This adaptive case study will engage first year, second year, and remote students, together with faculty, administrators, and support staff in mapping factors contributing to attrition of newly matriculated students, at the smallest 2-year community college in New Mexico State University system, an HSI with an overwhelming student interest in STEM. This collaborative team will engage in two parallel tasks: (1) analyzing content and structure of course offerings with high part-time student attrition and (2) organizing student feedback sessions through peer-led interviews and surveys. Each engagement will generate a list of recommended courses, advising, and student training guidelines, aimed at revising internal processes and courses to encourage student success.

This adaptive case study will investigate the development and validation of an assessment tool to measure how well math and science school teachers integrate equity literacy (EL) training in their K-12 STEM classrooms. The team of faculty, classroom observers, and evaluation experts will work with masters students who are concurrently teachers of record in highly diverse southwestern schools. The engagement will serve to (1) determine the extent to which teachers’ self-reported efficacy of the EL coursework converges with observational measures of EL, and (2) illustrate a process for developing capacity and tools to ensure “servingness” of classroom teachers of Hispanic students.

This adaptive case study will engage a vertically-integrated team in building institutional capacity to conduct more holistic and inclusive high-stakes student review processes in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at the University of Arizona (UA), one of the few HSIs with accredited graduate STEM programs in this field, that is also top-10 ranked nationally. Guided by a cultural wealth model, the broadening of metrics pursued in this study will (1) address the staggering minority-representation gap in this field both nationally and in the southwestern US, and (2) provide greater visibility of the value added to the field by individuals from diverse backgrounds, due to the integral part language plays in performing job duties, and improving quality of life of individuals and families experiencing communication disorders.