Community Support, Partnerships, and Inclusive Environments for Black Students and Professionals in Science, Engineering, and Medicine: Proceedings of a Workshop (2024)
Chapter: 5 Institutional Investments in Inclusive Education
5
Institutional Investments in Inclusive Education
Highlights from the Presentations
- Intentional programs for students, residents, and faculty at the Feinberg School of Medicine have resulted in improved recruitment and retention (Yancy).
- Tackling the bedrock of health disparities can be addressed with local and national partnerships that increase the number of Black students going into STEM fields (Okwuosa).
- Programs to build community, such as the Daniel Hale Society and STRIVE mentorship program, can break down silos and disrupt the sense of isolation among students, residents, and faculty of color (Youmans).
- The myth that a student is either good at math or not is perpetuated by the way that math is taught in most classrooms. Changing practices that rely on memorization, speed, and one right answer can build math identity in more students (Gresalfi).
- The intersectionality of students’ racial, gender, and sexual identities must be considered in developing inclusive curricula (Leyva).
- Cultural competence and hands-on engagement can prepare young students to enter engineering and other STEM programs (Reaves).
- While systems need to be changed, realism suggests the importance of efforts within the systems that exist (Malcom).
Starting the second day of the workshop, Clyde Yancy, M.D., M.Sc. (Northwestern University) presented and moderated a panel on how institutions can positively affect the trajectory of Black students. Presenters from Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, Vanderbilt University, and the Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program (DAPCEP) discussed inclusive community-oriented education and how educators can develop a more inclusive curriculum. In addition to Dr. Yancy, the presenters were Ike S. Okwuosa, M.D., and Quinten R. Youmans, M.D. (Northwestern); Melissa Gresalfi, Ph.D., and Luis Leyva, Ph.D. (Vanderbilt); and Michelle Reaves (DAPCEP).
PERSPECTIVES FROM NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
Dr. Yancy said that like many academic centers, the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern has targeted inclusive and excellent education by creating a separate entity, in their case, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. He explained that diversity is an all-encompassing holistic way to address social justice. A statement by Eric Neilson, M.D., as dean and Dr. Yancy as vice dean for diversity and inclusion serves as the calling card:
As physicians, scientists, and students, we respond to a higher moral calling. We cannot be the practitioners of superb health care and the purveyors of knowledge without maintaining our consciousness about our now grossly evident social failings.1
Overview of Pipeline Programs
Within that bucket of “social failings,” he continued, has been the dearth of Black men and Black women in pursuing education through the medical enterprise. In response, Northwestern’s pipeline initiative is not a single program but one that touches many important elements where students may be lost. These include community science, technology, engi-
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1 See https://news.feinberg.northwestern.edu/2020/06/01/a-note-to-the-feinberg-community/.
neering, and mathematics (STEM) programming, targeted undergraduate programs, and other efforts that capture students across their educational journey. He shared data about each program—when it was created, its target participants, and the enrollment numbers.
Dr. Yancy called attention to a program that starts at grade 9 called Northwestern Medicine Scholars Program, which works in a community on Chicago’s West Side. About 70 percent of the participating students require federal lunch assistance, and about 75 percent come from homes in which no one has ever attended college. “These are the children who are typically left behind in the educational cascade, and this is where we need to start if we want to accelerate the number of Black men and women entering the STEM professions,” he said. In a partnership between the medical school and the community, in particular, George Westinghouse College Prep (GWCP), more than 70 students have been engaged in the 12 years of the program. Of them, 68 are in college or have graduated, all with scholarships. The program is expanding to a second school with greater at-risk demographics, and Dr. Yancy expressed the belief that success will be replicated.
The word “partnership” is important, Dr. Yancy stressed. He noted that GWCP’s equity statement emphasizes such terms as “affirm,” “commit,” and “emotional health.” This is the kind of platform young people need to succeed. A postdoctoral researcher is involved in assessing the pipeline programs to introduce the findings into the literature. Takeaways to date include the following:
- Strategic alliance partnerships may serve as an innovative solution toward combatting the educational inequalities presented in K–12 education (Rocha et al., 2021).
- Strengthening self-efficacy through the affirmation of cultural assets and through asset-based frameworks can enhance students’ academic and career goals (Rocha, Castillo-Lavergne et al., 2022).
- Early STEM-M (STEM-Medicine) career interest and youth socialization in related out-of-school activities can address larger social inequities in school success and life and career outcomes (Rocha, Cabral, Landeros et al., 2022).
