Understanding the Biology Scholars Program's Impact on UC Berkeley

Abstract

Introduction The Biology Scholars Program ("BSP") is an equity and inclusion program at UC Berkeley that aims to support the success of historically underrepresented undergraduates in STEM. BSP has documented student success for over 28 years and continues to cultivate student growth and inclusivity at UC Berkeley for PEER and first-generation science students (Estrada et al., 2019). While UC Berkeley is highly renowned for its prestigious and rigorous academic programs, there still exists institutional barriers that disproportionately negatively affect historically underrepresented students' persistence (Ballen & Mason, 2017). We therefore sought to understand the impact and influence of the Biology Scholars Program on UC Berkeley. In particular, we wanted to understand its influence on members of the campus community (i.e., faculty, staff, and administrators) and its effect on the larger institution. Methods Data were collected via a brief one-time online survey in fall of 2020, which was distributed to participants using Qualtrics, a survey website. Participants were selected based on past attendance to BSP workshops and conferences between 2015 through 2020. Of 172 participants, 38% were staff, 35% faculty, 14% graduate students, 4% administrators and 9% "others" (i.e. alumni, postdocs, program directors). Over half of the sample self-reported as white (57%), hispanic/latinx (12%), black/african american (9%), filipino (3%), asian (3%), chinese (3%), vietnamese (2%), asian indian (2%), japanese (2%), american indian (1%), korean (1%), and declined to state (5%). Respondents self-identified as female (54%), male (34%), transgender (1%), nonbinary (2%), declined to state (1%), and did not answer (8%). The majority of respondents were between 30 - 50 years old. Results The results from the one-time survey provides robust descriptive data to increase understanding of how BSP has impacted UC Berkeley. The first set of questions assessed participants' familiarity with BSP. The data show that over half of participants had experience interacting with members of the BSP community (e.g., BSP faculty and staff [68%] or BSP students [83%]). A subset of questions was dedicated to understanding participants' knowledge of BSP. In terms of correct responses, participants scored relatively high on 5 sections: selection of students (86%), treatment of students (73%), goals of BSP (85%), who participates in the program (65%) and criteria for student success (85%). These data show that participants understand how BSP functions or "works." With respect to BSP's influence on UC Berkeley members, the category most frequently selected by faculty, staff, and administrators was "mentoring" in relation to 1) influence in their own work (28%) and 2) student persistence in STEM (16%). Importantly, 81% of participants agreed that BSP has influenced the minds of UC Berkeley faculty, staff and administrations about growing student talent instead of selecting for it; a key principle of BSP. The Biology Scholars Program was also reported to provide a model of how to create a safe and positive environment for UC Berkeley students. In fact, 97% of participants agreed that BSP's scholars created positive "ripple" effects into UC Berkeley and 90% agreed that BSP's Inclusive Excellence Communities of Practice also created positive "ripple" effects into UC Berkeley. A number of questions were also asked about BSP's influence. Seventy-seven percent of participants reported that BSP's presence on campus changed UC Berkeley. More to this point, the program was also reported to have positively influenced perceptions of equity (75%), inclusion (81%) and bias reduction (77%). Lastly, an open-ended question asked participants to describe BSP's greatest impact on UC Berkeley and the top two most frequent descriptions were modeling how to be supportive (19%) and creating a sense of belonging or community (17%) for students. Conclusions and Discussion The results of this study provide insight into the experiences and perceptions of faculty, staff and administrators with BSP and its impact on UC Berkeley. Overall, results showed that the Biology Scholars Program has had a positive effect on the members of the UC Berkeley community by modelling successful mentorship, and creation of contexts that provide support, inclusivity and equity for students who develop (rather than arrive with) the skills and preparation necessary to thrive in scientific disciplines. On a larger scale, BSP has had a "ripple" like effect on UC Berkeley, influencing not only individual members of the university, but other programs on campus, that seek to adapt the BSP model to other disciplines. How these "ripples" might extend to other universities is a topic of interest and future research. Acknowledgments The present research was supported by a grant from Howard Hughes Medical Institute ("HHMI") (Internal ID: 25087). We thank Missy Soto and Brook Yu for their contributions to this research.