University Policy Shifts and Equity Strategy Adaptation in STEM Programs within Diverse Ecosystems

• In Event: It Was Never Just About the Grant: The Befores, Durings, and Afters of Educational Justice Work in Times of Grant Cancellation

Abstract

Objective and Purpose

Responding to federal pressure, university-affiliated STEM equity initiatives have undergone rapid policy shifts that recast what counts as permissible equity work. The most visible markers are the February 2025 “Dear Colleague” Letter clarifying Title VI interpretations and the April 2025 funding freeze tied to ongoing scrutiny. These developments prompted Northwestern to issue internal guidance on how gifts, grants, and programs aimed at historically marginalized populations must be structured to satisfy anti-discrimination constraints, policies that rhetorically endorse equity while generally forbidding explicit differential treatment by protected status and allowing narrowly justified exceptions framed in identity-neutral language. Programs like DIVAS (Pinkard et al., 2017) and STEAMbassadors (Thompson et al., 2025), designed to cultivate community and critical STEM identity among historically marginalized groups, now navigate the tension between mission-driven targeting and compliance. Embedded in a broader ecosystem that includes non-university partners in Evanston, who do not face the same internal constraints or interpret federal signals differently, these shifts produce uneven collaboration dynamics and adaptation pressures. This paper asks: to what extent do university policy shifts, enacted in reaction to federal threats, reshape the equity strategies of university-affiliated STEM initiatives operating within such a diverse ecosystem?



Theoretical Framework

The study integrates theoretical perspectives on supplementary education and learning ecologies (Gordon et al., 1999; Barron, 2004), equity-centered concerns about workforce precarity (Baldridge et al., 2024), and Pinkard et al.’s (2025) opportunity landscape framework to situate policy-induced adaptation. Together, these lenses foreground how external policy contexts constrain and reconfigure locations and spaces, learning opportunities, relational connections, and organizational actors in community STEM program design.



Methodology and Findings

To trace those adaptations, I analyzed design meeting recordings and transcripts from January through July 2025, capturing both ideational and operational negotiations as teams developed two phases of a community-based STEM internship. Analysis consisted of identifying references to Opportunity Landscaping Framework (Pinkard et al., 2025) and then tagging moments when participants responded to policy pressures or internal interpretation shifts, such as narrowed definitions of permissible work. Aligning these layers surfaced concrete adaptation strategies. Findings revealed how the team treated policy as a barrier by reframing the initiative from identity-based targeting to income-based service language and then relied on a non-university partner to instantiate a naturally occurring version of the work, preserving equity aims while signaling compliance. This alignment made visible how shifts in policy discourse triggered strategic recalibrations in the landscape, reshaping partnerships and framing decisions.



Significance

This proposal contributes to design research by offering empirically grounded insight into how real-time policy shifts drive recalibration in equity-focused STEM design. It surfaces adaptation strategies such as proxy framing and ecosystem leverage that other initiatives can adopt under similar constraints. By explicitly linking macro-level policy shifts with micro-level opportunity landscaping practices, the study advances understanding of how external governance pressures shape internal resource mobilization and learning ecology construction. The findings provide actionable guidance for practitioners working to sustain equitable STEM learning environments amid uncertainty, making visible the trade-offs and creative reconfigurations that enable mission preservation in policy-constrained contexts.

Author

• Sydney Grae Simmons, Northwestern University