HHMI IE3 Inclusive Excellence in STEM

Xavier University is part of a six-year grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Inclusive Excellence 3 (IE3) initiative. Read the announcement at this link.

Xavier University has a long tradition of excellence in the sciences, providing undergraduates with substantive research experiences and mentoring. However, while persons traditionally excluded because of ethnicity or race (PEER) have not succeeded at the same rate as non-PEER students. Driven by our Jesuit Catholic mission, dedicated to an inclusive environment of open and free inquiry, we intend to increase our capacity for inclusive excellence across our STEM disciplines, particularly concentrating on the first-year experience.

Joining with 13 other institutions also interested in improving the first year STEM experience in a Learning Community Cluster (LCC), we developed a common framing question asking, “What would it take to create and maintain safe, equitable, and supportive teaching and learning environments where all students, faculty, administrators, and staff are deeply invested, empowered, supported and capable of providing the tools and resources that allow every student to feel valued as individuals, included, connected, supported and confident in their ability to succeed in their own STEM pathway?”

We are working on three connected projects related to this question:

• DEI-focused Professional Development and Repository
• Introductory STEM Curriculum
• Peer-to-Peer Student Connections

Xavier’s project is led by Dr. Gary Lewandowski (director, Provost Office), Diamond Brown (Center for Diversity & Inclusion), Dr. Liz Johnson (Computer Science), Mary Kochlefl (Associate Provost for Academic Excellence), Cara Pickett (Center for Teaching Excellence), Dr. Jen Robbins (Biology), and Sam Terry (Center for Diversity & Inclusion).