Phase 1 Proposal

SEM Programs at UTEP

The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) is a national leader in minority science, engineering, and mathematics (SEM) education, providing quality SEM instruction to approximately 2,000 minority SEM majors annually. UTEP offers bachelor's and master's degrees in science, engineering, mathematics, and the social and behavioral sciences and doctoral degrees in Computer Systems Engineering, Geological Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering, and Psychology, the latter two enrolling their first students in 1993. UTEP's bachelor's programs in engineering are accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology; its bachelor's program in Computer Science by the Computer Science Accreditation Commission; and its chemistry programs by the American Chemical Society.

Over the past five years, SEM minority enrollment and degree production at UTEP have grown by about 33 percent at the undergraduate level and 50 percent at the graduate level - - at a time when national data indicate a continuous decline in total undergraduate SEM degree production. Quality, when measured by job placement or enrollment in graduate/professional school, has been high. Anecdotal data suggest that employers value the quality of UTEP graduates. In times of corporate recruiting cutbacks, companies such as IBM, General Motors, Boeing and others still aggressively recruit UTEP students.

Funding for SEM Research and Instruction at UTEP

UTEP is a public, state-supported comprehensive university with a 1994 budget of more than $121 million. Over the past two years, the Texas State Legislature has demonstrated its commitment to UTEP and other universities along the Texas-Mexico border through the South Texas Border Initiative, which has provided special appropriations to expand facilities through construction of a new high-technology equipped classroom building and renovation of existing space, including UTEP's Physical Science Building.

UTEP has been increasingly successful in securing extramural funding for research, instruction, and outreach. During the past three years, sponsored projects awards have totaled more than $71 million. With a research expenditure of $12.8 million in FY 1993, UTEP ranked sixth in total research expenditures among 36 Texas public universities. A high proportion of UTEP's awards for research, instruction, and outreach are in SEM fields.

Funding comes from federal agencies such as NSF, NIH, NASA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, EPA, and the Department of Education; from state agencies such as the State of Texas' Advanced research/Advanced Technology program and the Eisenhower teacher enhancement program; from private foundations such as Tinker and Ford; and from companies such as AT&T, Battelle, and Honeywell.

The Contribution of NSF to Undergraduate SEM Education at UTEP Table 1 describes five major NSF awards to The University of Texas at El Paso that are closely related to the goals of this Model Institutions of Excellence (MIE) proposal. In addition, UTEP's infrastructure, instructional programs, and faculty/student research participation have been enhanced through awards from such NSF programs as RIMI, ILI, REU, and RUI, as well as through individual investigator-initiated research projects.

In addition to these awards, UTEP plays a major role in the El Paso Urban Systemic Initiative (USI), which began in Fall 1994. USI links UTEP with the three major school districts in El Paso and key community groups in a five-year effort to work with teachers, parents, and students to ensure quality mathematics and science education for all students in the region. The leaders of USI and MIE will work together to implement a seamless web of mathematics and science education that embodies national standards in content and instruction. As an indication of the continued liaison between MIE and USI, the MIE principal Investigator is a Co-Director of USI.

Characteristics of Minority Students at UTEP

Approximately 85 percent of UTEP's students come from El Paso County, a fast growing urban region representative of many large cities in the Southwest that now have or soon will have a majority of their population composed of groups currently underrepresented in the SEM workforce. Unlike most other urban universities in the Southwest, UTEP's student population has an ethnic distribution (63 percent Hispanic, 3 percent African American, 1.5 percent Asian American, and less than 1 percent Native American) that closely matches the demographics of the region it serves. Thus, UTEP has an opportunity to serve as a model urban university for the future, one with a mission to serve a multicultural population where minority students comprise the majority.

Although Hispanic students at UTEP refer to themselves with a wide variety of ethnic terms (Hispanics, Mexican Americans, Chicanos, tejanos, mexicanos, Raza, Latinos), most are primarily of Mexican origin. Many of their grandparents or great-grandparents and other relatives fled Mexico to escape the social and economic instability of the early 20th century. Some family members were born in Mexico and immigrated to the United States seeking employment or educational opportunities. And, of course, other students are fourth, fifth, and sixth-generation U.S. citizens.

The characteristics that unite Hispanic, in particular Mexican- origin, students include a strong sense of family loyalty and a belief that all family members are responsible for contributing to the economic stability and well-being of the family. Most of their families are larger in number than the national average, and a variety of generations often live together or share significant resources. Thus, many young people feel an obligation and a desire to go to work at a young age and to continue working, thereby assisting their parents and other family members. For example, 72 percent of UTEP students responding to a campus-wide survey administered in Spring 1994 reported that they are employed, usually off-campus, with 42 percent reporting that they worked more than 19 hours per week. Older siblings understand that they have responsibilities to do household chores, to aid their younger brothers and sisters economically, and to assist elderly family members. This "work ethic" within the context of family responsibilities is often viewed as being as important as higher education aspirations by both parents and university students. Most also feel a strong appreciation for and commitment to the El Paso/Northern Mexico/Southern New Mexico region since many family members live nearby and have historical or marital ties to the area. Finally, because of a cultural emphasis on respect for authority, some Hispanic young people may lack assertiveness skills and self-confidence that many non-Hispanic faculty expect from university students.

