Building Capacity: Advancing Student Success in Undergraduate Engineering and Computer Science

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The Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program (HSI Program) aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge about how to achieve these aims. This project at California State University-Fullerton will advance the aims of the HSI Program by increasing retention and graduation rates in computer science and engineering and reducing high repetition rates in lower-division STEM courses. Many students encounter challenges unique to their cultural or economic background, such as competing financial responsibilities and family commitments. These challenges can decrease students' capacity to achieve their potential level of performance in college. This project seeks to generate new knowledge about the role of social support mechanisms in helping students overcome these challenges. To this end, the project aims to integrate sociocultural practices, establish strong student-faculty rapport, and involve students in intellectually stimulating, personally relevant learning experiences, and hands-on research experiences in lower-division bottleneck STEM courses. By increasing retention and graduation rates, HSIs such as California State University-Fullerton have a potential to help fill critical gaps and broaden participation in the US STEM workforce.This project aims to develop contextualized, replicable learning modules; improve curricula and pedagogical approaches; provide faculty development and support; establish effective family and community engagement; and cultivate engaging faculty-student interactions. The learning modules may help researchers and educators in other higher education institutions, including HSIs, to adopt and enhance student learning in lower-division STEM courses. Involving students' families in STEM enrichment activities is predicted to create an enduring awareness in the community, with the potential to motivate future generations of students to pursue STEM careers. Both quantitative and qualitative research data will be collected and will include student outcomes and personal, social, cognitive, and contextual factors that may influence these outcomes. Anticipated student benefits from the project include improved morale, self-efficacy, persistence, and improvement in career-readiness skills, which are essential for the next-generation of scientists and engineers who will sustain the global competitiveness of the US economy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.