Building Capacity: City College of New York STEM Communities

改善本科STEM教育：西班牙裔服务机构计划（HSI计划）旨在加强本科STEM教育并建立HSI的能力。HSI计划支持的项目也将产生关于如何实现这些目标的新知识。 纽约的这个项目将通过建立一个专门为学生进入，继续或转入STEM专业而设计的社交媒体平台来推进HSI计划的目标。学生从高中过渡到大学，从两年制机构到四年制机构，或从低年级到高年级课程面临学术和后勤挑战。这些挑战包括在新环境中导航，学习注册和其他校园活动的机制，以及处理课程中严格性和节奏的变化。这些挑战在城市机构可能会被放大，在那里，通勤和在教室外工作会带来更多的障碍。CUNY City College计划通过为进入、继续或转入STEM专业的学生建立一个社交媒体平台来应对这些挑战。该平台将被设计为学术支持、辅导和社交互动的“一站式”场所。该平台的设想也促进网络和互动的学生与有限的时间在校园内，由于通勤或工作的需要。该平台还将成为虚拟辅导的家园，并将列出资源和联系信息（例如经济援助），以将学生与他们在校园中所需的内容联系起来。预计该平台将提高学生在STEM领域的成功率和保留率，从而有助于增加STEM领域的多样性。一个支持社区建设和信息共享干预措施的社会媒体平台可以通过改善城市通勤学校学生获得关键服务的机会，帮助处于关键过渡时期的学生。成功地解决文化冲击问题有望提高这些学生的保留率和毕业率。这一假设将通过创建CUNY City College STEM Communities平台来探索：一个定制的，开源的社交网络平台，旨在增强和扩展CUNY City College为新生，转学生和从低年级过渡到高年级课程的学生提供的外展和支持服务。 CUNY城市学院STEM社区也有望吸引这些学生参与社会和信息互动，这将减轻文化冲击的影响，从而提高保留率和毕业率。CUNY City College STEM Communities有四个目标：1）探索定制构建的社交媒体平台在多大程度上可以建立和扩展学生与同龄人，导师和学生组织的多层次参与机会，以减轻文化冲击; 2）探讨该平台在何种程度上也可以通过动员“亲和团体”来提高学生的教育成就和劳动力准备专注于体验式学习，研究，创业，学生俱乐部和网关类，由近同伴课程连接器支持，在灵活的时间内通过学术支持增强，并由助教和教师支持; 3）通过在线社会归属感干预来提高队列成员的自我效能和内部控制点;以及4）为关于产生和影响校园文化冲击的因素的文献做出贡献，特别是在城市通勤大学，以及通过使用社交媒体来缓解校园文化冲击。这项研究的结果将确定因素，有助于过渡代表性不足的STEM学生的文化冲击，并将探讨社交媒体的有效性，以减轻它。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

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 on how to achieve these aims. This project at the City University of University of New York (CUNY City College) will advance the aims of the HSI Program by building a social media platform designed specifically for students entering, continuing, or transferring into STEM majors. Students transitioning from high school to college, from two-year institutions to four-year institutions, or from lower division to upper division coursework face academic and logistical challenges. These challenges include navigating a new environment, learning the mechanics of registration and other campus activities, and dealing with changes in rigor and pacing in coursework. These challenges can be amplified at urban institutions, where commuting and working outside the classroom present added obstacles. CUNY City College plans to address these challenges by building a social media platform for students entering, continuing, or transferring into STEM majors. The platform will be designed as a "one-stop" location for academic support, tutoring, and social interaction. The platform is envisioned to also promote networking and interaction for students with limited time on campus due to commuting or work needs. The platform will also be a home for virtual tutoring and will list resources and contact information (e.g. financial aid) to connect students with what they need on campus. It is expected that this platform will improve student success and retention in STEM, thus contributing to increasing diversity in STEM fields. A social media platform that supports community-building and information sharing interventions may assist students at critical transitions by improving access to critical services for students who attend urban commuter schools. Successfully addressing culture shock is expected to result in higher retention and graduation rates for these students. This hypothesis will be explored by creating the CUNY City College STEM Communities platform: a custom-built, open-source, social networking platform intended to augment and extend the outreach and support services that CUNY City College offers to incoming students, transfer students, and students transitioning from lower division to upper division coursework. CUNY City College STEM Communities is also expected to draw these students into social and informational interactions that will mitigate the effects of culture shock, resulting in increased retention and graduation rates. CUNY City College STEM Communities has four objectives: 1) to explore the degree to which a custom-constructed social media platform can build and extend student engagement opportunities at multiple levels with peers, mentors, and student organizations to mitigate culture shock; 2) to explore the degree to which that platform can also improve student educational achievement and workforce preparation through the mobilization of "affinity groups" focused on experiential learning, research, entrepreneurship, student clubs, and gateway classes that are supported by near-peer Course Connectors, enhanced by academic support during flexible hours, and buttressed by teaching assistants and faculty; 3) to increase cohort members' self-efficacy and internal locus of control through an online social belonging intervention; and 4) to contribute to the literature on factors producing and affecting campus culture shock, particularly at urban commuter colleges, and its mitigation through the use of social media. The results of this research will identify factors that contribute to the cultural shock in transitioning underrepresented STEM students and will explore the effectiveness of social media to mitigate it.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.