Learning Communities for STEM Academic Achievement (LCSAA) will focus on increasing the participation of African American students in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) through strategies to improve teaching and learning at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), which enroll approximately 13 percent and graduate approximately 23 percent of African American students, despite comprising only about 3 percent of all institutions of higher education.

These institutions, therefore, offer an interesting and exciting set of laboratories for addressing the issue of academic achievement in STEM fields, where African American students nationally have underachieved. The proposed project will connect HBCUs to the national “Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” community centered around the work of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Inter-institutional virtual faculty learning communities will select and pilot strategies for improving teaching and learning in their individual classrooms.