UWM STEM CELL: An integrated approach to improve early college STEM education outcomes

UWM STEM CELL是一个试点项目，旨在解决导致缺乏毅力以及有才华和兴趣的学生离开职业生涯早期本科阶段的科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)专业的教学和社会文化问题。许多有抱负的STEM学生缺乏如何在大学环境中成功运营的文化知识，对STEM职业生涯所需的知识知之甚少，而且学术背景也很欠缺。干细胞将从根本上改变机构文化的方向，从自然减员模式转向注重学生结果的模式，强调STEM的坚持性、学习能力、热情和明智的决策。该项目将支持需要学术支持的学生，提供关于STEM专业和职业选择的个性化指导，并让学生沉浸在实际的、综合的、早期的学术职业经历中，帮助他们了解自己选择的学习领域和职业道路。该项目将通过全面应用一套低成本、高影响力的干预措施来实现其目标，包括在数学、化学和生物课程之间有意识地调整课程界限，实施积极的教育学学习模式，发展一个具有综合学术和社会支持的学习社区，并明确关注相关问题，包括建立一个动态的个人发展计划。这项全面的干预措施将通过随机试验进行严格的评估和测试，干预措施将与评估设计明确地共同计划。这项评估将提供关于这一可扩展、可持续的综合干预措施的有效性的明确信息，因此将与全国的高等教育机构有关。

UWM STEM CELL is a pilot project to address pedagogical and sociocultural issues that contribute to the lack of persistence and the flow of talented and interested students away from science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) majors at the early-career undergraduate level. Many aspirational STEM students lack the cultural knowledge about how to operate successfully in a university setting, have little idea what a STEM career entails, and have academic backgrounds that are deficient. STEM CELL will fundamentally reorient the institutional culture from an attrition model to one that is focused on student outcomes emphasizing STEM persistence, learning, enthusiasm and informed decision making. The project will sustain students in need of academic support, provide individualized guidance regarding STEM major and career choices, and immerse students in practical, integrative, early academic career experiences to help inform their chosen fields of study and career paths. The project will accomplish its goals through the comprehensive application of a suite of low-cost, high-impact interventions, including intentional course alignment across disciplinary boundaries among courses in mathematics, chemistry, and biology, implementation of active learning modes of pedagogy, development of a learning community with integrated academic and social supports, and explicit attention to issues of relevance including the construction of a dynamic individual development plan. This comprehensive intervention will be rigorously evaluated and tested by a randomized trial, with the intervention explicitly co-planned alongside the evaluation design. This evaluation will provide unambiguous information regarding the effectiveness of this scalable, sustainable comprehensive intervention and thus will be relevant to institutions of higher education nationwide.