FAST-TRAC: Identifying and Overcoming Barriers to Advanced Degree Attainment for Low Income Engineering Students

塔夫茨大学工程学院的FAST-TRAC项目将招收、准备和支持有学术天赋的低收入本科生通过塔夫茨现有的5年制BS/MS项目完成工程学硕士学位。FAST-TRAC的核心功能将是早期推广、支持学生-研究导师关系、技能培养研讨会和本科生研究经验。行业合作伙伴关系将把学生与他们所在领域的最新挑战联系起来。FAST-TRAC将建立一个全面和可转移的支持框架，为低收入本科生培养适应日益严格的研究生课程、文化和对研究生课程的期望的能力。FAST-TRAC研究部分将对知识库做出重大贡献，了解是什么阻碍和促进代表不足和经济困难的学生进入STEM研究生课程。该项目将描述低收入学生攻读工程学研究生学位的需求、认知和研究能力，并将衡量每个项目组成部分在帮助学生获得理科硕士学位方面的有效性。该项目将使用职业选择和发展的社会认知理论来衡量追求研究生教育或在行业中获得职位的背景支持和障碍。这一测量方法已被广泛用于职业选择研究，并成功地应用于研究STEM学科中性别和种族差异的根源。

The FAST-TRAC program at Tufts University School of Engineering will recruit, prepare, and support academically talented low-income undergraduate students to complete an MS in Engineering through Tufts' existing 5-year BS/MS program. FAST-TRAC's core features will be early outreach, support of the student-research mentor relationship, skill-building workshops, and undergraduate research experiences. Industry partnerships will connect students to current state of the art challenges in their fields. FAST-TRAC will establish a comprehensive and transferrable support framework to prepare low-income undergraduate STEM students for the increased rigor, culture, and expectations of a graduate program.The FAST-TRAC research component will make significant contributions to the knowledge base about what inhibits and facilitates the matriculation of underrepresented and economically disadvantaged students into STEM graduate programs. This program will characterize the needs, perceptions, and research competencies of low-income students pursuing graduate Engineering degrees, and will measure the effectiveness of each program component in helping students achieve the MS degree. The project will measure the contextual supports and barriers to pursuing graduate education or securing a position in industry using the social-cognitive theory of career choice and development. This measure has been extensively used in the study of career choice and successfully applied to examine the roots of gender and ethnic disparities in STEM disciplines.