Enhancing Undergraduate Success in Physics

佛罗里达国际大学是一所位于佛罗里达州迈阿密的城市公立大学，拥有53,000多名学生，是美国第七大大学。这所大学为大量经济困难的学生提供服务，近50%的本科生获得经济援助，其中近60%的受助人来自年收入低于3万美元的家庭。它也是一所西班牙裔服务机构，是美国授予西班牙裔学生最多的学士学位和硕士学位。仅物理系就有150多个本科专业，是西班牙裔学生获得物理学学士学位最多的国家之一。为了确保他们及时和成功地完成学位，该项目将为物理学专业的本科生提供奖学金，并将提供一个独特的机会，以增加历史上代表性不足的物理学群体的成功，并加深对支持这些群体的实践的理解。该项目还将影响整个物理系，因为招聘活动将聘请教授物理入门课程的教师，该项目将定期向系里的教师报告结果。通过期刊出版物和会议报告，将研究结果更广泛地传播到大学社区，以及全国范围内，将为如何最好地支持历史上代表性不足的物理学群体提供重要见解。此计划将为两组经济上有需要但在学术上有才华的学生提供可续期的奖学金，最高可达$10,000。学生群体将被整合到一个学术学习社区，该社区将提供必要的学术和社会支持，以促进及时完成本科学位。参与者将参加一个学分研讨会，为科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）职业和研究生院做准备，并接受项目团队的指导。作为学术课程的补充，他们还将参加一系列其他活动，进一步融入学习社区。该项目的招募将通过多种渠道进行，包括大学的物理入门课程、物理和天文学学生团体、直接电子邮件和网络展示。监测将在整个项目中持续进行，评估部分将通过毕业、研究生院录取率和持续性代理（包括Rovai的社区规模感）来检查持久性。

Florida International University is an urban public university in Miami, Florida with over 53,000 students, the seventh largest university in the country. The university serves a large population of economically disadvantaged students as nearly 50% of all undergraduate students receive financial aid and nearly 60% of those recipients come from families with annual household incomes under $30,000. It is also a Hispanic-Serving Institution and awards the most baccalaureate and master's degrees to Hispanic students in the country.. The Physics Department alone has over 150 undergraduate majors and is one of the country's largest producers of Physics baccalaureate degrees awarded to Hispanic students. To ensure their timely and successful degree completion, this project will offer scholarships to undergraduate physics majors and will provide a unique opportunity to increase the success of historically underrepresented groups in physics, as well as to develop deeper understanding of practices that support these groups. The project will also impact the physics department as a whole, as recruitment activities will engage faculty teaching the introductory physics courses and the project will regularly report results to the faculty in the department. Broader dissemination of the results to the university community, as well as nationally via journal publications and conference presentations, will provide important insights into how to best support historically underrepresented groups in physics.This project will provide renewable scholarships of up to $10,000 and academic support to two cohorts of financially needy, academically talented students. The student cohorts will be integrated into an academic learning community that will provide the academic and social support necessary to foster timely undergraduate degree completion. Participants will enroll in a one credit seminar to prepare for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers and graduate school as well as receive mentoring from the project team. Complementing their academic program will be a series of other activities to further integrate them into the learning community. Recruitment into the program will be through multiple channels, including introductory physics courses at the university, physics and astronomy student groups, and direct email and web presence. Monitoring will continue throughout the project and an evaluation component will examine persistence through graduation, graduate school acceptance rates, and persistence proxies including Rovai's Sense of Community Scale.