Current Winners
2024-2025
Mini-Grant Title: Women in STEM Awareness for Underserved High School
Project Coordinator: Derek O’Connor
Department: Office of Economic Department
Project Summary: The Office of Economic Development aims to increase awareness of STEM disciplines for minority and economically disadvantaged female students from underserved schools. Via our two Centers of Excellence, along with on-campus and industry partners, we will develop a four-visit program for Longwood High School female students to participate in expert-led workshops in STEM-focused, emerging fields with educational pathways and future applied workforce needs. A cohort of 20 students will come to SBU for four, five-hour workshops next school year. Each visit will provide an introduction to content, led by a SBU or industry facilitator, faculty mentorship, hands-on activities to provide understanding of tangible outputs, and insight into a day-in-the-life of a STEM professional. Connections to academic units, student groups, and departments will be made to bring awareness about continuing their STEM journey at SBU.
The four themes of the workshops will be energy engineering, healthcare, AI/UX, and a career strategy lab. Energy, led by the NYPA Environmental Justice Office, will have students map transmission lines throughout New York, while building a mock wind turbine. Healthcare, led by the School of Health Professions, will feature a population health data challenge. In visit three, an AI/UX digital product designer will guide the students in the storyboarding of a web application’s development. The Alda Center-led Career Strategy Lab will have the students summarizing their findings, activities, and learnings, and teach them how to communicate such to faculty, industry professionals, and their teachers, while learning key resume tools such as LinkedIn.
Mini-Grant Title: Breaking Barriers in Clinical Setting: Using Simulations for Microaggression and Bias
Training
Project Coordinator: James Pierre-Glaude
Department: School of Health Professions / Physical Therapy
Project Summary: Identification and recognition of microaggressions has been seldom broached within health professions curricula. By not providing students with information on resources, support services, and opportunities to explore their options when encountering microaggressive behavior diminishes their capacity to successfully navigate through their current and future clinical experiences. To address these challenges, the School of Health Professions (SHP) plan to develop and present a series of student clinical workshops. The workshops provide education, training/resources pertaining to the recognition & management of microaggressions in the clinical setting to SHP students. The didactic portion of the workshop will provide current working definitions with examples of DEISJ terms and concepts. The focus of this workshop is to provide interactive scenarios based on real world incidents using standardized scenarios.
Mini-Grant Title: Society for Women in Marine Sciences (SWMS) Symposium
Project Coordinator: Tara Rider
Department: School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences - Marine Science Division
Project Summary: In November of 2024, Stony Brook University’s chapter of the Society for Women in Marine Science (SWMS) will be hosting the national SWMS symposium. The mission of SWMS is to increase the visibility of women marine scientists, create a space for women in the field to network, and provide for professional development at all career levels. SWMS’ annual symposia have evolved from women in science presenting their research into a forum for small-group discussions on specific topics relevant to the daily lives of its members. The goal of our 2-day symposium is to connect attendees with current and future marine & environmental science leaders, gain crucial career advice & mentorship, and learn from the best in scientific communication to improve applied skills.
Mini-Grant TItle: Breaking Barriers in Healthcare: Providing Patient Experience Opportunities for Underrepresented
Students
Project Coordinator: Smita Heslin
Department: Emergency Medicine, Stony Brook Medicine
Project Summary: The goal of our program is to provide students with patient interaction opportunities and exposure to healthcare professions. The ED Patient Experience Internship is a collaborative effort between the SBU Career Center, SBU ED physicians and nurses, and Stony Brook Medicine’s Patient Experience team. We developed the internship for students to learn about patient experience, engage with healthcare professionals, and interact directly with patients. This mini-grant will enable us to expand the internship program to include many underrepresented students in healthcare, and it will also cover the cost of background checks for a significant number of participants.
Mini-Grant Title: Black Men in White Coats Community Outreach and Interaction Initiative
Project Coordinator: Wilfred H. Farquharson IV
Department: Psychiatry and Behavioral Health
Project Summary: There is a lack of diversity in the healthcare field, with fewer Black Men enrolling in medical school in 2014 than in 1978 and many schools admitting classes staggered to as low as 2%, Stony Brook historically being one of them. The Black Men in White Coats (BMWC) local chapter plans to address the issue by going into the community and recruiting elementary and secondary (K-12) students to join the healthcare industry. Traditionally, community outreach has involved medical students serving as panelists. To capture the attention and inspire young minds, it is imperative to have an interactive component where K-12 learners can not only meet medical students that look, walk, and dress like them, but can also expose them to health-related procedures. This grant funding will afford medical students the opportunity to connect with the community and provide interactive activities needed to engage a variety of learners.
