It’s in Our DNA: Leadership Perspectives on Institutionalizing STEM Success in an Alliance

Abstract

This study investigated how institutional leaders within an alliance navigate and use their agency to cultivate organizational change to support the success of underrepresented racial minority (URM) science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) students. As part of this study, we partnered with the Illinois Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (ILSAMP), a signature program of the National Science Foundation (NSF), to explore our research question. The phenomenon of interest is the institutional leaders’ perceptions of their agency and their organization’s efforts to engage in the Alliance and support URM STEM student success through the various initiatives. The research team conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with institutional leaders and faculty at 11 public and private institutions as part of the STEM alliance. We utilized Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six-phased thematic analysis to identify patterns of meaning within the data that respond to the research question. Findings revealed a leadership perspective that frames approaches to STEM initiatives becoming a part of an institution’s fabric. The contribution of this study relates to the illumination of the tension between institutional leaders' agency to make change sustainable versus structural and leadership networks inhibiting STEM success efforts.