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In the year of 2023 the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious affirmative action in college admissions programs, stating race will not be a factor for higher ed institutions to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies. Race-blind admissions policies will further exacerbate the existing inequalities and challenges that Black, Hispanic, and Native American students encounter throughout the admissions process and college experiences, specially in STEM disciplines. By ignoring the significance of race, the recruitment and retention approach will only  risk creating a wider divide of equal opportunities for the communities of color. However, most institutions do not declare the consideration of race in their admission process as per a report by (Reuters, 2023).

Now the decision of banning affirmative action would force colleges and universities to revisit their policies and implement new recruitment plans that are color blind. Also, we are at the intersection of growing anti-DEI narratives, amid the 2024 presidential election and the FAFSA issues that have impacted millions of families in the US, specially from those with marginalized backgrounds. Also, FAFSA delays posed significantly more challenges to the immigrant families without Social Security. As per a report from Diver Education by Herder, (2024) these interruptions are already having a negative impact on the students who need financial aid the most: first generation students, students of color, and those from low-income backgrounds.

The result of all the FAFSA related chaos could be a diminished impact on freshman class entering postsecondary education in fall 2024 and a continued racial gap in educational achievement. To exactly understand the impact of FAFSA delay and ban of affirmative action on marginalized communities we ask the following questions for this study are-How do interplay of affirmative action removal and FAFSA issue impact experiences of undergraduate multi-marginalized students in STEM? Did it result in fewer students of color and/ first gen students in KSU in STEM ?  What are the Implications of policy change and process mishaps on students of color? This study will embrace a mixed methods approach. We will send out survey, analyze publicly available enrollment data and finally interview 15 undergraduate students from STEM. This study will directly inform us of the impact of affirmative action ban and FAFSA delays on the college plan and changed career trajectories of marginalized groups in the STEM disciplines for the class of 2024 (intended freshmen students for 2024).

The student will learn basic research skills like literature review, assisting the PI with Institutional Review Board approval process involving human subjects, assisting to form survey and interview questions, interview techniques and finally data analysis and dissemination. Hopefully, after this work student will be interested towards taking education and other social science discipline for their further inquiry. This work will also serve for the student to consider graduate school. 

• First 2 weeks- conducting literature review
• Next 4 weeks- IRB approval documentation , constructing a survey instrument and preparing interview protocol
• In November/December- Interviews 
• January- Coordinating with the participants for gift cards and learning data analysis 
• Feb, March and April- Data Analysis

Hybrid

Dr. Debalina Maitra, dmaitra1@kennesaw.edu

As America's classrooms become more diverse, the teaching population remains essentially unchanged. Data from a 2021 study by The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported that over 80% of public school teachers are white. This is in stark contrast to the K-12 student population, where over 50% of students identify as Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, or bi-racial. This mismatch in the teacher and student population has persisted for several decades, and research indicates the need for change to ensure that students from historically marginalized groups experience academic and social success. For example, Black students taught by Black teachers are more likely to be placed in gifted classes (Barshay, 2016), less likely to be suspended from school (Lindsay et al., 2017), and experience deeper teacher-parent-community relationships (Gomez et al., 2008). Several studies have reported that teachers who are Black, Indigenous, and people of Color (BIPOC) consistently show increased learning gains for all students, regardless of the students' racial identities (Brayboy & Maugh, 2009; Gist & Bristol, 2022; Howard, 2003; Klopfenstein, 2005; Marin & Bang, 2015; Pham, 2019; Santoro et al., 2011). These findings make us curious about why these teachers experience success, particularly the well-documented impact of Black teachers.

This project presents a unique partnership opportunity for an undergraduate scholar to work with a KSU faculty member and The Black Teacher Archive Project (BTAP) at Harvard University. This archive, which boasts over 50,000 resources from Colored Teachers' Associations (CTAs), "makes public the intellectual, political, and cultural contributions of Black educators during the Jim Crow era through the Civil Rights era."

Undergraduate scholars matched with this project will engage with the following research questions:

1. How does the Black Teacher Archive support understanding of educational practices from the Jim Crow era through the Civil Rights era?
2. How does the work of Colored Teachers' Associations align with current Black-focused educational reform (e.g., Black Lives Matter at Schools Week, The Black Teacher Project)?
3. How can we draw upon the Ghanaian (Akan) principle of Sankofa in using the Black Teacher Archive to understand the current educational landscape?
4. How can we draw upon what we learn from questions one through three to support current and future educators in developing an identity of advocacy and excellence?

The research team will collectively study primary documents research in the Black Teacher Archive to answer these questions. 

1. Students will learn to conduct research on primary sources using a digital archive.
2. Students will learn to organize data, look for themes, and raise questions using a notice/wonder protocol.
3. Students will learn critical competencies, including problem-solving, cooperative learning, academic writing, and digital literacy.
4. Students will learn to write and submit conference proposals.
5. Students will learn to design and deliver local and state-level conference presentations.

Weekly duties include:

1. Conducting independent research in the Black Teacher Archive
2. Saving and organizing findings
3. Recording keywords in a shared research file
4. Participating in meetings with the project leader
5. Completing a research log and structured reflections
6. Preparing conference proposals and presentations

Hybrid

Dr. Marrielle Myers, mmyers22@kennesaw.edu