Diversity Plan Update and Overview Dawn Wilkins Associate Professor University of Mississippi

Diversity Plan Overview  Prior diversity efforts lacked a clear plan  Diversity Task Force established last fall  Meeting in January at MSU  Draft plan developed

NSF definition of URGs in STEM  Women  Underrepresented minorities  Alaska natives  Native Americans  Blacks or African Americans  Hispanics  Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders  Persons with disabilities

Mission  To develop an EPSCoR community of participants— students, faculty and leadership—that reflects the diversity of the State of Mississippi.  To foster a diverse, educated workforce in STEM for Mississippi and beyond.  To respect and support all individuals without preference to race, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, education level, religious preference or any other group.  To promote an environment of inclusion within Mississippi by helping to define strategies and processes across institutions.

Operation Pencil P romote Awareness of STEM E ngage Underrepresented Groups N urture Collaborations C ommunicate Opportunities and Results I nstitutionalize Best Practices L everage Successes

Promote Awareness of STEM  Strategy: Provide age-appropriate STEM education programs for K-12 teachers and students with particular attention to underrepresented groups.  Strategy: Provide age-appropriate STEM programs for community college students and faculty with particular attention to underrepresented groups.  CSI: MS  Targeted CC & HS outreach  Women in Research Seminars

Engage URGs  Strategy: Engage students from underrepresented groups in programs designed to develop skills in STEM research.  CC College Research Program  Assistantships for URGs  Opportunities to present research results  Targeted seed grants/start-up packages, travel funds

Nurture Collaborations  Strategy: Encourage and support collaborative, interdisciplinary research teams that include URGs.  Identify and support collaborations between EPSCoR and the and HBCUs, Mississippi institutions, institutions outside of Mississippi, and international institutions. Encourage collaborations with industry among URGs.

Communicate Opportunities and Results  Strategy: Promote research and impact of research results of faculty and students from URGs to the general public and research communities.  Spotlight underrepresented faculty and students on the Mississippi EPSCoR newsletter  Showcase results from URGs in the EPSCoR newsletter  Highlight research from URGs in online content  Promote research successes to diverse groups

Institutionalize Best Practices  Strategy: Encourage University and State officials to institutionalize programs to promote and award progress in increasing involvement in STEM by members of underrepresented groups.  Recommend creation of a statewide diversity in STEM taskforce  Recommend universities institute an award to recognize outstanding achievements in mentoring in STEM research, especially for and by members of URGs

Leverage Successes  Strategy: Use EPSCoR research and progress to assist in the development of the state’s STEM workforce.  Promote a STEM educated workforce to recruit businesses.  Continue to build the STEM pipeline with specific emphasis on URGs.  Secure future grant funding that specifically supports URGs in STEM.

Operation PENCIL metrics  Publications from underrepresented groups (URG)  Proposals submitted by members of URGs  URG graduate and undergraduate students on the EPSCoR project  Number of URG community college students participating in the Community College Research Program  URG teachers and students impacted directly or indirectly by the EPSCoR outreach efforts  URG faculty and students participating in the International Exchange Program

More Metrics  Assistantships provided to URG graduate students  Start-up packages provided to URG faculty  Seed grant funding provided to URG researchers  Members of URGs participating in professional conferences  Research highlights focusing on URG faculty and students  Recommendations made to state and university officials regarding URG mentoring

Summary  Developed a draft plan to organize efforts in broadening participation.  Plan includes goals, strategies, tasks and evaluation metrics.  Must flesh out additional strategies, tasks and metrics. Feedback and Suggestions ??