The Spanish language is another important point of cultural and family unification for many UTEP Hispanic students. Their experiences vary, however: there are some whose original language was Spanish; others whose first language was English; and some who grew up in bilingual households (for example, more than 11 percent responding to the campus-wide survey reported that they feel most comfortable speaking Spanish, 27 percent both English and Spanish, and 60 percent English). A portion require assistance in expanding their English skills, particularly in writing and oral presentations. Others could profit by developing their Spanish speaking, reading, and writing skills so as to expand their future employment opportunities.

These realities are reflected in the characteristics of UTEP's student body. An estimated 60 percent of UTEP's students are first-generation university students and thus are often uncertain about their career aspirations and educational requirements. Many have not developed the study or time management skills they need to cope with college-level work. They do not know what expectations faculty will place on them and often have unrealistic expectations of their own abilities to perform in college. In part because of their economic circumstances and in part because of the inability of the school system to deal effectively with children who are culturally and linguistically different, many Hispanics in the region do not yet have access to a secondary education that prepares them to enter college. Furthermore, parents and other family members may be unfamiliar with higher education requirements or even fearful of a university's impact on their young people. Nonetheless, the Hispanic community in general--both students and their families--has great reverence for education, and it values highly the role of teachers and professors.

Finally, a significant proportion of minority--and non-minority--students arrive at UTEP inadequately prepared to do college-level work, particularly in mathematics. Approximately 85 percent of SEM students begin their mathematics studies with a pre-calculus course that is the equivalent of college algebra. This underpreparation is being addressed by USI. But since USI is concentrating its efforts first at the elementary-level, it may be several years before USI has a significant impact on the preparation of UTEP entering students. NSF's Model Institutions of Excellence Program will allow UTEP to build on USI and to intervene dramatically to increase the number of Hispanic and other minority students who successfully complete SEM baccalaureate degrees.

Institutional Impediments to Minority Student Success

A variety of cultural perspectives, family experiences, and economic and educational circumstances influence students of Mexican origin at UTEP. UTEP attempts to acknowledge and respect these factors, even as faculty and staff challenge those students with expanded personal and professional opportunities. Yet UTEP faces a number of institutional impediments to its efforts to increase minority student success and baccalaureate degree completion.

UTEP lacks adequate mechanisms to introduce minority SEM students to the University community and to help them develop the survival skills they will need to succeed. Since less than 40 percent of SEM students successfully complete their first year of study, it is clear that the current two-day orientation and voluntary study skills classes are not sufficient, either for entering freshmen or for transfer students. UTEP has successfully piloted a variety of specialized bridge programs for high school graduates and community college transfers, emphasizing skills development in problem-solving and mathematics and use of peer mentors to initiate incoming students to university life. The major problem with these programs is that they reach only a small fraction of SEM students and that they are completely dependent on extramural funding. Also, they do not provide adequate linkages among the courses entering students take, especially their science, mathematics, and English composition courses. Finally, little is being done currently to enlist parents as allies of students' success.

Transfer students, including those coming from community colleges, where many highly qualified minority students begin their higher education, face an added burden. Most UTEP scholarship funds are earmarked for entering freshmen. Outstanding transfer students must rely on financial aid or loans or must work extra hours to pay for their college education.

For the 85 percent of entering students who are not ready for calculus (a co-requisite for most entry-level physical science and engineering courses), there are currently no mechanisms to help them maintain their interest in and commitment to science and engineering, while developing their mathematics skills. They take their math courses, along with unrelated English and other required courses, but they must wait one or more semesters to enroll in courses directly related to their chosen profession.

In spite of programs like AMP, MRCE, and RCMS, the numbers of students in the most popular SEM degree programs who would like to participate in and would benefit from participation in research or other kinds of professional enrichment activities far exceed the number of opportunities. Working on research projects with faculty mentors and completing SEM-related internships or co-ops are excellent ways to nurture minority SEM students' abilities and to prepare them for entry into SEM careers or graduate study.

Although most UTEP SEM faculty enjoy teaching, too many still teach as they were taught--by lecturing to their students. Faculty need assistance and models to learn how to create an active environment for student learning. They also need time and resources to develop their own curricular innovations. UTEP has moved in recent years to promote effective teaching by revising its reward structures, but assistance is needed in accelerating this process, particularly through development of effective measures of teaching excellence.

Several of UTEP's most popular SEM programs, including Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, and Biological Sciences, lack sufficient numbers of faculty and other resources to satisfy student demands.

Finally, UTEP lacks an adequate infrastructure for academic advising, for tracking student progress systematically, and for evaluating the effectiveness of SEM programs. A student information system with expanded capabilities is especially needed.

