Inclusive Excellence Program Launches Fellows Program for Undergraduate Inclusion in CNS

The UMass Inclusive Excellence Program has selected seven teams of faculty, staff, postdocs and graduate students as Inclusive Excellence Fellows for the 2021-22 academic year. With the support of Inclusive Excellence, these teams will implement projects to create a more inclusive experience for undergraduate students in the College of Natural Sciences (CNS).

Image

Using institutional data, new primary data and relevant literature, a team of mathematics and statistics faculty and staff will examine large lecture calculus at UMass. The team will assess equity gaps and develop evidence-based strategies to address the disparities that make calculus the largest barrier to STEM degree completion, particularly for underrepresented students.

A team of lecturers from microbiology, chemistry, and biochemistry and molecular biology will investigate the potential of addressing growth mindset to create a greater sense of belonging and success within the classroom. The team will develop an introductory module to teach growth mindset in their science courses.

A team of staff from CNS will develop a comprehensive strategy for addressing the equity gaps within the CNS transfer population by utilizing best practices that leverage existing assets, and incorporating success benchmarks, better use of data to target efforts, peer mentoring, support programming and specialized advising.

A team of staff and faculty from biology will develop a best practices document and an associated workshop to support gender-inclusive conversations with students, the development of inclusive educational materials and the creation of inclusive classroom environments.

A team from biochemistry and molecular biology advising will expand a peer-to-peer mentoring program they developed in Spring 2021 with the goal of increasing first- and second-year students’ sense of belonging and connection as well as knowledge of campus resources.

A team of faculty, staff, post-docs and graduate students from microbiology will develop a one- credit seminar course for freshman and sophomore microbiology majors. This course aims to increase students’ sense of success and belonging in the major by describing how to successfully move through the Microbiology curriculum, discussing the varied careers in microbiology and addressing issues pertaining to identifying as a scientist and microbiologist.

A team from environmental conservation (ECo) will establish an undergraduate recruitment and retention task force within the department. The task force will focus on increasing enrollment among undergraduate students from underrepresented groups in ECo majors while also taking specific steps to ensure student success including cultural and academic reforms within the department and its programs.