Hello, Dr. Yen,  Thank you for sharing information on your program.  There does appear to be synergy between LEVERAGE and what your are doing with LATTICE, and we welcome the opportunity to explore collaborating and learning from each other.  It looks like the two projects have a number of parallels.  

Wonderful!  Our program uses insights from Social Cognitive Career Theory, Community Cultural Wealth, counterspaces, and several other social science theoretical frameworks to guide our intervention design and implementation.

We are adapting a model we've successfully used in ecology/evolutionary biology and in neuroscience to engineering.  We have published two articles recently that talk about what we've learned from our prior experiences. I've listed the articles here in case they may be useful to you.

Margherio, C., Horner-Devine M.C., Mizumori S.J.Y., and Yen, J.W. Learning the Thrive: Building diverse scientists' access to community and resources through the BRAINS program. CBE Life Sciences Education. September, 2016. Available: http://www.lifescied.org/content/15/3/ar49.full

Horner-Devine, M. C., Yen, J., Mody-Pan, P., Margherio, C., Forde, S. (2016). Beyond traditional scientific training: The importance of community and empowerment for women in ecology and evolutionary biology. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 4, p.119. doi: 10.3389/fevo.2016.00119. Available: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fevo.2016.00119

Thank you for your question, Dr. Rogoff!  LEVERAGE provides the unique opportunity to adapt typical professional development delivered to mainstream faculty to the cultural contexts of the partner organizations.  The project will utilize subject-matter experts for both the faculty professional development and the cultural context adaptations and resources.  Examples of special aspects important to the success of underrepresented minority faculty include incivility in the engineering classroom, understanding micro-aggressions and micro-resistance within academic career pathways in engineering, and/or tactics for dealing with Imposter Syndrome as an early-career engineering faculty member.  The project is currently working to finalize the topics to be delivered and to identify the corresponding SMEs who will deliver for the pilot.  If you or others in the community have suggestions or recommendations, we welcome the contribution!  

Thanks for the examples.  Beyond getting mainstream faculty to avoid incivility and micro-aggressions, etc, I wonder if there are some differences in your approach that build on the resources and skills of the underrepresented minority faculty?

Based on my observations of these organizations delivering faculty content to date and comparing that to traditional engineering faculty development observed over my career, a key difference is in the richness and cultural context of the peer-to-peer conversations that take place as content is delivered.  A key objective of both LEVERAGE and ASSIST is the expansion of their informal professional network to include other diverse engineering faculty and LEVERAGE creates structures to enable them to maintain these relationships through time.  

It would be valuable to others if you could document how you foster the richness and cultural context of the peer-to-peer conversations!

Agreed.  Yes, it will.  Thank you for the feedback.