UTEP is committed to removing these impediments. MIE will accelerate the process so that UTEP can become a true model of excellence in minority student success.

The MIE Planning Process

Preparation for UTEP's MIE initiative began in the spring of 1993 and escalated with the University's submission of its proposal to NSF for a planning grant on July 1. UTEP established an 11- member MIE Coordinating Group, composed of key department chairs (Biological Sciences, Computer Science, Mathematics, Political Science) who have been principal investigators on other major NSF grants or who had similar experience with other infrastructure development programs. Also included on the Coordinating Group were key administrators, including the Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Dean of Science, the Dean of Education, the Associate Dean of Liberal Arts, the Associate Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies, and the Director of Freshman Composition. The group's activities were coordinated by the Director of UTEP's Center for Institutional Evaluation, Research and Planning, who reports to the President. The group met every two weeks to plan and implement the comprehensive self-assessment that serves as the foundation of our MIE implementation plan. During the fall and winter of 1993-94, the MIE Coordinating Group organized two major efforts.

First, each of the 11 departments in the Colleges of Science and Engineering, as well as the Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts, was challenged to (a) review the extent to which its degree program goals clearly specified expected results for undergraduates, (b) identify how the achievement of those expected student outcomes was measured, and (c) determine how the results could be used more effectively to improve SEM educational programs and services. The chairs worked with faculty committees to develop a summary report for each department by May 1994 that focused specifically on the MIE initiative goals and how the department could participate and contribute.

Secondly, the Coordinating Group also identified important cross-institutional issues and organized six MIE Task Forces to assess UTEP's status and opportunities. These Task Forces focused on institutional effectiveness, restructuring the University for entering and lower-division students, the development of innovations supportive of student learning, SEM teacher preparation, assessment of current UTEP externally-funded SEM programs, and identification of SEM trends and opportunities. More than half of the 63 members of the Task Forces were faculty; other members included graduate students and representatives of the El Paso Community College and local schools. The Task Forces produced detailed reports in April 1994 to guide the planning process.

To learn about student views, the MIE Coordinating Group asked the UTEP Office of Institutional Studies in Spring 1994 to survey a stratified course sample across campus, focusing on SEM students, particularly seniors, about their college experiences. All but one of the 113 faculty cooperated in administering the questionnaire; 2,135 students responded. We also surveyed alumni from the past five years, oversampling SEM graduates, to learn about their perceptions of UTEP and suggestions to improve our undergraduate programs. More than 700 alumni (35% of the sample) responded.

Finally, the MIE Coordinating Group brought to UTEP nationally renowned consultants in institutional effectiveness and the implementation of measurable student outcomes, the freshman year experience, and biology and freshman mathematics instruction. These consultants made campus-wide presentations and provided technical assistance to academic departments, Student Affairs, and Computer Services. Faculty members, administrators and staff also traveled across the country to review curricula, instructional innovations, and hardware/software applications.

We estimate that a total of approximately 200 faculty, staff, and others contributed to the intensive self-study process of the academic departments and the campus-wide task forces that resulted in this MIE implementation proposal.

A Model of Excellence: MIE Implementation Plan

The MIE planning process has led to a coordinated program that will increase minority SEM student success and serve as a model for urban universities, particularly in the Southwest, that serve large numbers of minority students. The program described below will offer minority students a pathway to excellence by providing entering students with tools for success and then nurture that success through research, mentoring and professional opportunities. It will also lay the institutional groundwork for student success by creating an active learning environment at all levels, rewarding innovative and outstanding teaching, enhancing the effectiveness of SEM colleges, departments, and research centers, and improving the University infrastructure.

An Entrance to Excellence: Providing Entering Students with Tools for Success UTEP proposes to significantly change its program for entering SEM students, to make the University more hospitable to new students and to give them the tools they need to succeed academically. The strategies described below are drawn from the best practices developed at a variety of universities, including UTEP. In implementing these strategies, the MIE Associate Director will work closely with the Dean of Students and the Deans of Science, Engineering, and Liberal Arts.

Mandatory Freshman Summer Transition Program for all SEM students. The new Freshman Summer Transition Program will serve incoming SEM freshmen through an intensive one-week session consisting of 40 contact hours. The program will acclimatize students to a commuter university environment and help them develop a foundation for success through (1) appropriate course placement for the subsequent Fall semester, (2) development of skills that foster academic and professional success, (3) formation of a network with other students, faculty and staff, and (4) cluster registration into key courses.

The Summer Transition Program will also provide special programming for parents, familiarizing them with the University and the demands of college life. Special emphasis will be placed on helping non-college-educated parents, who in El Paso are also likely to have limited English skills, view the University as a nurturing environment.

Course Clustering for Entering Students. If UTEP is truly to become a model of excellence in the production of minority bachelor's degree recipients, it must significantly increase the success of the 85 percent of entering SEM students who place into mathematics at the pre-calculus level. These students will enroll in new four-course blocked/linked clusters of freshman seminar, introduction to SEM, mathematics, and English composition. Sections will be kept small, 30 students or less, and will use a variety of active learning techniques. Faculty teaching the clustered courses will work together to integrate the content of their sections so that each reinforces the other.

Freshman seminar. All entering SEM majors will participate in a new one-semester freshman seminar that will be team-taught in a small-group format (maximum of 30 students) by a faculty member and an undergraduate student assistant. It will focus on the common experiences required of all students to succeed in college and emphasize development of study skills and communication skills. Study skills, such as note-taking, used in the other courses in the cluster will be evaluated and reinforced. An additional objective of the seminar will be to develop student support groups and establish bonds for each entering student with at least one faculty member and one upper-level student.

Introduction to SEM. Each SEM student will enroll in either Introduction to Physical Science and Engineering or Introduction to Life and Environmental Sciences. Introduction to Physical Science and Engineering will introduce both the scientific method and the engineering design process, in addition to providing information on the nature of various majors and departments and job opportunities in SEM fields. Engineering and science projects will be developed to reinforce concepts covered in the mathematics course. Furthermore, each student will participate in a major team project designed to develop students' SEM skills as well as their interpersonal skills. Introduction to Life and Environmental Sciences will provide a similar laboratory- based introduction to the life sciences and the environmentally oriented branches of natural sciences such as geology or chemistry, with an emphasis on the principles of biology. Special attention will be given to utilizing the math and writing skills being developed in the other courses in the cluster.

Mathematics. We propose a dynamic approach to meeting students' learning needs in mathematics, in the face of changes we expect from the El Paso Urban Systemic Initiative and MIE. Students will be assigned to sections of mathematics courses based on their preparation and needs. Through courses taught in small sections and emphasizing active learning, students will develop the skills they need to succeed in calculus. For some students, an intensive review of basic mathematics will serve as the core of a special nine-credit-hour course that will also develop writing skills and introduce fundamental principles of science. As high school preparation levels change, other appropriate strategies will be implemented.

English Composition. Special sections of English Composition for SEM students will emphasize writing about science, mathematics, and engineering. Students will write about mathematics to develop their math skills as well as their English skills, and subjects from the introduction to SEM courses will be used as topics for the composition course.

Services for Transfer Students. UTEP's efforts to enhance the success of transfer students, particularly those from El Paso Community College (EPCC), will build on our experience with successful summer bridge programs funded by NSF, NIH, and other agencies. MIE funds will be used to offer 30 financial support packages to students transferring from EPCC, providing funds for summer work on campus and for academic year expenses. A one-credit hour Transfer Seminar will be planned and offered in both the fall and spring semesters, with the primary goal of introducing transfer students to the expectations and resources of the University. To improve student outcomes in gate-keeper SEM courses, MIE will sponsor faculty collaborations and/or exchanges between UTEP and EPCC.

Significant amounts of faculty development and planning will be required to implement these new strategies. Introduction of a reformed calculus sequence at UTEP has begun, and some modifications to pre-calculus have been made. The University has provided support for these efforts in the form of release time for faculty to train, or to plan new curricula, and travel for a few faculty to attend calculus reform workshops. MIE funds will be used to continue these efforts and to hire additional mathematics faculty to reduce class sizes in these essential pre-calculus and calculus courses. MIE funds will also be used to hire new English composition faculty to teach clustered sections, as well as faculty to teach the freshman seminar. UTEP is currently planning the new program for entering students and has begun to pilot the new strategies.

A Pathway to Excellence: Research, Mentoring, and Professional Opportunities. As SEM students enter the upper-division, they need to broaden their commitment to SEM and to become active members of their profession. Universities like UTEP are chronically understaffed, but students still need person-to-person contact, not only with faculty members but with other members of the academic community. In a continuum of learning, upper-division students can both benefit from interactions with graduate students and serve as important role models and mentors to lower-division students. A major goal of MIE is to ensure that every SEM student participates at least once in a professional enrichment experience by serving as a research assistant in an on-campus research project or serving as an intern or co-op student in government or industry. UTEP will use MIE funding to achieve that goal through:

Expansion and improvement of undergraduate research experiences, industrial internships, and other institutional support for students. Faculty submitting research proposals will be encouraged to include undergraduate students on their research teams. A primary function of the MIE Regional Advisory Committee will be to secure additional co-op and internship positions for SEM students. Finally, MIE funds will be used to provide stipends to 20 undergraduate students to join ongoing research projects, under mentorship from faculty and graduate student researchers.

Enhancement of the professional content of upper-division SEM courses, with an emphasis on course-based design or research projects, written and oral presentation of project results, and the formation of interest groups to work together, under faculty supervision, on topics in the major. To facilitate these increased hands-on, laboratory-based experiential activities, MIE stipends/ internships will be awarded to UTEP SEM graduate students to assist in upper-division undergraduate laboratories.

Finally, MIE funds will be used to give upper-division SEM students an exposure to the excitement of teaching through serving as peer instructors of lower-division students in the freshman seminar and the introduction to SEM courses. The use of MIE funds to support such student opportunities will also alleviate the need for these students to work in off-campus jobs that are unrelated to their professional interests.

A Key to Excellence: Creating an Active Learning Environment. The concept of active learning, i.e., increasing students' involvement in the learning process, is known to be an indispensable technique for increasing the effectiveness of teaching. Active learning includes a variety of methods, including visual-based instruction, guided design, computer-based instruction, cooperative learning, and peer teaching. In some cases, active learning can be applied without any increase in costs and only modest changes in current teaching techniques. In others, investments in new technologies and systems are required, or there is a cost in terms of decreased material covered. All forms of active learning have clear benefits over conventional passive methods (specifically, the traditional lecture) in improving minority student performance.

UTEP proposes to establish itself as a Model Institution of Excellence in active learning by providing support to SEM faculty who want to become more effective teachers, i.e., who want to focus on how adults learn. The University's Multi-Media Teaching and Learning Center, directed by Michael Kolitsky, Assistant Vice President for Instructional Technology, already provides support for faculty developing technology-based innovations. With the addition of a new Co-Director for Active Learning, the Center will be restructured to provide training and technical assistance to faculty in the use of a wide variety of classroom strategies and support activities. The Center will identify existing materials and support the development of laboratory experiments, problems and other instructional/ active learning materials, as well as create a library of undergraduate education reference publications, instructional materials, research findings, and UTEP-developed materials. Finally, UTEP will use MIE funds to provide faculty with summer support to modify existing courses to incorporate active learning methods.

Fruits of Excellence: Rewarding Innovative and Outstanding Teaching Current academic reward structures are a major impediment to the adoption of active learning, and indeed to any major changes in teaching and mentoring of students. UTEP is in the process of revising basic policies that deal with faculty compensation, evaluation, promotion, and tenure. The following new policies will incorporate provisions that encourage faculty to employ the very best teaching methods in their courses:

Public acknowledgment of innovative and successful undergraduate teaching; release time to faculty who develop innovations in undergraduate teaching and provide significant mentoring to students; merit pay and promotion policies that reward outstanding undergraduate teaching; and, most importantly, a commitment to making successful undergraduate teaching a sine qua non for the award of tenure and to placing significant importance in the tenure process on innovation and research in undergraduate teaching.

This revised reward structure will both benefit current faculty and provide a clear message to new faculty about institutional and departmental expectations and rewards with respect to undergraduate education.

Building Excellence: Enhancing the Effectiveness of SEM Departments and Research Centers Departments and Colleges. SEM departments and colleges play the crucial role in improving undergraduate education. They are the agents for innovation in teaching and support for their students. Since they are also accountable for the quality of the graduates they produce, they must identify expected degree program results and student outcomes. As successful interventions at the lower- division increase SEM enrollment at UTEP, departments will need additional support to maintain quality programs. Thus, MIE funds will be used to meet the needs of all science and engineering departments, especially those that are understaffed and have high potential for growth and improvement. Such support will take the form of: additional undergraduate and graduate research and teaching assistants, as well as laboratory technicians, particularly to enable departments to enhance hands-on active learning in applied settings for undergraduate majors; funds to support renovation of space and purchase of equipment for undergraduate teaching and research training; release time for faculty to develop innovations in undergraduate teaching and mentoring of students; new faculty positions in programs that are currently in high demand, offer students excellent career opportunities, and have relatively high student-faculty ratios. Targeted programs include electrical engineering, computer science, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, biological sciences, and chemistry. UTEP is committed to making these positions permanent at the end of NSF funding and will increase its support for the new positions over the MIE funding period.

MIE will also provide enhanced administrative support to the Colleges of Science and Engineering. A Director of Student Programs will be assigned to assist each Dean in implementing retention, recruitment, and outreach programs. In addition, MIE funds will be used to renovate and equip a new, centrally located Academic Center for Engineers and Scientists (ACES) to serve undergraduate SEM students; provide a venue for cooperative and cluster group learning; serve as an alternative classroom in which visual display of relevant information can be accomplished via computer graphics; provide support such as technical reference material, testbanks, corporate literature, and graduate school bulletins; and become the base of student SEM activity on campus.

