At Bates College, STEM-interested Black Students Now 50% More Likely to Earn a STEM degree

BYLINE: By Mary Pols

Newswise — Six years into innovative new approaches to teaching STEM subjects, Bates College has dramatically improved retention outcomes for all students, but particularly within its population of Black and Hispanic students.   

Typically there is a gap nationally in higher education between the percentages of students who arrive at college expressing a desire to study science, technology, engineering, and math fields and those who stick with them and graduate with a STEM major. The coursework can be a grind and staying on track can be a challenge for any student. Statistics show that the fall-off is even higher among Black and Hispanic students.

But at Bates, that ratio of students who stick with STEM is now higher than national averages, including when compared to Bates’ peer institutions, very selective 4-year institutions. Comparing Bates data to nationally-representative data available from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), STEM-interested Bates students who are Black are now more than 50% more likely to earn a STEM degree than they were in 2016.

“This is exactly the kind of institutional change we want for our students, “ said Bates President Garry W. Jenkins. “Our STEM faculty has been intensely focused on creating more equitable educational opportunities. These findings show how successful their innovations have already been. It’s exciting for our institution, our students, and prospective students.  The data shows that Bates is one of the absolute very best places in the country to study mathematics and the sciences, and every student interested in STEM should give Bates very serious consideration. ” 

April Hill, a professor of biology at Bates who is an expert in equity and inclusion in the sciences, said Bates’ effort to improve equity for marginalized students and be more inclusive has led to improvements in outcomes across the board.

“Our classes are changed for everyone,” said Hill. “If you look at the data, you see that the white students do better too. Everyone does better because you have a way of teaching that really engages every student and that has a variety of ways that people can learn.”

Hill came to Bates from the University of Richmond, where she chaired the biology department and helped create more equitable STEM programs. She arrived at Bates confident in her methods for building more inclusive teaching, and found many willing partners, but together, they faced an uphill battle.

“STEM at Bates had a negative reputation,” Hill said, citing past student surveys and data that showed Black students leaving for other majors. “And I think we’ve worked really hard to change that.”

After presenting the new Bates data at the American Association of Colleges and Universities Transforming STEM Higher Education conference in November, Hill was approached by other academics who expressed surprise at how quickly Bates improved its methods and outcomes. “They were saying, ‘I just didn’t think you could do this in just a few years, but you’ve shown that you can,’” Hill said. “And it’s my belief that if a school changes their practices and the way that their curriculum is set up with the existing populations of students, they can increase the number of students that are persisting and not just persisting but actually doing really well in STEM.”

Making changes in the teaching approach —such as diving into real life research problems in introductory courses – in key areas like STEM can make a real difference in serving diverse populations well in academia, Hill said. 

Across all institutions, using data from a longitudinal study run by NCES which looks at outcomes for Black, White and Hispanic students, nearly a third of students planned on studying STEM subjects. But for all these racial groups something changes that steers them away from STEM subjects, and that drop-off is particularly notable among Black and Hispanic-identifying students.

Of white students in the 2017 NCES study of all institutions, 20 percent of those who arrived at college expressing an interest in pursuing STEM finished their undergraduate degree program with a STEM major. Only 12 percent of Black and Hispanic students with an interest in STEM ultimately graduated with a STEM major.

The most recent national data (from 2017) for highly-selective four-year institutions shows that 46 percent of the white STEM-interested students ultimately graduate with STEM majors, 26 percent of the Black STEM-interested students graduate with those majors and 44 percent of Hispanic students do so.

Using Bates’ most recent data for graduation outcomes (tracking students who arrived at the college as first years between 2017 and 2019)  those percentages are significantly higher, with 58 percent of the white STEM-interested students ultimately graduating with STEM majors, 42 percent of the Black STEM-interested students graduating with those majors and 49 percent of Hispanic students doing so. Most notably, Black students interested in STEM at Bates are 50% more likely to graduate with a STEM degree at Bates than they were prior to the curricular revisions.

Hill credits her Bates colleagues across all STEM subjects, who beginning in 2017, took a hard look at student surveys and outcomes and saw a problem with how they were getting through to marginalized students, for doing the hard work of changing the curriculum.

Although Hill and her colleagues have altered the overall approach across STEM courses at Bates, changes in outcomes in introductory courses with longstanding reputations as the kind that “weeded” students out are particularly striking. Lecture-based, the courses focused on textbooks, “cookbook labs” (where the outcomes are known) and high-stake exams. And looking at the student academic success data from 2012 to 2019 in these introductory courses, first generation students, Black students and students with the highest need for financial aid fared less well. 

These courses were among the first to be revamped. Faculty implemented a growth mindset. They focused on skill building and active learning, with real world problems that were unresolved, such as, would feeding dairy cows seaweed reduce the harmful methane emissions from dairy herds that contribute to climate change? And they offered multiple paths through the core curriculum in the Biology department. When it came time to assess the new courses, the equity gap had not only narrowed sharply, but success rates for all students had improved between 2019 and 2023.

“I have a huge amount of admiration for my colleagues here,” Hill said.

The way Bates students talk about their STEM education reflects that work, she added. “During the first year of our program, when students were asked to describe the culture of STEM at Bates, two of the most frequent words used were “competitive” and “challenging.”

But last year the most frequent words used to describe the culture of STEM at Bates were “inclusive,” followed by “collaborative” and “supportive.”