- Integration of supports, resources, and opportunities lie at the core of what influences students’ science identities (Rocha, Cabral, Chen et al., 2022).
Local and National Partnerships
Dr. Okwuosa continued the presentation. He noted Chicago’s economic and heterogeneous challenges. The life expectancy of a person in the majority-White Loop neighborhood is 81 years old. About 9 miles to the west, life expectancy in the Austin neighborhood is 70 years. The challenges highlighted are the bedrock of disparities seen in those entering medical education, he said. He noted that in 2015, Blacks/African Americans were 6 percent of medical school graduates and Hispanic/Latinx were 5 percent, far less than their representation in the overall population. “The approach we want to take is that we are all in this together. We can tackle it institutionally and with both local and national partnerships.”
Local efforts include Community Grand Rounds, in which Northwestern students and residents provide health screening and talks for community members. An important goal is for students to see physicians who look like them, he said. Through another program developed with the I Am Abel Foundation, youth gain exposure to the medical field. Northwestern brings students onto campus; provides parking, facility space, and lunch; and immerses them in learning and simulations in cardiology and gastroenterology.2 This Northwestern Partnership provides mentorship, test preparation, laptops, and other educational aids. In the class of 2022, eight students were accepted to medical school.
On the national level, Northwestern works with the American Heart Association (AHA) and four other institutions (Stanford University, Boston University, Vanderbilt University, and the Medical College of Wisconsin) through the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience. At each university, four summer undergraduates are paired with AHA-funded researchers. The Northwestern cohort has seen a 75 percent medical school matriculation rate (Ajayi et al., 2022).
Building Inclusion Through Mentorship
Dr. Youmans elaborated on building inclusion within the medical school through mentorship. First, he elucidated the benefits of mentorship to aid in professional development, career guidance, specialty selection, and research advancement. For Black trainees, there is the added benefit of connecting people with similar backgrounds to create a sense of inclusion and belonging. He described two programs.
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2 For more information on I Am Abel initiatives, see https://www.iamabel.org/.
The Daniel Hale Williams Society was developed at Northwestern in 2018, as a response to a report from the American Association of Medical Colleges that brought to light that fewer Black men applied or matriculated at U.S. medical schools in 2014 than in 1978. Northwestern became intentional about creating a setting where Black men would be recruited, be retained, and thrive. Since its inception, the society has formed connections from high school and college to senior faculty and deans. Activities create a community with a family atmosphere to ensure success in medicine. There are now more than 30 Black male medical students in the school. As a point of comparison, he said his class at Northwestern had three Black males out of 180 students.
Another program, which he helped create as a resident physician, is called STRIVE (Student to Resident Institutional Vehicle for Excellence). As the name suggests, it connects students and residents, and it tries to eliminate the silos that affect underrepresented minority trainees. Mentorship is a bridge. STRIVE consists of curriculum review sessions, panel discussions, and social events (Youmans et al., 2020). He related the comment of one trainee, who said, “STRIVE is an outlet to discuss the unspoken rules and experiences of being minority in medicine.” It is important to explore and put this issue at the forefront for success, Dr. Youmans concluded.
Commitment to Inclusive Excellence
Dr. Yancy wrapped up the Northwestern presentations by stressing a commitment to inclusive excellence at different educational levels. Northwestern recently received a $16 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the NURTURE (Northwestern University Recruitment to Transform Under-Representation and achieve Equity) Program. The purpose is to transform culture through a cluster hire of 15 faculty members. The NIH funds will be matched by the medical school. Other components include faculty development and evaluation cores, an institutional transformation and accountability committee, and an institutionally supported postdoctoral scholar initiative. He said that through this and other local and national programs, the institution must be “intentional about stopping the leaks in the pipeline and substantially increasing the presence of underrepresented minorities [URM] in the workforce.”
In conclusion, Dr. Yancy shared faculty, resident, and student metrics. Related to faculty, in 2014, there were 4.9 percent URM faculty, with more than a 25 percent annual attrition rate. In 2021, there were 9.5 percent
URM faculty, with less than 10 percent annual attrition. URM residents have increased from about 10 percent in 2015 to about 30 percent in FY 2023. The Feinberg School of Medicine had fewer than 10 percent URM students in FY 2015, with almost no Black men. In FY 2023, 23 percent are URM students, with the highest ever enrollment of Black men. “This is not an accident; this is an intentional outcome,” Dr. Yancy said. It is important to build out the next generation of leaders, and he challenged all institutions to do the same. He closed by acknowledging the commitment of Dean Neilson and Provost Kathleen Hagerty, Ph.D.
