UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A consortium of institutions led by faculty in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences has received a $75,000 planning grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation aimed at expanding the recruitment of and opportunities for Black, Indigenous and Latino students to enroll in science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduate programs.
Planning grants awarded under the foundation’s Creating Equitable Pathways to STEM Graduate Education initiative are designed to identify existing barriers to student success and to plan for future partnerships or collaborations to foster systemic change.
The funding will support a partnership among Penn State’s Insect Biodiversity Center and three minority serving institutions — the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Central State University in Ohio and Chowan University in North Carolina. The first two are designated as historically Black universities, and Chowan is categorized as a predominantly Black institution.
According to project leader Christina Grozinger, Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology and director of the Insect Biodiversity Center, the partners will create a program titled “INterdisciplinary Studies in Science, Education, Communication and Technology NETwork” — or INSSECT NET.
Program objectives include supporting faculty exchanges among the institutions, coordinating a “Diversity of Careers in Entomology” virtual symposium featuring alumni from underrepresented groups from the four universities, expanding undergraduate research opportunities, training faculty in mentoring nontraditional students, and facilitating long-term education and research collaborations among the participating institutions.
“A major goal of the College of Agricultural Sciences and our Department of Entomology is to recruit students from a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives,” Grozinger said. “The Sloan Foundation Equitable Pathways program provided an excellent opportunity to develop and test new strategies to expand and formalize our recruitment pipelines, and to understand what students from diverse backgrounds are interested in for their graduate studies and careers.”
Natalie Boyle, assistant research professor of entomology and program coordinator for the Insect Biodiversity Center, said plans call for the recruitment of three summer undergraduate research interns to Penn State in 2023 and for continued support, virtually, to these interns and their faculty mentors into the fall semester. In addition, the program will support three students to attend Penn State’s Graduate School Fall Open House, which brings together 11 colleges and institutes from across the University.
“This is a great chance to showcase some of the career opportunities that can result from a Penn State graduate degree in entomology,” Boyle said. “We’ll also survey students to measure our success in empowering them in STEM and to determine what some of the real or perceived barriers are to underrepresented minority students pursuing STEM graduate education.”
INSSECT NET team member Patreese Ingram, assistant dean for multicultural affairs in the College of Agricultural Sciences, noted that the team hopes to discover ways to make graduate school more supportive of, and attractive to, incoming students — particularly those from underrepresented groups.
“We hope to broaden students’ awareness and understanding of the variety of careers that come under the entomology umbrella,” she said.
Boyle said if the program is successful, the team plans to expand it in the future.
“We hope to use this first year to lay the groundwork for a larger and farther-reaching program going forward,” she said. “We are already looking for other minority serving institutions that we can invite into this collaborative effort next year, and we hope to extend the scope of the symposium to stretch beyond entomology.”
Grozinger added that INSSECT NET is leveraging several programs that Penn State’s Office of Graduate Educational Equity Programs already has in place to support training and recruitment of students from underrepresented groups, including the Summer Research Opportunities Program, which is an eight-week research and professional development program, and the Graduate School Fall Open House.
“Our project is integrating these existing programs with newly formed constellation mentoring groups and our new Diversity of Careers in Entomology Symposium to create a holistic approach that helps students learn about entomological research, graduate studies and careers at Penn State and beyond, and to develop a strong network and mentoring community,” she said.
Others on the project team in the College of Agricultural Sciences are Jared Ali, associate professor of entomology and Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair of Chemical Ecology; Gary Felton, Ralph O. Mumma Professor and head of the Department of Entomology; and Derek James, coordinator of multicultural programs. The team also includes Torrence Gill, of Chowan University, Hongmei Li-Byarley, of Central State University, and Simon Zebelo, of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.
The Insect Biodiversity Center is supported by the College of Agricultural Sciences and the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences.