so in creating our program we did it handoff from from one stage the next and i think that idea of understanding the pathways and preparing deliberate handoff from one step to the next to collaboration between institutions is very very important thank you i thank  towns it just reminds me of some of the campuses that i've been familiar with where when they built or extended those campuses they wouldn't let the sidewalks found that were all planned they would allow the paths to be developed and they'd put the sidewalk there i think we should be doing the same thing that maybe it's hard to teach i don't know i wonder if it's hard to teach science i think when i get to law school what i find is law school law is very inch easy to teach because it's all about stories and cases are really stories about human endeavor and i mean get into the stories and you can but the the challenge seems to me science at least the ways taught to me was that it it seems somewhat rote to start with and it didn't seem to connect up we say in the law you know your honor will connect up if you're asking a series of questions that don't really seem to make sense you say to the judge you're on it all connect up and sometimes he or she will let you keep going  this case is science so wonderful but the challenge is getting it to connect up early enough that people start seeing the connections and get excited about it the people that i know that have gotten excited about science like my kids for example got five kids they are very excited about science but somehow along the way they saw the connection sooner than i did but is this is this is my my just a idiosyncratic here  my experience or is it is that the case that we got to have some inspiration early on to make the connections perhaps hands on what is it that makes it so that people get these connections and get fired up i may my personal experience is that i was told as a as a young boy and all the way through elementary school middle school high school and even going into college i heard from teachers constantly came on you're you're you're going to be a great scientist a mathematician you're very good at science i've heard that phrase over and over again all my life and it wasn't until i was an advanced undergraduate in college and got involved in a real astronomical research project with a mentor that i realized i'd been told my whole life i was excellent in science and up until that point i had never done science i had learned about science i had learned the facts and the algorithms of science and i was quirky enough and it is idiosyncratic enough to be satisfied that but i think you're putting your finger on a very very important point and that is whether it's hands on or discovery based learning or other method some way of giving students who have the talent and the ability very very early on to experience what science is all about which is actually not about knowing the answers but about asking the right questions and having some skill and idea about how to pursue answering this question is it by no means i'm really an expert in science but from my experience this is that with our students with american indians we don't have those positive role models to begin with and then those that are teaching in our case with twelve programs so when i was a strong background in those areas so i think they programs and just when we got to the point where we thought we were got everything squared away we're we're doing our job for a while that program went away so we're faced with that same problem again and through those processes that are tribal colleges for instance in our situation we went from three to four science majors to over fifty now and it's through those times developments that we're able to reach down into the case we call programs and then advancing that to our community colleges is if huge are going to be that we have these super inspirational teachers sit appear to students on the web  individually so that other ways a student then can access the best teacher in the world who's so excited about making the connections in geometry such that the student can get in line with that professor or watch a lecture is that the future is the future trying to get the proficiency of these classroom teachers who sometimes really don't get the connections themselves you know i don't think that david mccullough says we should only let historians teach history because if you get somebody that got a degree in education and they're trying to teach history and they're not excited about history they can bore all the students so if you have somebody to mit who's really great at teaching science and i think mit is doing this online right you can go and get the best professors ever telling you about something of their area of expertise you're excited about right so which is  simply because of student learning styles and i think that the interdisciplinary approach insofar as my colleagues have mentioned that in their talks as well for instance if you do a science project it's never just a science project you can't do a science project if you're not also doing math you can't do a project if you're not doing communications so it's a matter of connecting as you said connecting the dots in the moment teach in silos and our faculty don't have opportunities to see what's going on in the in the related subjects and how they fit together i think at think we've got a big faculty development challenge and that office is well you know when i was in law school u c c uniform commercial it made him the most incredible professor for teaching what probably most lawyers in the room with think was the most horrible course they ever had in law school bob scott made it fascinating  few lecture he'd come in there excited you can't believe what we're going to learn today about this connection between article two in article three and so that's what i hope for our students is i just wanted to say that every person that comes into the world is a scientist they discover the world that is around them they discover their own version of the physical laws they discover their own version is that thing alive or is it not alive they are an open door i think that we basically kill off a large part of that curiosity and enthusiasm with uninspired teaching no one really wants to go into a classroom and be a terrible