Demystifying the Magic: Investigating the Success of University-Community Partnerships for Broadening Participation in STEM

• In Event: Fostering University-Community-School Partnerships

Abstract

This paper focuses on a university-community partnership that facilitates a STEM education program for girls in grades 6-12. Stakeholders within these two organizations (a community organization engaged in informal learning for girls and a large public research university) call the success of sustaining the support, engagement, and resources for the program “STEMSUCCESS Magic” because the costs of maintaining the collaboration can appear to outweigh the benefits for the individuals and departments involved. Using the STEMSUCCESS program as an instrumental case, our goal was to qualitatively investigate this partnership “magic,” thereby demystifying the elusive “black box” of partnership success amongst STEM broadening participation alliances who are experiencing constraints in time, funding, and resources alongside the organizational complexity of cross-sector engagement.

Authors

• Chrystal A. George Mwangi, George Mason University

• Genia Bettencourt, The University of Memphis

• Nilanjana Dasgupta, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Sarah Dunton, Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center

• Ezekiel Kimball, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Mark Pachucki, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Ryan S. Wells, University of Massachusetts - Amherst