Assessing Sense of Belonging, Climate, and Culture at the Departmental Level from the Perspective of Undergraduate STEM Students

This project aims to serve the national interest by developing a tool to measure undergraduate STEM students’ perceptions about the climate and culture of STEM departments. Students’ sense of belonging is key in retaining and graduating STEM undergraduates, especially STEM students from populations marginalized in STEM. The project plans to adapt questions from an existing tool, as well as develop new questions about STEM department climate and culture based on student interviews and focus groups with STEM department stakeholders. After initial development in three institutions, the project team intends to implement the tool in STEM departments in multiple institutions across the country. Additionally, the project plans to develop a handbook to guide departments in using this tool. This project should advance understanding of STEM student experiences in STEM departments and support efforts to retain students in STEM. This project at Florida International University (FIU) aims to develop a research-based assessment tool to measure undergraduate STEM students’ sense of belonging to their department, as well as their perceptions about departmental climate and culture. FIU is a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) and will collaborate with California State University, Fullerton and California State University, San Marcos, which are also HSIs. The project plans to adapt an existing assessment tool that examines sense of belonging and to develop new items to probe departmental culture and climate through input gathered from student interviews and focus groups with a diverse population of faculty, staff, advisors, and other departmental stakeholders. In addition to traditional closed-ended Likert-type questions and open-ended written assessment probes, the project plans to develop items based on visual narratives to probe students’ perceptions of departmental climate and culture. The new assessment tool will be piloted with a sample of ~1,400 undergraduate students in biology, chemistry, and physics departments across the three collaborating institutions to gather evidence of validity. Once initially validated, the assessment tool will then be implemented across at least 14 additional STEM departments, with data from the study returned to departments for reflection and discussion. Project evaluation will be guided by a 5-member advisory board composed of scholars from across different institutions and multiple relevant disciplines. Dissemination efforts include conference presentations, peer-reviewed publications, and development of a departmental handbook to guide use of the tool. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. This project is also supported by the NSF IUSE:HSI program, which has the goals of enhancing the quality of undergraduate STEM education, and increasing the recruitment, retention, and graduation rates of students pursuing associate’s or baccalaureate degrees in STEM. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.