Research Centers and Funded Projects. UTEP's SEM research centers, particularly its Materials Research Center of Excellence, Materials Research Institute, Center for Environmental Resource Management, Institute for Manufacturing and Materials Management, and Border Biomedical Research Center, conduct state-of-the art research and provide important research experiences to UTEP undergraduate and graduate students. Additional opportunities are provided through major federally funded projects on campus. Yet new and/or expanded opportunities for students and faculty could be provided through even greater synergy between centers/projects and the University's long-term institutional goals for research, graduate degree programs, and undergraduate student achievement. To facilitate greater cooperation and synergy, the Associate Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies will continue to convene regularly the directors of all undergraduate research training programs and research centers related to SEM. These meetings will facilitate greater coordination of centers and projects with other UTEP activities and resources, better communication about student opportunities and research announcements, and better support for long-term planning, reporting, and evaluation. The MIE initiative will support the greater integration of research centers into the overall instructional mission of the University through:

Expanded student involvement and faculty mentoring through MIE stipends to fund additional undergraduate positions on ongoing research projects in the centers, and expanded involvement of center professional staff in undergraduate teaching, on graduate and undergraduate thesis and project committees, and in other SEM projects at the University.

Sustaining Excellence: Improving University Infrastructure. Implementing, evaluating, and disseminating change places serious burdens on a university's infrastructure. Over the next three years, UTEP will either replace or significantly upgrade its Student Information System to better serve both students and departments in their need for accessible and accurate data for planning and evaluation. MIE funds will be used to purchase new hardware and software to enable SEM departments to access this new system and to provide training to SEM faculty to increase their ability to use the system for timely and effective student advising. MIE funds will also be used to expand the resources of UTEP's Center for Institutional Evaluation, Research, and Planning (CIERP) to serve the planning and evaluation needs of SEM departments. A Research Associate will be appointed in CIERP to provide MIE-related evaluation and reporting services, and new hardware and software will be purchased to link the planning and evaluation function with the new student records system. With the implementation of the new student information system, Enrollment Services will need to develop new processes for such procedures as electronic transcript submission and analysis. The Dean of Enrollment Services will work closely with MIE staff in the development of orientation programs for freshmen and transfer students, coordination of advising activities with the freshman seminar, provision of support for computer-assisted advising by SEM faculty, and clustered registration of SEM entering freshmen. The MIE initiative will support the validation and/or replacement of current mathematics and reading placement tests, the potential implementation of computer-adaptive testing for placement purposes, and the development of an early-warning system to alert students and advisors of potential academic difficulties.

MIE Program Organization

The MIE Principal Investigator will be Dr. Stephen Riter, Dean of the College of Engineering. The Co-PI will be Dr. Richard Padilla, Vice President for Student Affairs. Dr. Riter will be responsible for all aspects of program management, including developing policy, approving strategies, monitoring activities, and overseeing the evaluation efforts and interactions with the Advisory Committee(s) and outside consultants. He will be the key point of contact with NSF.

Dr. Riter is a respected engineering educator, has a long record of achievement in minority recruitment and retention, and has managed large interdisciplinary federally-funded programs. Under his leadership, the College of Engineering has taken the lead at UTEP in developing minority student retention programs. Dr. Riter is the Chair of the Texas Deans of Engineering and of the Educational Advisory Committee of the Texas Board of Registration for Professional Engineers. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Engineering Deans Council of the American Society for Engineering Education. Dr. Riter was PI for the UTEP NSF-funded Comprehensive Regional Center for Minorities and is Co-PI of the El Paso Urban Systemic Initiative. In the past year, he has secured support of more than $350,000 from government agencies, industries, and foundations for the College of Engineering's minority retention and outreach programs. Dr. Riter was founding director of UTEP's Center for Environmental Resource Management and serves as PI for a $1 million/year EPA Center of Excellence grant.

As Co-Principal Investigator, Dr. Richard Padilla brings a wealth of experience with student support and development programs designed to help retain students and improve their academic performance. At the University of Houston, he was active in revamping new student orientation programs and creating a mentor program for new students. He currently serves as President of the Texas Pubic Colleges and Universities Council of Student Services' Vice Presidents. He has also been an active member of the Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education, an organization dedicated to increasing the numbers of Hispanics succeeding academically in undergraduate and graduate studies. Dr. Padilla will play an essential role in merging the resources of academic and student services departments in new ways to achieve the goals of MIE.

An Associate Director will be recruited after the award is announced. This individual will have general responsibility for the day-to-day operation of the MIE program, but will be specifically responsible for all efforts focused on the freshman year. Between award announcement and hiring of an Associate Director, Dr. Andrew Bernat, Professor and Chair of Computer Science, will serve as Interim Associate Director. Dr. Bernat is a recognized leader in Computer Science education and is currently PI for an NSF CISE infrastructure grant awarded to the UTEP Computer Science Department. During 1993-1994, he played a major leadership role in the MIE planning process.