PERSPECTIVES FROM RESEARCH AT VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
Moving from the programs at Northwestern, Dr. Gresalfi and Dr. Leyva reported on research that looks at how students learn and develop STEM identities.
Designing to Support Productive STEM Identities
In research on math education, Dr. Gresalfi focuses on obstacles to developing a STEM identity and combatting the myth that “only certain kinds of people can do math.” School structures provide space for only some kinds of reasoning, practices, and ways of thinking, and they invite the interpretation that people are either born mathematically competent or not. As a consequence, students choose not to participate when something seems unwelcoming or unsafe. Classroom cultures and practices communicate, even tacitly, the message that school math requires memorization, is competitive, and is not for everyone. Most math textbooks, she continued, present a set of procedures to be practiced in a certain way and done rapidly.
She explained that her work draws on the layers of resources that people can draw upon to develop their identities. Interactions throughout the school structure send messages to students about whether they belong or not. For example, in her research with kindergarten students, she found that some children were consistently asked to “leave the rug,” that is, be excluded from the group sitting together during class. They are essentially told they do not belong and the way they behave is not okay from this early age, Dr. Gresalfi posited.
According to Dr. Gresalfi, people respond to microaggressions in different ways because of the narratives they have to draw upon, including the
effect of classroom practices. Female students who do not do math quickly might say they are not good at math by drawing on a broader narrative that “girls are not good at math.” Identity is formed on three levels—narratives, frames, and norms and practices (see Figure 5-1; Gresalfi and Hand, 2019), and can be developed or redesigned by challenging stereotypes, defining “smartness” broadly, and allowing students to exercise their own agency. As an example of how a STEM identity can be developed, Dr. Gresalfi described a computer-coding camp for middle schoolers conducted in low-income, racially and ethnically diverse areas of Nashville. An evaluation found that students not only described the experience as enjoyable and fun, but also that it was hard, and it made them want to continue with computer programming. She noted that when space is made for students to engage, as in this coding experience, they can succeed.
Inclusive Curricular Opportunities for Undergraduate Black STEM Students
Dr. Leyva shared his identity and background, and he explained how this positionality informs an activist approach to his scholarship. He highlighted two studies on the intersectionality of educational experiences among Black and Latinx STEM majors, in which students draw on identities based on their race, gender, and sexual identities (Leyva, 2016, 2018a,b, 2021; Leyva et al., 2022). The studies were conducted in two large higher education institutions. Through event journaling, a “STEM autobiography,” and individual and group interviews, Black STEM majors shared the positive and negative experiences in STEM contexts encountered at their institutions. Synthesizing the elements, Dr. Leyva suggested, can bring their voices to the fore and rethink STEM teaching to be more affirming and inclusive to students.
He highlighted two themes from the research of relevance to the workshop. First is the need to find ways to disrupt the erasure of Black experiences in STEM curricula. He provided short excerpts from several interviewees’ narratives. For example, a gay Black male student called out the broken healthcare system but felt “working from the inside to fix it is very important to me.” The student, a neuroscience major, said he had to go outside the STEM departments to learn about interventionist medicine from the humanities and social sciences classes. “It was left up to him to seek out electives to nurture his justice orientation,” Dr. Leyva observed. “We socially construct STEM to be a neutral space and not a socially relevant
SOURCE: Melissa Gresalfi, Workshop Presentation, September 20, 2022, from Gresalfi and Hand, 2019.
space.” The second theme related to fostering within-group support through peer collaborations. Dr. Leyva shared the experiences of two Black female students who felt they were pitted against the few other students of color in their STEM classes; and he suggested that “when we begin to normalize underrepresentation, both in terms of race and gender in STEM environments, when you see another Black person in the room, you might feel a sense of tension or competition.” In other words, without an opportunity to collaborate, the students felt isolated and competitive with one another.