Mini-Grant Title: Cirque Kalabante’s Afrique en Cirque
Project Coordinator: Daria Carioscia
Department: Staller Center for the Arts - Advancement
Project Summary: On Saturday, November 9th, Cirque Kalabante will be performing at the Staller Center for the Arts with a public performance in the Main Stage theatre in the evening. The Presidential Mini-Grant will allow the Staller Center to expand on the opportunity of having this incredibly talented group of artists share their culture and brilliance with the SBU students at large. Cirque Kalabanté’s mission is to promote the artistic traditions of West Africa and facilitate a better understanding of Guinean culture using his performances as a form of cultural exchange. The show interweaves acrobatics, storytelling, music, and dance representative of Guinean culture to share the beauty, youth and artistry of his upbringing in an accessible way. The priority use for the funding from this Mini-Grant will go toward covering the artist fee and additional marketing cost for a pre-performance workshop and Q&A with members of Cirque Kalabanté as we feature a talk back and partner with Stony Brook University’s Black World Student Group. The grant funding will also go toward complimentary tickets for SBU students to experience the evening show at no charge.
Mini-Grant Title: Interdisciplinary Research Experience for Educational Opportunity Program Students
Project Coordinator: Richard Tomczak
Department: Undergraduate Education
Project Summary: This first-year seminar invites guest speakers to work with students enrolled in The Educational Opportunity Program (EOP). The purpose of EOP is to fulfill New York State’s commitment to provide access to higher education for economically disadvantaged students who possess the potential to succeed in college, but whose academic preparation in high school has not fully prepared them to pursue college education successfully. In addition, students from high needs school districts are not sufficiently exposed to STEM fields and research in STEMs nor the complexities of social behavioral sciences and the humanities. This has resulted in a lack of inclusion in these areas. This seminar seeks to rectify a persistent gap in faculty engagement: connecting underrepresented students from financially disadvantaged backgrounds with experts across disciplines in their first year.
Mini-Grant Title: Community of Mentorship to Empower Women in STEM
Project Coordinator: Luis Colon
Department: CELT - Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching
Project Summary: Our program aims to tackle the significant underrepresentation and lack of structured support for women, especially underrepresented groups in STEM. Despite governmental initiatives and institutional efforts, underrepresented women graduating from STEM careers does not exceed 30% (Nkrumah, 2022). Research asserts that STEM programs in higher education commonly nurture an environment that excludes underrepresented women; have a lack of understanding of their unique challenges; and assume underrepresented women lack academic preparation to succeed in the field (Ortiz-Martinez et al., 2023). Equitable approaches in higher education, beyond peer-to-peer mentoring, are essential for fostering community and support in STEM and have yet to be explored sufficiently.
Our goal is to establish an inclusive mentoring initiative addressing challenges specifically affecting women and underrepresented groups in STEM, specifically graduate students, aiming to enhance their career goals and work-life balance.
Mini-Grant Title: Gateway to Diversity and Inclusion: Experience the Language of Other
Project Coordinator: Jiwon Hwang
Department: Asian and Asian American Studies
Project Summary: In today's global landscape, English serves as the hegemonic language because of its status as a lingua franca, leading to instances where non-native English speakers experience linguistic discrimination. This harms inclusiveness and equality across various societal domains, including our own campus. The pandemic further exacerbated this issue, as Asians faced increased discrimination. In this context, the teaching of Asian languages emerges as a pivotal tool to counter this problem. By learning and using these languages, even partially, individuals can gain direct access to the mind, emotion, and cultures of those who are subjected to linguistic discrimination. Language learning can be instrumental in fostering intercultural communicators. The first goal of our initiative is to engage students who have no experience with Asian language/culture into one-day Asian language open classes to expand their linguistic and cultural horizons and to cultivate a more inclusive and harmonious campus culture. The second goal is to enrich language instructors’ teaching by integrating critical language pedagogy with a strong emphasis on DEI topics. This approach is to transform language classrooms into dynamic forums for critical discussion and reflection, thus empowering language learners with intercultural competence necessary to respond to today’s linguistic and cultural complexities.
Mini-Grant Title: CARE Seminar
Project Coordinator: Giselle Gerardi
Department: School of Nursing
Project Summary: The School of Nursing (SON) is launching the dynamic CARE (Cultivating Awareness, Respect, and Equity) seminar program, funded by the Presidential Mini-Grant Award. This initiative aims to educate students, faculty, and staff at the SON about DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging) and address the perinatal-neonatal health disparity crisis in the United States. While perinatal and neonatal healthcare is a specialized field within nursing, its impact extends across the entire lifespan. Notable keynote speakers will share their insights, enriching the experience for attendees. The program will be accessible through both in-person and recorded sessions, ensuring engagement from all SON members.
Mini-Grant Title: Promoting LGBTQ+
Project Coordinator: Patricia Swanson
Department: Prosthodontics & Digital Technology
Project Summary: TBD