Ethics Case Study Project: Broadening STEM Participation by Normalizing Immersion of Diverse Groups in Peer to Near Peer Collaborations

To successfully broaden the participation of underrepresented racially minoritized (URM) students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), students from all demographic groups must routinely work together in STEM as a cohesive community. A Mutual Benefit Approach (MBA) is a way to create longstanding partnerships between members of the community, academia, industry, and government to develop equitable opportunities for students from all demographic groups and zip codes to engage together in STEM. One of the primary objectives for MBA is to provide a continuous series of immersions in deliberately diverse STEM environments for students from K-12 up through the PhD. This will normalize STEM as a diverse experience for students and build their self-efficacy in STEM. URM students will be prepared to navigate the STEM environment in predominantly white institutions (PWIs), and White students will be prepared to engage with URM students in the PWI environment or in the environment of Minority Serving Institutions if they are enrolled there as students. The MBA also hypothesizes that peer to near-peer interactions are critical for students to progress continuously through all the levels of STEM, from K-12 to the PhD and STEM workforce. This paper discusses one example of a "normalizing immersion" – a team-based case study project in Ethics. The teams consisted of African American high school students, African American undergraduate students from a Historically Black College or University, and predominantly White graduate students from PWI university. Student teams were guided by high school teachers, university faculty members and community mentors – a holistic approach involving STEM in the context of students' respective communities. The team-based Ethics case study project included visits and campus tours at both universities with opportunities to eat in their dining halls as well as delivering presentations on their work. The paper discusses the methodology employed in the Ethics case study project, as well as planned future work to expand the project and improve it for the next iteration. Overall, the project presentations were outstanding with equal participation of the African American high school students with their college near-peers. Identified areas of improvement include implementation of group contracts as means to synthesize peer to near-peer chemistry, and an early involvement of high school teachers. In addition, the future goal is to plan additional "normalizing immersions" in STEM beyond Ethics. As the MBA collaboration increases, our belief is that students, teachers, mentors, and faculty at the high schools and tertiary institutions will grow more fluent in interacting with each other in a diverse environment, which they would not have been able to accomplish at their respective, less diverse, institutions.