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PEER Scholar Program - A team of 4-10 PEER identified, upper-level students and their faculty mentor(s) will research, develop/design, and assess specific programming targeted toward the first-year student experience in the Biology department.

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Please enter feedback below.

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In which ways might we create a department culture that is inclusive of all races and ethnicities?

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Wouldn't it be nice if we retained more first-year students through inclusivity?

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1. Develop Steering Committee
2. Research similar programs
3. Get Funding/FTE Release
4. Develop Spring 2022 PEER Scholars Course
5. Recruit Students for Spring 2022 PEER Scholars Course
6. Design and plan implementations for Fall 2022
7. Recruit students for 2022-2023 PEER Scholars Program

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Realizing our vision will take time.  As a first step we are proposing a program that will help us collect the information we need to move forward.

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Facilitate meaningful senior and first year student social and academic interactions

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1.) changes/modifications in curriculum
2.) climate
3.) access

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1brCdAqUFWgwluCqxQiS75-uyO8CgS-ma/view?usp=sharing

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Time: Faculty release, student course credit
Money: Student stipend, Faculty stipend, supply funds
Facilities: Classroom or Zoom space for meeting
Training: Faculty start/completion of DEI certificate program
Administration support: Provost, Center for Teaching and Learning Director, Chief Inclusion Officer

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Steering Committee - subset of faculty (~4) committed to the planning/implementation process

Faculty Instructor - JBF?

PEER Student participants - team of 4-10 students

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1.) Build community
2.) Develop sense of belonging
3.) Create student agency

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Student-driven research program devoted to fostering a sense of belonging in our first year students

PEER students take ownership of the project and develop a sense of autonomy

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Great idea and plan. How will PEERS be selected? We have had issues getting PEERS to self select.

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My only concern is that there might be pressure on your PEERS students to solve the problem.  I think how you message this might be really important to get the right balance of wanting to hear their voices vs asking them to solve the problem

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Great idea having PEER's mentor other PEER's however, using a PEER's only group may serve to further isolate this group, or create silo's of groups that are already isolated. AUgie

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How will participating in this group benefit upper-classmen? Leadership? Monetarily? How will this further their career goals? AUgie

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Good plant and concrete solutions.
I also think you should include students not identified as PEER. As a PEER person, sometimes I feel too much pressure to represent PEER's and it can be a deterrent.

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Nice plan! I like that upper-year students would get credit for taking the course (assuming that credit would be useful for meeting graduation requirements).  I'm confused about whether the course would also have first-year students enrolled, or whether they would only participate in Fall '22 activities designed in Spring '22.
Catherine Kirkpatrick (cakirkpa@umn.edu)

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Not sure if the mentors will also be PEERs, but you may want to look into trainings tailored for the mentors of underrepresented students.

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Really nice job and thoughtful ideas. The idea of having upper class students help determine what is useful for PEER students while getting great is super smart. I really like that you have a very concrete plan and timeline that focuses on one task. I'm a little unclear on exactly what the PEER Scholars will do. This seems like more than a mentor program if they take a course but to what extent to they interact with the first years? If they are going to research, design and assess programming for first year students, who is going to implement those ideas? The faculty or students or both? Thanks for sharing. Rachel Bergerson (bergerson@csp.edu)