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How do you boost the number of marginalized students in the sciences?��

That’s a question Darnell Cole, a ������̳ professor��of education and co-director of the Center for Education,��Identity and Social Justice, has wrestled with throughout his��career. His new research project, known as (Student��Engagement, Exploration and Development in STEM),��sets out to answer it by exploring the impact of multigenerational mentoring on the math and science engagement��of middle school students from economically disadvantaged��Los Angeles neighborhoods.��

“Our focus is connecting the middle school students��with college students who live in these communities as mentees and mentors together around the construct of STEM��engagement through online gaming,” Cole said. “The middle��school students get to see people who look like them, who��might have experienced things that they’ve experienced,��engage in science concepts.”��

The mentors, several of whom are USC students, are all��majoring in STEM (science, technology, engineering and��math) subjects at two- and four-year colleges, and they benefit��from their relationship with the middle school students as��well. For one, they are viewed by the middle schoolers as scientists rather than as college students at risk of not graduating,��as those from low-income backgrounds and communities��of color are often framed, Cole said. “It helps solidify their��identity beyond these kinds of characteristics that are often��deficit-oriented and changes into an asset-oriented view,”��he said.

As the middle schoolers receive guidance from college��students, the college students are mentored by professionals—educators, working scientists and others in the STEM��field—who coach them through the undergraduate experience. They can help them transition to graduate school or��to a STEM career. “Our professional mentors are able to��engage our college students in meaningful, thoughtful ways��with their career pathway information as well as their own��kind of navigational and aspirational capital,” Cole said.��

In addition to Cole, SEEDS includes co-principal��investigators Christopher Newman, an associate professor in the Department of Higher Education at Azusa��Pacific University; Shafiqa Ahmadi, a ������̳ professor of clinical education and co-director of the Center��for Education, Identity and Social Justice; and Ting-Han��Chang, a postdoctoral researcher at the center. Graduate��and undergraduate students also have leadership roles in the��project, which kicked off in 2021 with a pilot phase.

The first year of the program at full scope is now underway, a development Cole attributes to the partnerships��and grant funding that have made SEEDS possible. That��includes a close connection with the (NAI), a seven-year��enrichment program to help students from South and East��Los Angeles earn college admission. NAI hosts a Saturday��Academy at two USC sites with four schools: El Sereno��Middle School, Florence Nightingale Middle School,��James A. Foshay Learning Center and Murchison Street��Elementary. About 450 students from those schools take��part in the SEEDS program.��

NAI has “allowed for us to come in and provide the��SEEDS program using online games to promote STEM��content learning as well as mentorship around STEM concepts and ideas,” Cole said. “The online games are part of the��award-winning curriculum specializing��in math and science and designed for distance, hybrid and��blended learning.”��

Lizette Zarate, NAI program director, said she appreciates Legends of Learning because students can use the��curriculum with no prior knowledge of the lessons included.��

“We had a science component as part of our program pre-SEEDS, and it’s all hands-on, inquiry-based science that we��do,” she added. “What SEEDS brings—it’s a game-based��program [in which] kids bring their laptops, and then they��get to play video games that are science-focused.”

The city of Los Angeles is another important SEEDS��partner. The college students now participating in the project��applied through L.A.’s Youth Development Department,��which pays a collective sum of $180,000 to cover 60 SEEDS��internship roles. Through its relationships with organizations such as Para Los Niños, Brotherhood Crusade and��Archdiocesan Youth Employment Services–Los Angeles,��
the USC McMorrow Neighborhood Academic Initiative has��helped recruit college students to serve as SEEDS mentors.

Having granted SEEDS $228,373 in September 2021,��the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation��makes the project possible, Cole said. That grant covers two��years, while the city of Los Angeles plans to make an annual��financial commitment to SEEDS, Cole said. He hopes to��develop a variety of partnerships that can provide corporate��or individual funding for the SEEDS project. Cole would��also like to replicate the project in cities across the country��to evolve the outreach it is doing.

