By Laurel White
Two faculty members from the UW–Madison School of Education will help lead the new Wisconsin Sloan Center for Systemic Change, or WiSC², an initiative aimed at removing barriers and improving equity in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) doctoral programs across the country.
The project launched earlier this month as part of a $2.5 million initiative by the Sloan Foundation. It aims to strengthen the environment for graduate students at UW–Madison, including Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students, students from rural areas, and students who are the first in their families to attend graduate school, and to support a diverse student body.
The initiative spans 10 universities across the United States. Each university selected for the program received a two-year, $250,000 seed grant to develop and begin implementing evidence-based policies and practices aimed at advancing equitable and diverse physical science and engineering doctoral programs. The initiative will focus on improving recruitment, retention, and graduation outcomes in those programs.
At UW–Madison, the effort has been dubbed the Wisconsin Sloan Center for Systemic Change, or WiSC².
Brian Burt, an associate professor in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, and Aireale J. Rodgers, an assistant professor in the same department, are co-project directors and co-principal investigators on the initiative. Burt is also the director of the Wisconsin Equity and Inclusion Laboratory (Wei LAB) at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER).
Burt says he is looking forward to taking on the vitally important work over the next two years.
“It is exciting to be a part of this path-breaking initiative,” Burt said. “This project recognizes the need for institutions to participate in information sharing. The promising practices that will improve graduate education, particularly for students from the most marginalized populations, will be transformational. The fact that UW–Madison gets to be a part of this major initiative is significant.”
Burt’s research uses qualitative methodological approaches to study the experience of graduate students and the institutional policies and practices that influence students’ pathways. His current research falls into two strands: understanding team-based research experiences and exploring the experiences of underrepresented graduate students of color in engineering. His most recent publication, a collaboration with his own doctoral student mentees, published in the Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, illuminates some factors that influence Black men to pursue higher education in STEM fields.
Rodgers says the Wisconsin Sloan Center for Systemic Change will provide much-needed insight and action on removing barriers to higher education for marginalized students.
“What excites me most about this interdisciplinary partnership is that it intentionally takes aim at systemic levers to promote possibilities for equity-minded organizational learning and institutional change,” Rodgers said. “WiSC² will play an integral part in fulfilling the university’s responsibility to cultivate learning environments where graduate students can flourish as critical thinkers, intellectuals, and whole humans.”
Rodgers’ research draws on frameworks from critical race studies and the learning sciences, seeking to illuminate how people’s everyday understandings — and misunderstandings — about race and racism shape learning across various higher education ecologies. She uses qualitative techniques to study faculty development programs, graduate student socialization processes, and classroom teaching and learning to better understand how educators can facilitate learning that advances critical race consciousness for faculty and students in postsecondary institutions.
Six other faculty from across UW–Madison are also co-project directors and co-principal investigators on the initiative. Those faculty are Eric Wilcots, dean of the College of Letters & Science; Ian Robertson, dean of the College of Engineering; Erika Marin-Spiotta, professor and faculty director of L&S Community of Graduate Research Scholars; Victor M. Zavala, professor and faculty director of CoE Graduate Engineering Research Scholars; Lucas Zoet, professor of geosciences; and Mel Freitag, L&S assistant dean and director of diversity, equity, and inclusion training and innovation.
In a press release from the Sloan Foundation, Adam Falk, president of the organization, said making STEM graduate education better for everyone is within reach. He also expressed deep confidence in the participating universities’ work.
“What stands out about these institutions is their level of commitment and readiness,” Falk said. “These are campuses that have a vision for how to do better and are eager to take the next step.”
The other participating institutions are the University of California, Berkeley; University of Colorado, Boulder; University of Nevada, Las Vegas; The Ohio State University; University of Pittsburgh; Portland State University; Purdue University; University of Texas, El Paso; and Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University.
In addition to the grant funding, the Sloan Foundation will support each grantee’s participation in the Equity in Graduate Education Consortium. The consortium provides participants with research, tools, and change management strategies to achieve systemic change.
At the end of the two-year seed grant period, the participating institutions will be eligible to apply for four-year, $1.4 million implementation grants from Sloan. The grants will include scholarship funds for students in participating departments.