Michael Ferrara’s research while affiliated with University of Denver and other places

Background A growing part of the efforts to promote student engagement and success in undergraduate STEM are the family of Student Support and Outreach Programs (SSOPs), which task undergraduate students with providing support and mentoring to their peers and near-peers. Research has shown that these programs can provide a variety of benefits for the programs’ recipients, including increased academic achievement, satisfaction, retention, and entry into STEM careers. This paper extends this line of inquiry to investigate how participation in these programs impacts the undergraduate STEM students that provide the mentoring (defined here as undergraduate mentor-teachers or UMTs). We use activity theory to explore the nature of metacognition and identity development in UMTs engaged in two programs at a public urban-serving university in the western USA: a STEM Learning Assistant program and a program to organize middle and high school STEM clubs. Constructs of metacognition and identity development are seen as critical outcomes of experiential STEM inreach and outreach programs. Results Written reflections were collected throughout implementation of two experiential STEM inreach and outreach programs. A thematic analysis of the reflections revealed UMTs using metacognitive strategies including content reflection and reinforcement and goal setting for themselves and the students they were supporting. Participants also showed metacognitive awareness of the barriers and challenges related to their role in the program. In addition to these metacognitive processes, the UMTs developed their science identities by attaching different meanings to their role as a mentor in their respective programs and setting performance expectations for their roles. Performance expectations were contingent on pedagogical skills and the amount and type of content knowledge needed to effectively address student needs. The ability to meet students’ needs served to validate and verify UMTs’ role in the program, and ultimately their own science identities. Conclusion Findings from this study suggest that metacognitive and identity developments are outcomes shaped not only by undergraduate students’ experiences, but also by their perceptions of what it means to learn and teach STEM. Experiential STEM inreach and outreach programs with structured opportunities for guided and open reflections can contribute to building participants’ metacognition and enhancing their science identities.

The need for a more robust, well-trained STEM workforce is becoming increasingly acute in the U.S., and there is a clear need to recruit and retain a larger and more diverse population of undergraduate STEM majors. While numerous efforts to improve engagement and support in the traditional P-16 classroom have been implemented successfully, it is also critical to explore other types of activities that have potential for high impact. The STEM Club Leadership for Undergraduate STEM Education, Recruiting and Success (STEM-CLUSTERS) project at our large public research university in the Mountain West presents an outreach model to engage undergraduate STEM majors in developing and facilitating activities in local middle and high school STEM clubs. Through case studies, built upon data from reflective journals and semi-structured interviews, the project has identified a number of benefits to the first cohort of participants, which is comprised of eleven undergraduate students operating in interdisciplinary teams across five schools. In this paper we describe the essential elements of our outreach model and suggest benefits related to undergraduates’ content knowledge, metacognition, communication skills, and identity as a future STEM professional.

Mathematics is a central part of all STEM disciplines, and undergraduate success in mathematics courses is an increasingly critical piece of the growing national need to train the next generation of U.S. STEM professionals. Despite this, early undergraduate mathematics courses are often gatekeepers that prevent students from reaching their goals of obtaining a college degree. The Promoting Success in Early College Mathematics through Graduate Teacher Training project at the University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver) will address this critical national issue through improved teaching preparation for Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) in the Mathematical Sciences. In particular, the project will focus on how a more comprehensive approach to training GTAs can impact their classroom practice and benefit their students, ultimately increasing success, particularly in early undergraduate mathematics courses. Further, a large proportion of PhD graduates, with appointments ranging from community colleges to large research universities, have a significant part of their professional responsibilities focused on teaching undergraduates. By providing an effective model of broad graduate student training that encompasses a wide variety of components, the project will study the impact on the overall undergraduate teaching and student learning effectiveness of the GTAs. This project will conduct a multi-part research study with the intended purpose of investigating the impact on GTAs during and after the time they complete their enhanced multi-component instructional and pedagogical training. The project will develop several new components for the CU Denver department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences GTA preparation program which will provide the GTAs with: (1) a deep understanding, grounded in relevant literature, of issues in undergraduate mathematical sciences instruction; (2) opportunities to be mentored by peers and faculty; (3) opportunities to provide peer-mentoring; and (4) outreach opportunities in order to gain an understanding of the student pipeline. Research will include analysis of data on undergraduate student performance and success, retention and satisfaction, a longitudinal qualitative and quantitative analysis of observations of GTA classrooms, an examination of how the training program impacts GTA perceptions of mathematics teaching and learning, and a qualitative analysis on how peer mentoring impacts the experienced GTAs both inside and outside of their classrooms.