NSF Improving Undergraduate Science Education
UTRGV is taking a systemic and transformative approach to its pedagogy to increase student achievement and enable the university to fulfill its mission to become one of the nation’s leaders in higher education as a premier bilingual, Hispanic-serving, emerging research institution and a model catalyst in the socio-economic transformation of students and the region.
With support from the National Science Foundation's Improving Undergraduate Science Education (IUSE) Program our project team aims to examine ways to effectively transform undergraduate education in STEM through community engagement and culturally relevant pedagogy NSF Grant #1832523 .
Working closely with faculty and committed community partners, we present a series of Community Learning Exchanges as an in-depth series of workshops that focus on:
- (a) Experiential Learning through Community Engagement
- (b) Culturally-Relevant Pedagogy,
- (c) Reflective Communication,
- (d) Effective Mentorship, and
- (e) additional on-campus resources for student success.
These workshops take place throughout an entire semester moderated and organized by the program team and the Center for Teaching Excellence. The goal of this program is to help faculty redesign STEM coursework to emphasize community engagement and cultural relevance. Through a rigorous evaluation, the project team will examine the relative impact of these course innovations on different indicators of student success.