teacher so the question then becomes well how do we help people to become inspiring teachers one of the first things is that the way that teachers are actually educated is a real issue and that is this are they taught their own science and mathematics in ways that are exciting and engag this is a complex system we are not going to address the issues that relate to teachers until we really address the issues that relate to the people who talk to them and the ways in which they become inspired and excited and that they become gain a command of the subject area we have a program here in in the district of columbia we work with with veteran teachers and in this particular case this is a partnership with george washington university and a master's of practice program and while we give them the pedagogy and information about learning the learning sciences what we now know about how people learn and engage we go back and we make sure we give them content and give it to them in a way that they can give to someone else that they get excited and enthusiastic about it and they're able to pass it on and also engage their students i hope that we don't look to any one spot to try to find the answer because this is a systems problem and we have to think about how we engage every part of it in order to really give kids the and when i began teaching i asked myself what could i do as one person to deal with some of the problems that we're talking about and i started a special  course for future elementary school teachers teaching them physical science which was a required course but i also expanded that to talk about how to teach science which created some problems for the department of education which was very concerned about me getting into their turf but one thing i did which which was turned out to be very fascinating i told the students at the beginning the very first class what i was up to  and i said in my experience virtually every teacher i knew taught as they had been taught and i said i want you to try to break that chain so they each had to have a little notebook they had to carry with them all the time and every friday the return examples that they had seen in classes that they were taking of a good teacher doing something exceptionally good or a bad teacher doing something exceptionally bad or anything in between and they had to analyze it and write just you know hundred words at most and then i would want to share those with the students we talk about it it was really fascinating and the students nationally of course begrudged it but then they really began to enjoy it i mean sister that they wouldn't not where they were not allowed to write down the names of the professors involved and we were just going to talk about pedagogy it's something i would recommend for every for every if anyone teaching future teachers because it makes for the first time in their life think about how they're being taught and analyzing whether it's a good bad or indifferent but it gave me a lot of insight into what the students really need and want because that came out of there too so it's a fascinating exercise and you know if i had had the time and didn't get diverted into politics i would've enjoyed doing summer institutes on that with teachers and just try  down your comments give me a greater appreciation of your question before in regard to new pedagogy because apparently you did the new set of goji when you started with your interest in this area but the process you describe of data collection and careful data analysis about instructional practices is in fact at the heart of my recommendations in regard to what i called process benchmarking but which is also known as inquiry inquiry is self reflective practice about how is what i'm doing contributing to the success of my students and so that type of data collection is really necessary to reframe this problem from problems of students to problems of practice at the center for urban education funding from the n s f we're in the currently in a dissemination phase of our grant and we're designing what we call our stone tool kit and the tool kit includes protocols and materials that instructors can use to engage in this type of data collection and a reflection about their own practices as teachers i should have met you forty years ago but i did have one firm rule announced in first class of the year that every day i was going to tell a joke and my jokes were terrible and so they weren't going to join them and the only way they could stop me was to come with their own jokes and i just said totally different frame in the classroom right from day one you know the joke this one certainly is really critically important gets gets down to the heart of what we're we're talking about here but i will stop i recognize myself for five minutes and i just want to add on  scientists i thought maybe it's just me i want to be going on to getting a couple degrees in engineering ph d in political science but i always think that naturally we look try try to try to figure out the world and it's a scientific process in science and talking about pedagogy and analyzing how we are doing but it's very difficult it takes time and effort to be able to do that but it certainly is critical i remember going going back earlier in my life i didn't when i was in grade school i don't think it was particularly advanced school that i was in by any means but when i was in seventh or eighth grade they asked if any students wanted to go in to teach sort of science to second third grade something like that and so i did that and i still remember some of the things that i did at that time trying to teach the younger kids about about rain and how to where rain comes from and what that doesn't serve growing in trees and things like that another one on magnetism which i remember didn't work out very talking more generally in at the lower levels but i want to ask a question you know relating to what dr malcolm had suggested in her testimony that major research universities need to be more accountable and take responsibility for students success or lack of success in stem so i'm interested in for two things one general more particular to what we're dressing today first how can the federal government incentivize this type of self assessment in improvement in second since a lot of money goes these institutions in