Undergraduate Mentors’ Perspectives on Equity-Oriented STEM Outreach
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper explores undergraduate mentors’ perspectives on, and participation in, “Bringing STEM to Life: Work Integrated Learning in Physics” (BSTL), a work-integrated, equity-oriented STEM outreach program administered by the kindergarten to industry (k2i) academy at York University’s Lassonde School of Engineering. To that end, this study brings Feminist Science and Technology Studies and critical pedagogy to bear on a three-phase methodological approach to generating and analyzing qualitative data pertaining to the mentorship component of BSTL. Preliminary findings suggest that (1) undergraduate mentors bring complex STEM motivations, shaped by intersecting marginalized identities, to bear on their mentorship duties; (2) mentors possess nuanced yet occasionally contradictory understandings of STEM, equity, and society; and (3) mentors’ experiences in the BSTL program are variable but positive. These findings suggest that outreach programs can expand their capacity to generate equitable outcomes by actively supporting the creation of STEM counterspaces, foregrounding equity training, and exposing mentors to critical theoretical perspectives on STEM, equity, and society.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.015 | 0.027 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.012 | 0.010 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.011 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".