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STEM专业的低收入低年级和高年级学生提供奖学金和基于队列的培训和支持，这些学生还注册了环境研究专业或证书。通过STEM教职员工每周一次的研讨会，CESP将学生与他们的同龄人联系起来，将他们与CESP毕业生网络联系起来，并在社区中为他们提供途径，让他们将对环境的热情与对服务的承诺联系起来。为了确定潜在的申请者，我们与我们的学生资助办公室、CESP的现有学生以及更广泛的校园社区合作。通过校园奖学金门户网站，我们可以在秋季和春季收到申请。这些被录取的人在每周研讨会上组成了一个团队(队列)，随着时间的推移，这个团队承担着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来提高学生在STEM学科中的留存率，使他们能够在不同的团队中工作，以应对他们所在社区面临的现实世界挑战。虽然现有研究已经表明，基于队列的项目可以提高STEM学科中的学生留存率，但很少或根本没有研究评估跨学科STEM队列(如CESP中的STEM队列)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不同的队列设计，并确定我们的CESP学生和一组同样注册了环境研究但没有参加CESP的STEM学生之间是否存在这些重要的教育结果不同。我们的分析结果将通过期刊文章和公众宣传，在会议上与机构同行分享，并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.