PDF of Dr. Korpusik's Article | Dr. Korpusik's Reflection
Faculty Learning Communities for STEM Equity
By: Mandy Korpusik
This year I have the honor of working in the Seaver office with Dean Tarleton on the $2.5M HHMI grant “Driving Change: Faculty Mindset Shift and Data Stewardship for Collective Accountability to PEER Student Experiences and Success.” We are creating the inaugural STEM Equity Summer Institute and Faculty Learning Community. Our goal is to build faculty capacity and increase self-efficacy and motivation to bring an equity-centered mindset and student-centered practices to teaching, mentoring/advising, and institutional leadership.
To prepare for the summer institute, we participated in the NSF-funded Inclusive STEM Teaching Project on edX. As I reflect on what I have learned about the concept of identity, as well as how to create a more inclusive classroom environment, one area of growth that stands out to me is assigning inclusive groupwork. At the end of every course, I assign a team project. In most classes, I also assign think-pair-share activities where students briefly work together. However, I have lacked the confidence to properly facilitate group conversations and manage conflict.
This semester, for my 1010 final team projects, I am experimenting with two new strategies—specifying roles for each team member (e.g., manager, secretary), normalizing conflict, and providing communication guidelines (e.g., intent AND impact, “both/and” thinking, beginner’s mindset) presented by Ariane White, Director of TRHT Center Alliance & Ombuds, at an FLC session on restorative practices for classrooms and office hours.
I’m excited to further explore new techniques for increasing inclusivity and for our first summer equity institute to start in May!
Mandy Korpusik
Mandy Korpusik is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Loyola Marymount University. She received her B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering and completed her S.M. and Ph.D. in Computer Science at MIT. Her primary research interests include natural language processing and spoken language understanding for dialogue systems. Mandy used deep learning models to build the Coco Nutritionist application for iOS that allows obesity patients to more easily track the food they eat by speaking naturally. This system was patented, as well as her work at FXPAL using deep learning for purchase intent prediction. She is currently collaborating with eBay on a research project using deep learning to predict customer purchase intent.