A fundamental element of UTEP's MIE management strategy is linkage with a variety of constituencies involved in SEM education. To ensure effective interactions, UTEP will establish an advisory structure featuring partnership between MIE and key SEM faculty, campus administrators, regional SEM leaders, and national experts on SEM education. A Regional Advisory Committee will be established, to be composed of SEM faculty with records of involvement in related activities: the Deans of Science, Engineering, Liberal Arts, Students, and Enrollment Services, and regional SEM leaders. The regional SEM leaders on this committee have distinguished themselves through securing industrial positions for UTEP students and by assisting in pre-college recruiting and in curriculum development. Several committee members have participated in the MIE planning process. It is anticipated that the Regional Advisory Committee will meet on a monthly basis during the program start-up and initiation phases discussed below and quarterly thereafter. The committee will perform much of its work through three subcommittees: student opportunities, educational technology, and assessment. Members will advise the PI and Co-PI on strategy, evaluate program success, and help secure additional resources for SEM programs at UTEP.

UTEP is well connected with most national minority SEM development activities. However, as a check on progress we will bring in on a yearly basis a visiting committee of national leaders in minority education from business, industry, and government. The Committee will review programs, check evaluation strategies, observe activities, and interview faculty and students.

Targeted MIE academic departments will also establish visiting committees that will be expected both to help secure co-op and intern opportunities for SEM students and to assess program effectiveness. The latter task will be accomplished by participating in annual reviews of student design projects in engineering and research projects in science. The assessments will address the technical merit of the projects, the extent to which students are aware of economic and political constraints on their solutions, and the communication skills of students. These committees will play a major role in evaluating the competitiveness of students and making recommendations regarding curricula changes.

UTEP has developed an MIE implementation plan that will guarantee a smooth start-up of MIE activities. The plan calls for a pre- program effort, already underway, that includes developing job descriptions, obtaining academic approval for curriculum changes, scheduling classes, soliciting estimates for renovations and equipment purchases, and securing faculty support for MIE initiatives. Upon notification of award, there will be a start- up phase estimated to begin in Spring 1995 and be completed by receipt of spending authorization in late Summer 1995. This will include release of advertisements for positions and specifications, as well as of publicity on program goals and objectives to targeted audiences. A program initiation phase, to begin in Fall 1995 and be completed by January 1996, will include hiring of key personnel, acquisition of equipment, and initiation of some program elements. Full implementation will begin with the Spring semester of 1996.

Institutional And External Commitments

As the MIE contribution budget indicates, UTEP is making a substantial contribution in terms of time committed to the initiative by high-level administrators, including the PI and Co-PI, the Assistant Vice President for Instructional Technology, and the Director of the Center for Institutional Evaluation, Research and Planning. All of the positions requested in the MIE budget are designed to be permanent. Over the course of the five-year period, UTEP will contribute the salaries of increasing numbers of the English, mathematics, and freshman seminar faculty needed to ensure the success of the MIE programming for entering students. Each year, beginning in the third year, one of the new faculty to be added in computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, biological sciences, and chemistry will become permanent, University-supported positions. In addition, UTEP will pay 50 percent of the cost of salaries for graduate teaching assistants for entering-year activities and upper-division laboratory instruction, the Director of Engineering Programs, and the Director of Science Programs. Finally, the Colleges of Science and Engineering are prepared to commit their entire allocation from our only state source of funds for renovation and equipment purchase to support the MIE initiative, including in the first year purchasing equipment to enhance departmental and college infrastructure and to renovate space for the Academic Center for Engineers and Scientists.

The strategies described in the MIE implementation plan have been designed to become self-sufficient in time through the existing funding process. UTEP receives funds from the State Legislature on a credit-hour reimbursement formula that generates income based on the number and level of student credit hours. These funds provide support for faculty salaries, student assistants, and operating funds. University policy dictates that as their enrollments increase, SEM departments will receive the income required to replace the NSF funding used for infrastructure support and to improve the experience of entering students. Success in these activities will also help build a case for moving resources from other University activities to successful SEM programs. In addition, we anticipate that adoption of active learning techniques and development of other instructional innovations will become widely accepted and rewarded appropriately throughout the University.

Finally, our experience has been that success will attract additional sources of income from both the public and private sectors. The growth in UTEP research activity over the past decade has stimulated more growth. We expect a similar phenomenon for programs to improve the quantity and quality of SEM graduates. The Special Information and Documentation Section of our proposal presents a list of companies and federal laboratories that regularly provide co-op opportunities to UTEP SEM students and/or donate regularly to undergraduate SEM programs. As it becomes apparent that we are becoming a model of excellence for urban minority institutions throughout the Southwest and the nation, we should be able to attract additional industry, foundation, and government support for all of our activities.

Evaluation

Projected Outcomes: Evaluation of UTEP's MIE initiative will focus on attainment of student outcomes objectives, in particular increased minority baccalaureate degree production and increased numbers of minorities with UTEP SEM bachelor's degrees going on to graduate or professional study and entering the SEM workforce. By the fifth year of the program, UTEP expects an additional 170-180 minority students to gain SEM bachelor's degrees beyond the 1989-1994 average of 130 per year and an additional 90 to enter SEM graduate programs beyond the 1989-94 average of 40 per year. We also expect to more than double the number of minority graduates entering the SEM workforce. (See the Special Information and Documentation Section for breakdowns of these projections by SEM program.)