Dr. Leyva noted three implications for undergraduate STEM curricular design that he drew from his research. First is the importance to build partnerships between STEM, humanities, and social science departments to develop curricular opportunities that nurture Black students’ justice-oriented pursuits of STEM majors. Second, peer collaboration in classrooms disrupts the dominant view of doing mathematics as a solitary endeavor and expands opportunities for building Black peer networks of support. Third, co-constructing norms of participation in STEM classrooms mitigates the influence of stereotyping in peer collaborations and creates space for Black learners’ contributions.
DAPCEP: DETROIT AREA PRE-COLLEGE ENGINEERING PROGRAM
Ms. Reaves spoke about DAPCEP, which Kenneth Hill began in 1976 (see also Chapter 3). Its mission is to increase the number of historically underrepresented students who are motivated and prepared academically to pursue STEM degrees. It serves 13,000 students per year throughout Southeast Michigan by partnering with 11 colleges and universities, dozens of corporations, and hundreds of volunteers. With an overall goal of exposure and motivation, DAPCEP starts with children at age 4 and offers programs through high school. The initial focus was on Saturday programs to help students understand the curriculum they were expected to know in college. Now a variety of programs is offered, including summer and Saturday programs, pop-up workshops, longer-term group cohorts, teacher training, large events held on college campuses, and more. Each age level has distinct goals and methods (see Figure 5-2).
Ms. Reaves related DAPCEP outcomes. Programs are evenly divided between males and females; 87 percent of DAPCEP high school seniors report applying to institutions of higher education, 2 percent apply to the armed forces, less than 1 percent report intention to work or start a
SOURCE: Michelle Reaves, Workshop Presentation, September 20, 2022.
business upon high school graduation, 3 percent report entering a trade or vocational program, and 6 percent planned to apply to college but had not at the time of the survey. About half (49 percent) enroll in Michigan colleges and universities.
She stressed the importance of cultural competency and concordance between the students and adults:
It is all around STEM engagement. We make sure the people in front of the [students]—all of our professors, our teachers, our instructors—are typically all people who can relate to them. They are not just presenting the information as, say, an engineering course. They are presenting the information using language and projects that students are familiar with. As we go to high school, we are narrowing our focus so that students are able to make decisions about what they are going to pursue in their next steps.
Teachers reflect cultural competency and use their knowledge to engage students in the learning process. For example, they use terms that students are aware of—such as “hustle” rather than “entrepreneurship.” This cultural competency drives students’ engagement and the capacity to visualize themselves in STEM industries and career pathways. The teachers embody diversity in STEM and use their own lived experiences to enhance instruction. They look for relevant and authentic experiences to teach engineering concepts. For example, building a water filtration device relates to the water crisis in the Flint area. Students in an architectural design program considered how to design well-built structures that would solve community problems. “They can see themselves in the solution,” Ms. Reaves said.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Dr. Yancy asked each presenter to share one final takeaway. Dr. Okwuosa said, “Be intentional. The problems exist, but we can overcome them if we are intentional.” Ms. Reaves reflected, “It is imperative that we attack this issue at all levels, from K–12 up to medical school.” Dr. Youmans stressed, “As we consider the importance of recruitment, we should keep top of mind the importance of retention and inclusion once we get there.” Speaking for himself and Dr. Gresalfi, who had to leave the session, Dr. Leyva said, “There is a lot of brilliance that comes from Black learners and Black professionals in the STEM space that allow us to redefine what we consider as science, engineering, and mathematics. The disciplines
themselves don’t allow us to embrace that, which is why we see racialized problems in these areas.”
Dr. Yancy reflected on the presentations during the panel. He related that he was part of the entering class of Black male medical students in 1978. While still seeing challenges, he expressed some optimism about the way forward:
Whether we think about changing the way in which we learn, or the environment and the context in which our students matriculate, when we think about the importance of strong leadership in the community and ingenuity among students, I’m delighted as we close this session on inclusive excellence that we see metrics across the board where things are better than they were. I don’t know what the ceiling is, and I don’t accept this as being sufficient, but I do acknowledge that we’ve made progress, and I’m delighted to be a part of that initiative.
Dr. Malcom reinforced the need to start early. She commented on the discussion about meeting students where they are and transmitting the message that “you belong here. You are bringing assets to this space.” While she stressed the ongoing need to change systems, she said that she recognizes, as a realist, the importance of interventions to make changes within existing systems. Dr. Churchwell underscored the need to reimagine education: “We should not be locked into a 19th century European white paradigm, where it is all up to the students to conform.” He appreciated the spotlight on the need to change the model to listen to students and create inclusive education.
REFERENCES
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