The CIRTL AGEP project (2016-2022) worked to increase the number of Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous (BHI) scholars entering STEM faculty careers, and to improve the academic climate experienced by BHI scholars. The ten participating universities established a Networked Improvement Community (NIC) to affect change within and across institutional partners with a focus on improving scholar experiences and creating more inclusive environments for all graduate students and postdocs, especially BHI scholars.

NICs are structured collaborations intended to accelerate innovation. They are collaborative and utilize innovative efforts to address systemic, complex, and entrenched issues. In this toolkit, those considering a NIC structure to advance BHI scholars into the professoriate can consider these tools as a whole.

The toolkit is also structured for campuses to adapt and adopt individual tools independent of doing so within a NIC framework.

Establishing & Maintaining a Network Improvement CommunityAffecting Change Within and Across Institutional Partners (Michigan State University)

Recommendations About an Inclusive NIC (All Institutions)
Organizational Change ProcessesNetwork Mapping: Identifying and Expanding Institutional Collaborations, Resources, and Impact (The University of Texas at Arlington & University at Buffalo, State University of New York)

Emergent Change: Mini Seed Grants (Northwestern University & Boston University)
Faculty Mindsets and PracticesInstitutional Capacity Building: Train-the-Trainer Inclusion Workshops (Iowa State University)

Systemic Change: Influencing in Culture & Mindsets through Holistic Admissions Interventions (University of Georgia and University of Maryland, College Park)
Future Faculty DevelopmentCohort-based Learning Community: NextGen Professors Program (Cornell University)

Mentoring Micro-Commitments: Faculty Power Mentors (Cornell University)
Community BuildingLarge and Small Group Mentoring: STEM PhD Peer Mentoring Program (Howard University)

Graduate College Community Chats for BHI Students (Iowa State University)
Collage of photos of CIRTL AGEP collaborators

We acknowledge the support of NSF grants numbers 1647104, 1646810, 1646977, 1647094, 1647119, 1646869, 1647146, 1647121, 1647021, and 1647181. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this work are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.