Supporting Low-Income Students for Success in STEM Careers

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With funding from the NSF Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) program, this project will support high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at West Texas A&M University. The project will address the need to recruit, retain, and graduate students in STEM fields, including biology, chemistry, and physics. This project will provide scholarships to two cohorts of 15-students (30 total) who meet scholarship requirements that include first year student status, SAT/ACT scores, majoring in a target STEM field, high school rank, an academic recommendation letter, and a scored essay. Student support activities include peer mentoring, faculty mentoring, relational coaching, career skill development, and leadership training. This project will also support a redesign of six first-year courses in chemistry, biology, and physics, with the goal of increasing student success in these gateway courses. It is expected that participation in program activities will help prepare and encourage the Scholars to enter STEM careers or graduate programs following graduation.The project has four objectives centered on retention, success in gateway courses, student engagement, and graduation. The first objective is to increase first to second semester and first to second year retention rates of low-income, academically-talented students in targeted STEM fields by 10% by 2024. The second objective is to increase student success in gateway courses. The third objective is to increase low income academically talented student graduation rates by 10% by 2024. The fourth objective is to increase student engagement and participation in High Impact Practices. Student engagement will be assessed with the National Survey on Student Engagement. This project will use evidence-based practices in mentoring, non-cognitive and leadership skill development, and course redesign to attain these objectives. Intellectual contributions include evaluating the extent to which the combined effect of project interventions affect scholars in areas including first-year/senior engagement, retention, graduation, senior participation in high impact practices, as well as examining the correlation between student engagement and retention. Results of this project will be disseminated to the Texas A&M System using the System website, and nationally via scientific conferences and articles in chemistry, physics, and biology journals.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.