The coronavirus pandemic has been a setback for many higher education initiatives. But not so for Project Kaleidoscope, according to Dr. Kelly Mack, its executive director. She thinks the initiative for STEM higher education reform is only getting started — and the unforeseen pause of in-person learning could help the project heighten its offerings for next year.
Project Kaleidoscope, or PKAL, is an Association of American Colleges & Universities. (AAC&U) center dedicated to making transformative change in undergraduate STEM education including diversifying the ranks of STEM degree holders. PKAL started in 1986 and joined AAC&U in 2010. It now has a network of more than 7,000 STEM faculty and administrators.
When Mack took the helm in 2012, the center adopted a renewed emphasis on empowering faculty to support underrepresented students in STEM fields. Since then, it more than doubled the number of Black and Latinx STEM faculty who participate in its STEM leadership development program as well as the number of representatives from minority serving institutions.
“It’s not out of a knee-jerk reaction that we feel we have to focus on diversity, equity and inclusion and social justice in STEM,” says Mack. “We have always understood that excellence in undergraduate STEM reform cannot be achieved if we are not paying attention to eradicating the systems and structures embedded in STEM that advantage some and disadvantage others.”
STEM disciplines are notoriously lacking in diversity, with a notable gap between STEM and non-STEM academic fields. Black faculty, for example, made up only 0.7% to 2.9% of professors in biology, chemistry and economics, compared to 8.8% to 15.1% percent of professors in sociology, English and educational leadership and policy, according to a 2017 report by the Brookings Institution, which surveyed 4,000 tenure-track faculty from 40 public institutions.
To help change the status quo, Project Kaleidoscope now focuses on professional development for STEM scholars and leaders. Normally, this summer, Project Kaleidoscope would be hosting the 2020 STEM PKAL Leadership Institute, which gathers early- and mid-career STEM faculty, principal investigators and administrators for training designed to attune them to the disparate privilege and power dynamics within STEM higher education. This year, the convention and all in-person institutes were cancelled to keep participants and facilitators safe, in part because of the center’s focus on experiential learning techniques.
“All of our programs — but especially our leadership development institute — are very hands-on and very high-touch,” Mack says. “… We don’t just sit in our chairs and listen to experts talk, but we are seated face-to-face, eye-to-eye and heart-to-heart in ways that are most conducive for interacting, for learning and for engaging in the most difficult of conversations, as well.”
