ACE: Collaboration to Community

Speaker: Nancy Cox-Konopelski, Academic Excellence Program, Director UCSC Thursday, March 8th 2018 12:30-1:30pm Location: Biomed room 300, UCSC Topic: ACE: Collaboration to Community

Description: ACE is an academic success and retention program that has been administered through PBSci for over 30 years and is designed to increase the diversity of students who earn STEM bachelors’ degrees. We support students through active and collaborative problem-solving sessions that are supplementary to gateway math and science lecture courses. In addition to the problem-solving sessions, participants attend a weekly, small group peer mentoring session. The ACE professional staff members encourage their students to consider a variety of STEM opportunities beyond their courses and ACE sessions, advocating for them by writing letters of recommendation that support students’ applications for undergraduate research and internship programs as well as for graduate and professional schools. In short, we provide a community for STEM students who strive for, and commit to, academic excellence. ACE students consistently perform better in their ACE supported courses than their matched peers who do not participate in the program. This success translates to an increase in their self-confidence, persistence, and, finally, to their STEM graduation.

About Nancy: I earned a Bachelors’ degrees in education from the University of Kansas and in chemistry from California State University, Sonoma and a Master’s degree in Chemistry from UCSC. I began working with the Academic Excellence (ACE) Program in its early years and have been the director of the program for 20 years. ACE is an academic support program dedicated to increasing the diversity of students who graduate from UCSC with STEM Bachelors’ degrees. The ACE Program received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring in 1999. PAESMEM is the highest national mentoring award bestowed by the White House to individuals and programs that show a successful and sustained effort in mentoring those underrepresented in STEM. My passion for inclusivity and equity in STEM education led me to collaborate with community and university women to host UCSC’s Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) Program, which included an annual day-long conference and after school program designed to encourage girls to pursue science, math, and engineering careers. I been involved UCSC’s HSI Initiatives since they began: first as a member of HSI Task Force and now as a committee member with the Maximizing Achievement through Preparedness and Advising (MAPA) Math Committee and the Science Education & Mentorship in Latino Lives in Academia (SEMILLA) Team. I am encouraged that the campus is earnestly engaged in exploring and implementing active learning, equity, and inclusion through the HHMI grant and the HSI Initiatives.