Meeting Abstract
Students who can see themselves in a particular role (i.e., as a scientist) and feel that they belong to a scientific community tend to have greater academic success in STEM disciplines. Thus, how we portray scientists in our classes and textbooks, and the people that students encounter as role models and mentors matter. Students also succeed when they learn to practice metacognitive skills that faculty often take for granted. In this project, we used publicly available data to investigate the diversity of faculty in marine science/marine biology undergraduate programs at eleven institutions in the United States, comparing that to the diversity of undergraduates who completed B.S. degrees in marine science-related majors at the same institutions from 2013-2016. Not surprisingly, we found mismatches between the diversity of students and faculty in these undergraduate programs, including our own. Informed by these mismatches, we began creating “Scientist Spotlight” activities to highlight non-stereotypical marine scientists whose research coincides with key concepts taught in an introductory marine biology course. We modeled our approach on similar activities that have improved student sense of belonging in community college biology programs. In our adaptation of these activities, students reflect on the content of interviews with the spotlight scientists and associated science readings (i.e., metacognitive skills practice), and on the types of people who are scientists. Our pilot results suggest the Scientist Spotlights can provide insight about student understanding of the topic (e.g., bacterial influence on animal development), reinforce students’ desire to learn more, and that students took away positive, yet realistic views of the qualities that define people who do science.
