Progress 09/15/23 to 09/14/24
Outputs
Target Audience:We are pleased to report that we have our first cohort ofwomen and minority K10-14 rural Arkansas students. We reached out to K10-14 W&M students in rural Arkansas (62 counties) and opened a selection for mentees. We distributed an invitation for both traditional and alternative education. For traditional students, we utilized high school and community college lists in rural Arkansas, specifically with Future Farmers of America (FFA) programs. While for alternative education students (e.g., home schoolers), we utilized 4-H networks by contacting the area coordinators. The applicants wereasked to provide academic details, demographics, and a 500-word statement of objectives. Preference wasgiven to talented students from a pool of underrepresented students, such as those with disabilities, from low-income families, or rurally isolated homes. Changes/Problems:A major change in the project will occur in January 2025, when the management will be transferred a new Project Director (PD) within the same college. Dr. Pipiet Larasatie, the current PD, will be moving to a new role at a different institution, which will limit her ability to remain involved with this grant. To ensure continuity of the project, a replacement PD will assume the management of the project for the remainder of the award term. Dr. Larasatie has already initiated the transition process with USDA. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Participating in this mentorship program provides mentees with the opportunity to develop essential skills that will be beneficial for their college and professional journey. By designing a scientific project, mentees gained experience conceptualizing, planning, and executing a research. They also acquired practical skills like data collection. The final stage of the program will focus on effective science communication, as mentees will participate in a science fair competition to share their science project through both written and oral presentations. In addition, being part of a mentorship group fosters team collaboration and leadership, which are important professional competencies. ? Although the target audience is W&M K10-14, this project also provided professional development to seven undergraduate and graduate college students enrolled in the CFANR. To ensure that the mentors could enhance and develop necessary mentorship and leadership skills, they participated in a 2-hour interactive leadership training conducted by a faculty member specializing in science communications. In this training, mentors worked on setting their pedagogical objectives to help realize expected mentee learning outcomes. In addition, communication skills were also reinforced, including establishing and maintaining boundaries and active listening between mentor and mentee, as well as problem-solving skills. These teachings were delivered in the form of learning by doing through role plays. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?There are not results to report at the moment. The first cohort of mentees will "graduate" from the the WAMSFOR Program in mid-March 2025. This is when the Southeast Arkansas Reginal Science Fair is usually held, and where mentees will present their final science project. After this competition, we will culminate the evaluation process for the first cycle. The same schedule will be followed for the second cycle. This project was designed as a longitudinal research project where qualitative analysis will be conducted at the end of cycle two. We will be utilized three longitudinal interviews conducted with both mentor and mentee participants: (1) pre-interviews conducted in the student selection phase (spring 2024/2025), (2) mid-interviews (fall 2024/2025), and (3) post-program conducted after the completion of the program (spring 2025/2026). The main goal is to evaluate the success of the project, including learning outcomes, long-term impact, as well as recommendations from improving the program. Results from the qualitative analysis will be disseminated to the public in the CFANR website and official social media accounts, as well as to the scientific community through presentations in scientific conferences and publication of peer-reviewed articles. ? What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Methodology: To advance educational equity and exposure to the forest industry of W&M, we plan to employ the same mentoring methodology as established in the project proposal. We will continue to employ the near peer mentorship methodology; that is, pairing K10-14 students with undergraduate and graduate college students enrolled in a Forestry, Agriculture, and Natural Resources program at UAM. The mentorship will span for nine months starting with the five-day summer camp during the summer of 2025 and culminating with the presentation of science projects in the spring of 2026. Recruitment: Our major concern for cycle two is to improve mentee recruitment rates and participation. Despite significant efforts to recruit K10-14 students for cycle one, we were not able to meet our annual goal of recruiting 10 mentees. In total, we received five mentee applications during the selection phase; however, we were able to secure only two mentees to participate in the program. To improve recruitment and retention outcomes, we plan to implement new strategies, including early and direct communication with all the high schools that already have a relationship with the Southeast Arkansas Regional Science Fair to spread the word of the program with their student body. On the other hand, the mentor recruitment efforts presented a better success rate, as we were able to secure the participation of seven undergraduate and graduate students. We plan to employ the same recruitment strategy for the second cycle, which includes advertising via classrooms visits and posts of open call announcement physically around campus as well digitally in the university and college official social media accounts and website.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
During the first cycle, we successfully recruited a diverse cohort of mentees and mentors representing a range of gender, racial/ethnic backgrounds, and educational levels to participate in the mentorship program. The mentee group included two students currently in 11th grade from rural counties in Arkansas. One mentee identified as White, while the other identified as Latin/Hispanic. We also recruited six mentors: three undergraduate and three graduate students enrolled in the CFANR, including three women and three men. The mentors' racial/ethnic backgrounds were diverse, including Latin/Hispanic, Black/African, and Asian. Although the ideal 1:1 mentor-mentee ratio was not achieved in the first cycle because small number of mentee applicants, we implemented a new methodology consisting of mentorship groups with a 1-mentee to 3-mentors structure. These groups were intentionally designed to allow knowledge and skill sharing across different education levels. For example, graduate students could share expertise with undergraduates and high school students, while undergraduates could, in turn, support high school students' learning process. This structure enabled us to meet the program's two primary objectives: (1) facilitating student mentoring and (2) promoting experiential learning opportunities in STEM with a focus on forestry and natural resources. Experiential learning: The mentees participated in a five-day, in-person summer camp conducted in the UAM campus. The summer camp focused on providing real life exposure to the college life and academic experience, as well as different career paths within the forest industry. The summer camp started with a series of faculty led lectures about the different forestry and natural resources careers, which was followed by a walking tour around campus to see the college classrooms, laboratories, and forestland, where actual college students conduct their studies. To demonstrate future career path, the mentees also had the opportunity to learn about different job possibilities within the industry along the supply chain from forest management and timber harvesting to forest products manufacturing and commercialization. The group participated in two fieldtrips. The first on-site visit was to a private forestland guided by an expert consulting forester. During this visit, the mentees learned about the best management practices for forest conservation and utilization as well as the different landowner objectives (e.g., timber production, wildlife habitat). The other on-site learning experience involved visiting a certified logging operation where mentees had the opportunity to run the high-tech machinery utilized for timber harvesting. The mentees also had the opportunity to learn about the processes and skills needed in manufacturing wood products conducted by the mills. Beyond academic and professional mentoring, the program also provided a graduate student female chaperon, who accompanied mentees in their college-like experience. This chaperon supported a variety of after-work team building activities, such as sports, movie night, and bowling, creating opportunities for mentees and mentors to connect outside the formal classroom setting, fostering trust and building strong mentor-mentee relationships for the long-term duration of the program. Additionally, the chaperon offered insight into the university dormitory experience and other aspects of college life for a realistic perspective of the transition to higher education. Mentoring: During the summer camp, the mentees had working sessions with their mentors to brainstorm ideas for science project and select project topic and research question to be developed during the fall. During the fall, the groups continued to meet online, where mentors guided their mentees in the different stages of the project including conducting literature reviews, collect and analyze data, and develop preliminary results. This is an ongoing process that will end in the spring of 2025. ? Other objectives such as college recruitment and retention will be evaluated in the aftermath of the project. This will be a longitudinal study where we intend to follow up with the students in the future to observe their career choice and understand the impact of the mentoring program in their higher education choices.
Publications
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