Learning Communities for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Academic Achievement (LCSAA) focuses on increasing the participation of African American students in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) through strategies to improve teaching and learning at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

The project 1) improved African American student achievement (measured by increase in grade point averages and graduation rates) in STEM fields and 2)adapted, implemented, and evaluated the success of STEM teaching and learning strategies derived from the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) and other sources within the contexts of HBCUs and disseminated these adaptations to the higher education community generally.

Through the project, which connected HBCUs to the national Scholarship of Teaching and Learning community centered on the work of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, learning communities (LCs) on the four campuses have improved classroom instruction and student learning across subsets of STEM disciplines. In addition, the larger, inter-institutional faculty LC selected and piloted strategies for improving teaching and learning.

Faculty and graduate student fellows, who came from the group of HBCUs, were formally linked with their own campus community as well as those of others via Web conferencing and blogs. These methods of virtual communication, however, proved insufficient, so face-to-face communication was instituted.

Each type of LC established by the partner institutions (e.g., cross-disciplinary courses, seminar series, or faculty LC) incorporated teaching and learning strategies—such as problem solving, cooperative learning, or project-based laboratories—supported by research and application within the scholarly and teaching communities. Fellows implemented these strategies in courses they taught and assessed student learning outcomes. Each LC drew upon resources of the wider inter-institutional community and of the individual fellows in the group, meaning individual fellows had access both to the best research on teaching and learning strategies and to practical classroom-based support about them.

Each campus designed a plan to ensure institutionalization of its work. During the project, each campus held a Learning Communities Day to describe the LCSAA work to the wider campus community. In addition, participants from all four campuses came together annually as members of the larger LC to discuss design, implementation, and evaluation of specific campus activities. At these meetings, LCSAA fellows received instruction and training from the PI and national LC experts.

Project results appeared in a special LC edition of the Journal of Negro Education. In addition, activities and results have been presented by faculty fellows at three academic conferences at the HBCU LC conference in 2008.

At a conference held on January 30-31, 2008 at Howard University, individuals from 10 local HBCUs and minority-serving institutions were invited to see what the participating institutions had accomplished during the project. All participants were provided with a copy of the special summer 2008 issue of the Journal of Negro Education containing the articles on the LCSAA program.

ONLINE REFERENCE: 

LCSAA Website
   http://www.gs.howard.edu/vlc  

Orlando Taylor
Project Director

Howard University
Graduate School
4th and College Streets, NW
Washington, DC 20059
Tel: 202-806-6800
Fax: 202-986-0335

View Personal Web Site

Jill McGowan
Project Co-Director

Howard University
Department of Mathematics
Washington, DC 20059