Chanda's Cosmos

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Click here for the link to our research proposal.

Inspiration

As Chanda Prescod-Weinstein states in her book, The Disordered Cosmos, “People are really excited about science. [But] They feel like the scientific community is not excited about them, or welcoming to them, except sometimes using Black people for experiments." To help people of color and other minorities in STEM feel more welcome, it is important for them to see people like them in STEM careers. This sense of belonging needs to be addressed early on, as it is around grades 4 - 8 that interest in math and science wanes, particularly in females and students of color. We investigate

1. Using incentives and nudges to hire and retain more math and science teachers of color

2. Using games to shift 4th to 6th-grade students’ perceptions of diversity in STEM

We assess the impact of these interventions on increasing diversity in STEM careers.

Aims of our research proposal

1. To improve student competence in STEM subjects, we will work with low-income and minority schools to develop policies that attract math and science teachers, particularly those from underrepresented groups

2. To change student perceptions of who belongs in STEM fields, we will develop a phone app that showcases non-stereotypical scientists and integrate its use into classrooms

Proposal audience

We will present our proposal to and work with school administrators of a subset of low-income and minority elementary schools in Southern California to implement our inclusive learning interventions. We will partner with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Google Education to develop our app. Finally, we will present our findings to

1. State policymakers involved in public education in hopes of broader implementation of our interventions

2. State and federal government officials involved in the student loan forgiveness process who we hope to convince to simplify the complicated debt forgiveness process to make it a more powerful nudge

Accomplishments

While working on this proposal, we realized we needed to provide a demo of the basic idea of the application we want to develop. To do this, we were stretched to a totally new extent! We consider this as one of our accomplishments outside of successfully collaborating and working across 3 different time zones...and not losing any team members!

Challenges we ran into

Our team is located in three different time zones across the world. This challenge would be called a sweet solution for us! It allowed us to work in 12-hour cycles, giving us the opportunity to work more efficiently at peak productivity.

What we learned

Working with a diverse team makes projects more fun!

What's next for Chanda's Cosmos

Partnering with local schools in the short term and UNESCO in the long term!

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