“Lighting the Pathway to Faculty Careers for Natives in STEM,” a bold, innovative, NSF-funded project to address the persistent underrepresentation of Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawai’ians in STEM faculty positions at US colleges and universities, is now in its third year. This five-year pilot project utilizes the nationwide network of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) to recruit scholars, including undergraduate and graduate students and postdocs, who aspire to become college and university professors in the STEM fields. Currently there are 79 active Pathways Scholars, 14 of whom are in Chemistry, Biochemistry, or Chemical Engineering. Each Scholar is assigned to a STEM faculty mentor. Through regular conversations one-on-one with mentors and through webinars and conferences, Pathways Scholars receive guidance and encouragement in career development, including participation in summer research internships and writing graduate and postdoctoral fellowship applications. Short-term goals of the project are to help students to persist and succeed in their chosen academic programs and research efforts, to continue on to the next step on the path to a faculty position, and to build an inter-generational network of Indigenous People in the STEM academic world. The long-term goal is to increase the number of Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawai’ian faculty members in STEM fields in higher education. The Pathways project has provided a sense of community to Scholars, many of whom are the only Indigenous person in their respective academic programs. Examples of contributions to science and to Native tribes and communities by Pathways Scholars will be described. Supported by NSF-DBI-1444853.

Pathways to faculty careers: Contributions of native scholars to the scientific and indigenous communities

254th National Meeting (2017)

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