support of n s f broader impact requirement how can a broader impact proposals spending the money in the best way possible in providing the incentives that are necessary for better major research universities so how can how can this be done better open up to that with dr malcolm i think that dr stephan probably said it best that faculty are very entrepreneurial and that they will basically figure it out if they are required to do something about it and the broader am pags criterion actually holds a real opening for being able to do to do more and to do better but i think that there has to be an accounting with regard to to those issues as well let me explain what i mean if i submit a proposal to the national science foundation one of the things that they're going to ask me is how did i do on the last money i gave you so i have to report on the accomplishment from the previous funding now i report on the technical side but i don't necessarily have to report on the broader impact side and i think just that particular piece having to actually report on both aspects the technical as well as the broader impacts and beginning to do some kind of an audit or reflection on the part of committees of visitors and other kinds of processes within the foundation could have a a real major impact but rather than just as have it seem like it's a carrot issue why not begin to actually reward with recognition those places that come up with exemplary broader impacts we have we recognize teachers outstanding teachers we recognize outstanding researchers we recognize young really investigators we recognize all kinds of things why not begin to recognize when someone has done a usually solid piece of work with regard to these issues and that they can actually make a case and present the evidence that in fact that they have done this thank you dr down i would second that the evaluation process and assess grantees can can create incentives for the organization organizational learning and faculty learning that's needed to make a difference and so beyond just measuring effectiveness of particular programs and asking in what ways has an institution learned as a result of the incubator of best practices that's going on at a program level is part of the expectation that should be set so evaluation should move towards  broader impact at the institutional level not just at the level of programs and we can for example develop surveys of faculty beliefs about their own effectiveness or efficacy in increasing diversity in stem fields  that's just an example for example the center of urban education we're developing indicators of of faculty effectiveness in gauging on issues of diversity and so we can use these types of surveys not just to ask about students are you engaged or are you motivated are you expending effort but then to ask that question on the faculty side of the equation and on the institutional side as well as  i would emphasize again that unfortunately currently n s f is on its own as a federal funding agency with with explicitly requiring this kind of this kind of language in the evaluation of funding proposals that are submitted to it i'm referring specifically to the broader impacts language it would help tremendously i think if that kind of priority and explicitness were present in the other federal funding carrots that are available to entrepreneurial researchers the second thing that i would add however is that perhaps ironically it is often the case through n s f funding programs specifically those that are focused on broadening participation that one of the reasons there is not currently a higher level of accountability for progress that was made lessons that were learned in previous grants that were awarded is because very often  or recipient of an s f funding award focus on broadening participation will very often be excluded from going back for a second round of funding in order to have the opportunity to demonstrate here's what we accomplished with the first round here's what we learned here here's the metrics here's the data here's how we can show that we are performing and that we deserve to at least be considered for another for another round of funding on the research side on the technical side what we do as researchers is and we're very incentivized and motivated to do this if we keep careful track of the products of our research of what comes out of the of the previous round of funding because we know in three or four or five years we're going to going to have to write another proposal to n s f and say we're ready for the next stage of our program and here are the specific concrete products of the last investment that you made in us not having the opportunity to do that in multiple rounds  multiple stages of innovation and development on the broader product the broader broadening participation side i think is currently a limitation for tapping into the entrepreneurial spirit of these researchers if you look at numbers and a credit card just when we're dealing with the small numbers of students and how it impacts just the numbers themselves then the question would be are we being successful but on the other impacts is that it's just not the students or the faculty members that are being impacted but the families in the communities how the word of mouth in the heart goes out and how it impacts the whole community how we're able to change policies within school systems and so forth still the broader impacts is what is real key to us the tribal colleges because we do have lack the resources to continue to move forward as far as competing for these kinds of grants when you have faculty and staff that carry on multiple tests within the system because we're understaffed to begin with and for example some of our fact members aside from teaching fifteen to sixteen credit they're also managing other federal grants so it's those kinds of things that it really does impact a broader sense for us to travel colleges thank you thank you with that i think we are going to complete the testimony for today i want to thank our witnesses for all their their testimony and answers to the to the question see the record remain open for two weeks for additional statements from members in for answers to any follow up questions the committee may ask of the witnesses thank you again the witnesses are excused and hearing is now