National Science Foundation Awards LaGuardia $530k Grant to Support STEM Education Professional Development

LONG ISLAND CITY, NY (August 27, 2024) — The U.S. National Science Foundation recently awarded a $530K grant to LaGuardia Community College/CUNY for professional development in STEM degree programs.

The grant award is part of NSF’s comprehensive investment of $14.5 million in an inaugural set of awards through its Innovation in Two-Year College in STEM Education (ITYC) program. The program aims to support potentially transformative projects that will advance innovative, evidence-based practices at two-year colleges nationwide in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education.

“Community colleges play a critical role in training people from all parts of the country for a variety of STEM careers including future scientists, engineers, and technicians,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan in a press release from NSF. “The Innovation in Two-Year College in STEM Education program is essential to how we expand pathways and opportunities so that more talented people from every part of the nation have the opportunity to make their way into STEM. I’m pleased that Congress recognized the critical role of community colleges in the ‘CHIPS and Science Act of 2022’ and the foundation they provide for educational opportunities. Programs like ITYC are how we build on that foundation to reach more young people who have bright futures ahead of them in the STEM community.”

Dr. Reem Jaafar, Professor with the Math, Engineering and Computer Science Department and Ljubica Depovic, Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning are co-principal investigators of LaGuardia’s STEM Professional Development project that was funded by NSF.

Dr. Jaafar said, the grant will support the development of instructional practices that increase participation in and completion of STEM degrees at LaGuardia Community College.

“It builds on a pilot program that was funded by a prior PSC-CUNY enhanced award with additional support from Academic Affairs,” Dr. Jaafar said. “I am grateful to our first cohort who contributed to the project design.”

“We plan to have a diverse cohort of faculty (full and part-time) who will engage in professional development activities and department level change initiatives that utilize coaching and mentoring strategies in the areas of STEM,” Dr. Jaafar added. “With the grant, we plan to investigate the effectiveness of a cohort-based, two-tiered faculty development model that incorporates leadership training and data coaching on persistence in foundational STEM courses. The project fosters a culture of continuous improvement and knowledge-sharing that contributes to local and national practices in STEM education at two-year colleges.”

Depovic said they hope this project will help reduce learning outcome inequities by scaling data-informed, equity-minded practices across introductory STEM courses using the Shared Equity Leadership (SEL) framework.

“There are four project objectives we want to achieve,” Depovic said. “We want to: 1) scale equity-minded and data-informed actions through professional development, 2) leverage institutional strength to mobilize faculty for equitable change, 3) develop faculty leadership and build upon faculty’s knowledge, and 4) foster continuous improvement and dissemination practices.”

The grant will help enhance LaGuardia’s current professional development efforts in STEM by implementing activities including inquiry-guided faculty development, leadership training, open educational resource (OER) creation, and a mixed-methods evaluation of the impact of project interventions on faculty practices and student outcomes.

“Specifically, the assessment and evaluation plan utilize focus groups, equity-minded assessments of student belonging, and iterative analyses of disaggregated institutional student success data to support faculty leaders to refine and gauge the effectiveness of project interventions,” Dr. Jaafar said. “As project leaders, we plan to inform broader efforts around faculty leadership and educational development through conference presentations, peer-reviewed journal publications, OER design, and collaborations with the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges (AMATYC).”

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LaGuardia Community College (LAGCC), a Hispanic-Serving Institution, located in Long Island City, Queens offers more than 50 associate degrees and academic certificates, and more than 65 continuing education programs to prepare New Yorkers for transfer to senior colleges and rewarding jobs and careers. An institution of the City University of New York (CUNY), the College reflects the legacy of our namesake, Fiorello H. LaGuardia, the former NYC mayor beloved for his advocacy of the underserved. Since 1971, LaGuardia’s academic programs and support services have advanced the socioeconomic mobility of students from Queens, NYC and beyond.

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