Programs designed to broaden participation in science are often deemed “successful” based on quantitative evidence such as student participation rates, retention, and persistence. These numbers alone only explain that a program met its goals; they seldom critically explain how, specifically, the program achieved its success. To address this gap, we studied students’ perspectives about and experiences with the Ecological Society of America's award‐winning education and diversity mentoring program, Strategies for Ecology Education, Diversity and Sustainability (SEEDS). The persistence rate in ecology by SEEDS participants is three times greater than the national average, but the numbers alone do not explain the program's impact. We explored the reasons why this program has been so successful by gathering qualitative data as direct evidence explaining how SEEDS influenced participants’ decisions to study science and pursue science careers, and the resulting integration into a scientific community. We coded open‐ended survey responses from SEEDS alumni against a social influence theoretical framework that proposes three dominant processes that predict students’ integration into a scientific community: scientific self‐efficacy, scientific identity, and shared values with the scientific community. We not only found emergent evidence for all three processes, but we also gained a deeper understanding of how—in participants’ own words—SEEDS achieves its success. Specifically, SEEDS successfully welcomes students into a science community by (1) providing both breadth and depth of programming that offers flexible, multilayered approaches to developing self‐efficacy to fit the needs of diverse students, (2) enabling participants to integrate a science identity into other preexisting identities, and (3) implementing programming that intentionally helps participants to consciously connect their values with those of their communities.

Using large public datasets in the undergraduate ecology classroom E cology and environmental sciences are in the midst of an "ecoinformatics" revolution, including real-time data streams from sensor networks, remote-sensing program data, and dataset archives (Michener and Jones 2012). These data are creating unprecedented opportunities to investigate environmental questions at regional, continental, and global scales (Peters 2010). However, many instructors and students are ill-prepared to engage in data-intensive, large-scale research (Hernandez et al. 2012; Strasser and Hampton 2012). The skills needed to engage in such research include how to (1) formulate and test hypotheses involving multiple factors and at large spatial or temporal scales; (2) use efficient methods for locating and retrieving data; (3) synthesize diverse data sources; (4) critically evaluate data quality; (5) manage and manipulate large datasets; and (6) use ethical practices in acquiring data and crediting data authors (Michener and Jones 2012). In 2009, the Ecological Society of America (ESA), the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), and the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) sponsored a distributed seminar entitled Engaging Undergraduate Students in Ecological Investigations Using Large, Public Datasets (https://groups. nceas.ucsb.edu/big-data/front-page). Over a 2-year period our team-faculty from five colleges (including historically black, tribal, and primarily undergraduate institutions) and colleagues from the three sponsoring organizationsworked together to develop, implement, assess, and disseminate classroom exercises using publicly available ecological datasets. Our objectives were to create exercises that, by working with real data, enhance students' ecological knowledge and critical thinking skills, engage students in the synthesis of ecological knowledge, and instill in students an understanding of the value of publicly available archived data. We also intended these exercises to introduce 21st-century "ecoinformatics" skills in data mining, processing, and analysis, and to be of practical use for undergraduate institutions and with any population of undergraduate ecology or introductory biology students.

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The goal of this project was to determine the impact of supplementing a concurrent enrollment (CE; also called dual enrollment) nonmajors biology course with online mentoring from professional scientists via the PlantingScience (PS) program (http://plantingscience.org). Student attitudes and motivation toward science were measured using the Test of Science-Related Attitudes (TOSRA) questionnaire as well as open-ended questions. Students in both the experimental group (CE biology course supplemented with PS) and the control group (CE biology course with no PS supplement) were surveyed during two academic years (2015–2017). The impact of PlantingScience on students’ attitudes toward science is discussed.