Evaluation Plan: The University's evaluation plan has four stages or levels to mirror the implementation of the MIE initiative.

1. Initiation (June 1-December 31, 1994): this stage will focus on strengthening the details of the evaluation plan and on providing feedback to the Principal Investigators on start-up issues of staffing, faculty development, and technical assistance, as well as piloting procedures and instruments for the new summer orientation sessions and freshman seminars.

2. Process (January 1, 1996-December 31, 2000): this level of evaluation will monitor the implementation of MIE. Sample activities include developing and sharing indices of course effectiveness, interviews with faculty on MIE activities, focus groups with students, and analyses of student satisfaction measures.

3. Outcomes (each December 15): this level of evaluation will measure and analyze student outcomes (i.e., the tables in the Special Information and Documentation Section) annually to determine the effectiveness of the MIE initiative.

An annual report will be prepared for the President, our MIE Regional Advisory Committee, and NSF summarizing achievements and areas of needed improvement based on both process outcomes and findings. In addition, the MIE evaluation will focus on improving and expanding UTEP's current longitudinal measures of SEM graduates' success, including cooperation with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and the Texas Employment Commission for use of a statewide automated follow-up system. We are also exploring the possibility of cooperative agreements with the New Mexico and Oklahoma AMPs to assess the regional success of SEM graduates.

4. Impact (annually and biennially): external evaluators will provide feedback to the MIE management. The National Visiting Committee will assess the initiative's progress each spring and make recommendations to the Principal Investigators following a site visit by its members. We will also ask a nationally recognized evaluation researcher to undertake a formal review and report on the student outcomes and the systemic impact of the MIE initiative on UTEP every two years.

Dissemination: UTEP is committed to serving as model of excellence for the urban university of the future, one with a mission to serve a multicultural population where minority students comprise the majority. Thus, the University will work with NSF and its sub-contractors to develop and implement a national dissemination plan and will commit its resources to sharing its MIE experiences with universities in the Southwest and the nation.

The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) is a national leader in Hispanic education. Over 60 percent of its more than 17,000 students are underrepresented minorities and an estimated two-thirds are the first in their families to attend college. Approximately 85 percent of UTEP's students come from El Paso County, a fast growing urban region representative of many large southwestern cities that now have, or soon will have, a majority of their population composed of groups currently underrepresented in the science, engineering, and mathematics (SEM) workforce. UTEP, however, is unique in that it is the only major urban university in the Southwest whose ethnic distribution matches the demographics of the region it serves. The Model Institutions of Excellence (MIE) program provides UTEP the opportunity to serve as a model for the urban university of the future, one with a mission to serve a multicultural population where minority students comprise the majority.

UTEP's MIE proposal first addresses the major impediment to increasing the number of bachelor's degrees in SEM disciplines: the unacceptably high attrition of entering SEM students. UTEP proposes a dynamic approach to meeting the needs of entering students, needs that will change as local school improvement programs, such as the NSF-funded El Paso Urban Systemic Initiative, improve area students' preparation in mathematics and science. UTEP's MIE plan will help first-year students understand how to succeed in college, reduce class size in first-year courses, develop cohorts of students who learn together, introduce active learning strategies in first-year courses, and present a broad picture of what SEM disciplines are about and the opportunities that careers in these fields provide. Most importantly, through MIE, UTEP's faculty commit to the concept that they are responsible for more than classroom instruction, that they are also responsible for the development of the entire student and the creation of an on-campus environment that supports learning and personal development. Since many of these activities will utilize undergraduates as mentors and peer instructors, an additional benefit will be the provision of meaningful work experiences for a student body composed of people with financial responsibilities they must meet while attending school.

UTEP will also use MIE to accelerate the introduction of active learning strategies into all of its SEM courses. Such strategies include cooperative learning, computer-assisted instruction, the linking of English composition courses with SEM courses, and peer instruction. To make active learning and effective teaching a reality, MIE will serve as a catalyst for a change in thinking about the mission and responsibilities of faculty by working to modify the major determinants of faculty rewards from research to the promotion of learning.

MIE will provide resources to enrich the quality and increase the quantity of SEM programs through addition of faculty and staff and the upgrading of infrastructure in the degree programs likely to yield the greatest increase in SEM graduates. A goal of MIE will be to ensure that every SEM student participates at least once in a professional enrichment experience by serving as a research assistant in an on-campus research project or as an intern or co-op student in government or industry. Finally, MIE will impact the university educational infrastructure by providing resources to improve UTEP's ability to advise students, track their progress, and evaluate the effectiveness of programs.

UTEP will manage MIE through a unique combination of expertise in academic and student affairs. The Principal Investigator is a national leader in engineering education with experience managing large interdisciplinary programs. The CO-PI brings similar experience in the student affairs area. They will work with an advisory committee of key faculty, administrators, and regional SEM leaders from industry and government to change the very nature of SEM education at UTEP.