Together for the Planet 2.0: Community Environmental Scholars Program

社区环境学者计划（CESP）将为至少36名低收入的大三和大四学生提供奖学金和基于队列的培训和支持，这些学生是STEM专业的学生，也参加了环境研究专业或证书。通过STEM教师每周一次的研讨会，CESP将学生与同龄人联系起来，将他们与CESP毕业生网络联系起来，并为他们提供社区途径，将他们对环境的热情与对服务的承诺联系起来。为了识别潜在的申请人，我们与我们的学生资助办公室，目前的CESP学生，以及更广泛的校园社区。通过校园奖学金门户网站，我们收到申请秋季和春季。 那些被录取的人在每周的研讨会上组成一个团队（队列），随着时间的推移，他们将承担越来越复杂的领导角色。最终，我们的目标是通过提供相关的科学内容，建立信心的机会和增强的职业技能，使他们能够在不同的团队中工作，以解决他们所生活的社区面临的现实挑战，从而提高学生在STEM学科中的保留率。虽然现有的研究已经表明，基于队列的计划可以提高学生在STEM学科中的保留率，很少或没有研究评估跨学科STEM群体（如CESP中的那些）是否可以提高学生的表现，保留率和毕业率。我们将使用统计比较来调查我们的多样化队列设计，并确定这些重要的教育成果是否在我们的CESP学生和STEM学生的比较组之间存在差异，这些学生也参加了环境研究，但没有参加CESP。我们的分析结果将在会议上与机构同行分享，并通过期刊文章和公共宣传与更广泛的社区分享。

The Community Environmental Scholars Program (CESP) will provide scholarships and cohort-based training and support for at least 36 low-income junior and senior students who are STEM majors and also enrolled in an Environmental Studies major or certificate. Via a weekly seminar taught by STEM faculty members, CESP connects students with their peers, links them to a network of CESP graduates, and provides avenues in the community for them to connect their passion for the environment with a commitment to service. To identify potential applicants, we work with our Office of Student Financial Aid, current CESP students, and the wider campus community. Via a campus scholarship portal, we receive applications fall and spring. Those accepted form a team (cohort) in the weekly seminar that takes on increasingly complex leadership roles over time. Ultimately, our goal is to improve the retention of our students in their STEM disciplines by offering relevant scientific content, opportunities to build confidence, and enhanced career skills that will allow them to work in diverse teams to address the real-world challenges faced the communities in which they live.While existing research already suggests that cohort-based programs improve student retention within STEM disciplines, there is little or no research that evaluates whether interdisciplinary STEM cohorts (such as those in CESP) can improve student performance, retention, and graduation rates. We will use statistical comparisons to investigate our diverse cohort design and determine if these important educational outcomes differ between our CESP students and a comparison group of STEM students who also enrolled in Environmental Studies but who did not participate in CESP. The results of our analysis will be shared with institutional peers at conferences and with the broader community through journal articles and public outreach.