135 - Participatory Processes for Understanding Inclusivity in STEM

Abstract Information: In this session, we will share how we piloted a Student Committee to include undergraduate students in evaluative processes and will discuss the benefits, challenges, and lessons learned of this approach. The Duke Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) has an ongoing evaluation partnership with Duke Technology Scholars Program (DTech), an organization supporting undergraduate women interested in computation careers. For the past fewIn recent years, our evaluation work has focused on the concept of inclusivity in STEM, in large part because students consistently reported that DTech was an inclusive organization, even more so than other groups on campus. In 2023, we determined to further probe what students understood or meant when considering this “inclusivity”, which had previously only been gauged by a single survey question. We conducted a series of student focus groups which resulted in a four-part framework of inclusivity, which outlined the four common features of an inclusive environment in general. These findings inspired many follow-up questions among program staff, including those related to process (“how do DTech activities fit into the inclusivity framework?”, “how can DTech be more inclusive?”) outcomes (“what are the benefits of inclusivity in student support organizations for STEM?”) and generalizable knowledge (“how is inclusivity defined in STEM?”, “why is inclusivity important for women in STEM?”). With so many potential avenues for future evaluation and research, the evaluation team, in collaboration with DTech program leadership, decided in late 2023 and 2024 to turn to DTech student members themselves for help. We developed the DTech Student Committee on Inclusivity, a group of student volunteers interested in supporting evaluation design, data collection, and data analysis. This approach allowed our evaluation on inclusivity to be, in itself, inclusive.
In this session we will detail our experience using a Student Committee and together discuss the benefits and challenges of this approach. We will first describe our process in detail, sharing both how we expected the Student Committee to function and how it functioned in practice. We will then outline several of the challenges we faced around student engagement, including processes for engaging individuals with no prior knowledge of evaluation, time constraints among college students, and unclear expectations and roles of committee members. In breakout groups, audience members will discuss each of these challenges in depth and will then share back with the whole group potential solutions and how these challenges may differ in other contexts. Audience members will leave the session more knowledgeable on how evaluation focus can and should inform evaluation processes; with understanding of the importance of inclusivity in STEM, evaluation, and beyond; and concrete tools to use participatory evaluative processes to conceptualize and assess inclusivity.