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INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT
Implicit in earlier discussions of funding inequities is the infrastructure need in those portions of the educational pipeline Hispanic STEM students are more likely to traverse. In addition to the greater likelihood of having inexperienced and out of field teachers in K-12 and of not having higher level math classes available, Hispanic students in poorer school districts will also lack the resources for laboratory sciences.
At the college and university level the underfunding of HSIs suggests a similar disparity in STEM infrastructure, especially in regard to undergraduate research opportunities. At “teaching” universities, lab space is necessarily dedicated to instructional purposes with far more limited opportunities for student and even faculty original research. Repeating classic “labs” is an essential element of pedagogy, but it’s a far cry from genuine laboratory research.
While more adequate funding would assure that the laboratory sciences at HSIs have a carefully selected and up-to-date set of resources for instructional purposes and perhaps some additional laboratory space to support original faculty research, teaching loads often preclude serious research on the part of faculty during the school year. Summer opportunities and collaborations with faculty and researchers at institutions with more resources become especially important. Leveraging these connections for undergraduate research experiences seems an obvious positive byproduct.
In addition to federal support for these infrastructural development, corporate and private support is needed. Better resourced institutions are more likely to have stronger relationships with major potential donors and will ordinarily need to take the lead in these conversations. The benefit for them is a stronger pipeline to a more diverse pool of graduate students and the research benefits of more diverse teams of researchers. The benefits for the HSI should include enhanced research opportunities for their faculty and students and more successful STEM graduates.
