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Interdisciplinary Learning Communities at Linfield College Increase Interactions Among Students and Participation in Science
Author(s) -
Kruchten Anne
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.29.1_supplement.559.39
Subject(s) - demographics , ethnic group , population , medical education , community college , curriculum , psychology , inclusion (mineral) , mathematics education , pedagogy , medicine , sociology , social psychology , demography , environmental health , anthropology
At Linfield College, faculty from multiple disciplines have developed novel STEM programing that includes a week‐long pre‐orientation “boot camp” experience for incoming students, an ongoing learning community program that engages peer mentors in communities working on interdisciplinary problems, and an interdisciplinary seminar series that incorporates both a traditional invited speaker series and preparatory experiences that help undergraduates engage with the advanced material presented by invited speakers. We report here our progress towards our three initial goals. First, we have examined our student population demographics to develop a baseline understanding of the gender, race and ethnicity, first generation status, and transfer status of our students. We use this information to develop programs to retain all students, but especially those who are at risk of leaking from the pipeline. Second, we encourage students and faculty to engage in interdisciplinary research and problem solving in our boot camp, our learning communities, and our seminar series. Third, we have scaled up from ten students per year in a boot camp setting to fifty plus students in learning communities engaging first year students, transfer students, and upper division peer mentors in research projects and discussions. Through pre‐ and post‐ surveys and conversations, we find that students identify more strongly with the experience of “being a scientist” and develop more interdisciplinary connections and communications between first year and upper division students. We believe that the development of a science community through these programs will lead to increased retention of students in our programs. Supported by Linfield College, the Rose E. Tucker Charitable Trust, and the Hearst Foundations Inc.