NSF INCLUDES ALRISE Alliance: Accelerate Latinx Representation in STEM Education

The overarching broadening participation challenge addressed by the Eddie Bernice Johnson NSF INCLUDES ALRISE Alliance is to accelerate Latinx representation in STEM education (ALRISE). Target audiences and Alliance members are Latinx STEM students and educators (faculty, staff, and administration) at 2-yr and 4-yr Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). The approach to addressing this challenge includes providing professional development for faculty, staff and industry to serve Latinx students with intentionality, harnessing Latinx students' assets and creating a more welcoming environment that fosters reproducible success through culturally-responsive undergraduate Research and Work-based experiential learning. This paper addresses our goal to establish ALRISE as a Networked Improvement Community. First we describe the components of the ALRISE Alliance framework of regional hubs, how they were implemented, what challenges we encountered, how we had to adjust, and what has been achieved to date. Key aspects include a Regional Hubs Manager who coaches Regional Hub leads and their full-time coordinators, all of whom are building relationships with the leads of STEM faculty/staff Teams representing the HSIs by region. Local STEM Team meetings, Regional Hub meetings and national convenings all lend to the communications strategy to engage at the individual, institutional, and network levels. Adjustments from deadline-driven activities to competency-driven deliverables reflected the need to meet HSIs where they are, just as faculty and staff are asked to meet their students where they are.Finally, work-based and undergraduate research-based experiences repositories complemented with culturally-responsive instruction are being made easily accessible.