Recruiting for Diversity
This set of resources can help support ATE community efforts to increase diversity both in students and faculty. Please share any resources you think should be added to this list by emailing us at info@atecentral.net - we'd love to get your suggestions and additions.
How to Recruit and Retain Underrepresented Minorities
This article in American Scientist examines how to better attract and retain minority scientists and explores how issues related to culturally relevant educational programming as well as mentorship from senior colleagues who are from similar backgrounds can be critical. The article is co-authored and the writers share their own stories as minority women in the sciences.
Minority Student Recruitment, Retention and Career Transition Practices: A Review of the Literature
This review of the literature underlines some of the critical issues related to the recruitment and retention of minority professionals and students. The paper does a good job of describing an array of programs and strategies from various fields and disciplines.
Reimagining the Pipeline: Advancing STEM Diversity, Persistence, and Success
This article articulates strategies that can support diversity in the scientific community by highlighting four specific action areas: (1) aligning institutional culture and climate; (2) building inter-institutional partnerships; (3) building and sustaining critical mass; and (4) ensuring, rewarding, and maximizing faculty involvement.
Community College Retention and Recruitment of “At-Risk” Students
This report assesses current best practices related to retention and recruitment of community college students. The report includes discussion of strategies employed by community colleges to recruit minority students as well as retention practices focused on supporting minority students, first-generation college students, and students with disabilities
This report examines efforts to increase faculty diversity at Virginia Tech and includes examples of various approaches departments can employ to diversify their faculty as well as a series of recommendations that can be implemented quickly to improve minority recruitment and retention and address climate issues.
Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit
The Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit from Brown University was created to identify best practices for promoting diversity and inclusion. The toolkit provides guidelines for demonstrating an understanding of compliance, cultural awareness, respect for differences, and coaching for positive change towards inclusive practices for all identities
Minority Student Retention: Resources for Practitioners
While this paper was written in 2005, it still does a good job of providing an overview of a large body of research findings concerning minority retention and graduation.
National Center for Women and Information Technology
NCWIT is a non-profit community that convenes, equips, and unites change leader organizations to increase the meaningful participation of all women — at the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, age, sexual orientation, and disability status — in the influential field of computing, particularly in terms of innovation and development. Their web site has a vast array of resources in English and Spanish.
DeafTEC is a National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education National Center of Excellence and serves as a resource for high schools and community colleges that educate deaf and hard-of-hearing students in STEM-related programs and for employers hiring deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. They recommend the following set of resources:
- National Technical Institute for the Deaf
- Equal Access: Universal Design of Instruction
- CAST - Center for Applied Special Technology
- Access Computing
- AccessCSforAll
- CMD-IT – Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in IT
- Described and Captioned Media Program
While efforts to diversify the U.S. STEM workforce have been led by various groups across all disciplines, not much has been heard from STEM trainees other than those in the postdoctoral community. The Northeast Scientific Training (NEST) Programs Retreat was established to provide underrepresented minority trainees with “a community of scholars retreat setting” and to create a venue and environment free from daily distractions to informally discuss, inform, and question one another about careers, career paths, and choices. Another key goal was to give trainees the opportunity to formally report their concerns, desires, and recommendations on how to increase URM student involvement in STEM fields and careers. This report from the 2014 retreat shares outcomes.
This paper addresses issues related to the engagement of underrepresented students and describe some efforts that have shown success for promoting diversity in STEM and highlight continuing issues and factors associated with cultivating diversity in academic STEM disciplines at majority institutions. Recommended efforts include addressing academic assistance, professional and cultural socialization issues and institutional environmental factors that are associated with success or lack thereof for URMs in STEM.
The paper provides an overview of recruitment and retention efforts made by six National Institutes of Health Office of Minority Research/National Institute on Aging-funded Centers on Minority Aging and Health Promotion. The summary of findings suggests that recruitment and retention success occurs when there is a match between the goals of the ethnic minority communities and the research community. Recognizing and understanding the culture of each ethnic minority community as well the research perspectives is essential to successful recruitment and retention of ethnic minority elderly individuals.
The community college is the modal entry point for higher education across the nation, and is even more typical for first-generation, low-income, racial-ethnic minority, and nontraditional-aged college students. Complex barriers decrease the feasibility of four-year science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) pathways via community colleges. This report discusses outreach, recruitment, and mentoring strategies that can mitigate barriers and improve retention. Also discussed is the need for outreach and recruitment efforts to be paired with accessible, sustained mentoring so students can navigate pathways efficiently and effectively.
Tools and Practices for Increasing Diversity in ICT Education
This document provides an overview of the diversity in the Information and Communication Technologies field as well as strategies for achieving diversity including specific changes faculty, counselors, and administrators would like to support.