“The wonderful thing about SEEDS is that it creates these��significant partnerships between foundations, the city of Los��Angeles and postsecondary institutions as well as LAUSD��and other schools that are participating in this work,” Cole��said. “It creates this opportunity to have these partners who��occupy different places in the city come together around one��critical goal: developing opportunities and access for low-income and minoritized students to engage in STEM work.”��

The genesis of SEEDS dates back to about seven years��ago, when Cole and Newman earned a National Science��Foundation grant that aimed to bring physicists, scientists,��social scientists and educators together so they could brainstorm about ways to increase the participation of racialized minorities in the sciences, particularly in physics and��astronomy, Cole said.��

“We were able to create a preconference experience [for]��the National Society of Black Physicists,” Cole said. “We��pull[ed] together all of these scientists who were physicists,��astronomers, worked in national laboratories, and put them��in the same room with social scientists and educators and��began to ask and workshop these questions. We were able��to generate a few significant ideas, and [SEEDS] is one of��those ideas.”��

Although SEEDS is new, the project has already yielded��some preliminary results. Students who participate in��SEEDS, so far, have performed similarly academically to��their peers from the same schools who don’t. This may be, in��part, because students are still rebounding from being out of��class for a year after schools shut down amid the COVID-19��crisis in March 2020. While the Los Angeles Unified School��District held classes online during this period, research has��found that students in communities of color and low-income communities had low participation rates in remote��instruction and that their test scores in a variety of subjects��continue to suffer.��

“One of the things that this program does—not only the��SEEDS program, but also NAI—is that it creates an opportunity to bring these students back face-to-face and engage��them in some hands-on work around science,” Cole said.

"If students see themselves as��scientists, they’re more likely��to engage in science-related��work and more likely to persist��through the challenges that��they experience in sciencerelated work.”��—Darnell Cole, ������̳ professor of education��and co-director of the Center for Education, Identity and��Social Justice

“The SEEDS project really allowed [the students] to engage��their technology in ways that were designed to promote��STEM content acquisition and curiosity and engagement��in the same space as their mentors and peers. So, I think��we were thinking about it, not in terms of learning loss, but��how do we create and recreate a meaningful STEM-focused��engagement and mentors who are thoughtfully engaged in��working with them.”

Where SEEDS participants differ from their peers who��aren’t involved in the program is in science identity, baseline��mean scores have found. Over the course of the program,��SEEDS participants develop a stronger sense of their identity as potential scientists.��

Cole said the research indicates that SEEDS participants��grow in their ability to identify adults or mentors available��to offer them guidance in pursuing scientific interests. He��emphasized, however, that these are preliminary findings,��and he doesn’t want to overstate their significance. More��research needs to be done, but the SEEDS pilot points to the��start of a meaningful trend with regard to science identity.

“The science identity has been cited in the literature as��being these fundamental, core concepts, that if students��and individuals, as they’re developing, see themselves as��scientists, they’re more likely to engage in science-related��work and more likely to persist through the challenges that��they experience in science-related work,” Cole said.

Equally important, Cole added, is that the college students serve as role models to their middle school mentees,��instilling in them the belief that they, too, can go to college��and become STEM majors. Zarate said the college students��contribute to making science fun for their young mentees.��That some of the college students took part in NAI themselves just deepens the connection between them and the��middle schoolers.��

“In their science class, the [kids] are with their science��teacher cutting up cows’ eyeballs, which is actually a lesson��that we did a few weeks back,” Zarate said. “They’re focused��on that. In the SEEDS period, it gets to be more informal,��more personal, kind of like, ‘My mentor’s here. I’m playing��this cool video game’—that’s really science. It’s disguised��learning, but they get to connect and ask questions that they��probably wouldn’t get to ask their teacher, probably wouldn’t��feel comfortable asking their teacher.”��

With the mentorship of these college students, the��SEEDS middle schoolers can explore STEM free of��harmful stereotypes about their academic abilities, Cole��said. Stereotypes may lead to a phenomenon known as “stereotype threat,” in which marginalized people hear negative��stereotypes about their group, such as “Black and Brown��students aren’t good in STEM,” and proceed to struggle��in that subject.��

“Often, minoritized students or low-income students��walk into [STEM] environments, and they’re stereotyped��about why they have access to these environments, their��inability to be successful academically, the fact that they��don’t look like a scientist,” Cole said. “All of those things��are washed away in many ways because we’ve redefined,��for the middle school students, who they see as scientists,��and we’ve also helped reshape and cultivate how college��students now are being seen as scientists by these middle��school students. So, it’s a wonderful kind of thing that��stereotype threat doesn’t revolve around the center of the��experience.”