Rutgers—Camden to receive $2.5 million for its efforts in diversity of STEM departments, industry

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) recently awarded Rutgers—Camden a $2.5 million grant for its work in making STEM spaces more inclusive.

The grant is a part of the Driving Change initiative, which seeks to invite historically disadvantaged students to join STEM fields. The Camden campus will be 1 of 6 universities selected to receive the funds over the course of five years, according to the press release.

Every year, the HHMI selects six schools from the Driving Change Learning Community, a group of 38 universities that participate in curricula centered around promising inclusion in STEM spaces.

Universities are chosen to receive the grant based on their level of involvement in the Driving Change Learning Community and campus inclusivity efforts, the release stated.

Kwangwon Lee, a professor in the Department of Biology at Rutgers—Camden, told The Daily Targum that the HHMI selected 38 schools for the Driving Change Learning Community out of 99 applicants in 2019.

Lee said the HHMI initially awarded Rutgers $60,000 for engaging in a year-long self-study. The study discovered six barriers to STEM learning spaces and used these conclusions to find equitable solutions with the intention of including them in a program beginning in January 2024, he said.

Lee said implementing the results of the study will be a shared effort between faculty and students, with a stronger focus on faculty. He said fundamental shifts in the University's policies are required to transform it into a sustainable educational institution.

"That's one main thing: how we can help (train) faculty (and) staff (to) do their job better in terms of making their course and program more inclusive," he said. "And then the second will be creating a space where we discuss equitable University policies, where we promote and reward faculty and staff for creating (a) beloved community."

Lee, who led the study, said researchers found that institutional barriers, educational inaccessibility, social hurdles and inadequate faculty incentives were key factors preventing marginalized communities within the student population from participating in STEM pursuits.

"So, we have five STEM science departments, and unfortunately, we have not a single, Black tenured professor in our STEM program when our campus is designated as (an) MSI, minority-serving institute, and there's no representation here," he said.

He added that the Department of Biology only got its first tenured female faculty member last year, despite there being more female students studying biology than male students. Lee said this underrepresentation among faculty makes students from marginalized backgrounds feel unwelcome in academic STEM spheres.

He said the research also found that faculty tends to incorrectly perceive struggling students as underqualified when the issue lies in their circumstances rather than their capabilities.

Lee also said science programs continue to depend on outdated teaching methods that are no longer applicable to students' needs, hindering their academic progress.

"This 'we've been doing this for decades, so there's no problem,' idea has to go," Lee said. "We need to really make our pedagogical approaches (and) course design (meet) the needs of our students — make them excited and relevant to them."

He said that many students attending Rutgers—Camden did not have access to Advanced Placement science courses in high school that their peers from more resourced backgrounds did, leading to higher rates of course failure or program withdrawal among those from under-resourced school districts.

More than 50 percent of Camden students are also first-generation college students, which limits their access to information about applying to and attending college, Lee said. Additionally, many Camden students commute, work and have other time-consuming extracurricular obligations that can interfere with academics, he said.

A large portion of students are nontraditional, which causes curricula and extracurriculars to be incompatible with their needs because many students support their families in addition to pursuing a degree, he said.

"For example, students have to go home when their mom needs a translator," Lee said. "They need to go to (the) hospital — they cannot speak English. And our students are actually really supporting family and studying."

Lastly, Lee spoke about the University's evaluation of tenured faculty members' responsibilities, which values research above education. He said the lack of reward for faculty who carefully craft their curricula or pay close attention to each student's needs is disheartening.

Since receiving the HHMI's Driving Change grant for these insights, Lee said Rutgers—Camden is engaging with other institutions that also received funds this year. He said he was invited to the University of California, Los Angeles, and is also in contact with the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

"There's a really active, collaborative spirit to make real change because we all have different challenges," he said. "And the challenges other big (universities) had, we probably don't have, but they don't have challenges that we have. So, there's no point of competing — we're really trying to help each other."