New Research Papers Explore Integrated Programs Aimed at Supporting Underrepresented Student Success in STEM

Two new research papers from the Pullias Center for Higher Education uncover the role of collaboration and the importance of a unified community in successfully implementing integrated programs to support success in STEM.

Integrated programs combine and align several interventions with the goal of countering the persistent underrepresentation of low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented minority students among those who complete an undergraduate degree in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.  The papers, published in a special edition of American Behavioral Scientist available now online and in print soon, come from The Pullias Center’s CSU STEM Collaboratives study that gave the researchers access to integrated program efforts at eight campuses in the California State University system.

The Role of Collaboration in Integrated Programs Aimed at Supporting Underrepresented Student Success in STEM by Adrianna Kezar and Elizabeth Holcombe delves into the role of collaboration in improving integrated program design and overcoming policy and practice implementation challenges.  Since not all eight campuses participating in the study from the CSU system were able to successfully integrate their programs, the authors were able to study the differences between the programs that successfully integrated and those that did not. The study not only confirmed that collaboration is an important element of implementing integrated programs, it also identified various mechanisms that emerged as powerful levers for successful collaboration.

Ensuring Success Among First-Generation, Low-Income, and Underserved Minority Students: Developing a Unified Community of Support by Elizabeth Holcombe and Adrianna Kezar goes beyond the emerging evidence of the value of these integrated programs to gain more understanding of how and why they are effective.  The study indicates that successful integrated programs are effective because they create what the authors term a ‘unified community of support’ for students, faculty, and staff. This unified community of support leverages structural changes to campus policies and practices to promote individual changes to faculty and staff knowledge, beliefs, actions, and relationships.

“The CSU STEM Collaboratives study, along with the Pullias Center’s TSLC study that also looks at college transition programs,  identify the value and role of a broader environment and community of support with multiple touch points over time in shaping postsecondary outcomes and improving student success,” states Adrianna Kezar, who co-authored the CSU STEM Collaboratives papers and is the director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education.  “These studies indicate that the specific elements of programs are less important than structuring opportunities within the environment and community for institutional agents to have on-going interactions with students to provide advice, resources, support, and validation.”

The eight CSU campuses involved in the research for these papers developed mechanisms to structure these interactions such as e-portfolios, electronic advising, and other themed projects that cut across co-curriculum and curriculum.  Other mechanisms that created linked activities, communication, and work across the institution in support of students were also implemented.

“A unified community of support is the result of a program that links staff and faculty across departments to work on promoting student success in collaborative and connected ways that they had not in the past,” concludes Kezar.

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Kezar, A., & Holcombe, E. (2019). The Role of Collaboration in Integrated Programs Aimed at Supporting Underrepresented Student Success in STEM. American Behavioral Scientist. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764219869421

Holcombe, E., & Kezar, A. (2019). Ensuring Success Among First-Generation, Low-Income, and Underserved Minority Students: Developing a Unified Community of Support. American Behavioral Scientist. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764219869413