Developing Undergraduate Students' Science Identity through Scholarships, Teams, and Research

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This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need. It will support students at Texas Woman's University, a Hispanic-serving institution the largest university primarily for women in the United States. Over its five-year duration, this project will provide up to three years of scholarship support to 35 students who are pursuing bachelor's degrees in Biochemistry, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Informatics, or Math. Rather than basing project activities on a deficit model focused on barriers to success, activities will be based on supports to success. In addition to providing Scholarships, the project will engage Scholars in a multidimensional mentoring model that drives co-curricular activities to support student success. The project will also generate new knowledge, intended to not only increase retention and STEM graduation rates locally, but also to inform the higher education community. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion by low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The project seeks to increase STEM engagement, retention, and graduation through three strategies: 1. provide S-STEM scholarships to 15 students annually; 2. provide Scholars with co-curricular supports including living-learning communities, mentoring, and research experiences; and 3. examine factors related to participant science identity and success, and disseminate results to expand the impact of the project activities to institutional communities and beyond. Helping students develop a science identity is a goal of the projects' co-curricular support strategies and, consequently, the research questions focus on how each of these strategies impact students' science identity. Research questions include how each project activity, including scholarships and research experiences, strengthen students' science identity. A mixed-methods, qualitative and quantitative research approach will be used, and data analyzed to identify potential differences in the success of different groups of students. These findings can contribute to equipping institutions of higher education with strategies for assisting and retaining students, including those from groups that have traditionally not had access to or sufficient preparation for STEM programs. The long-term expected outcomes of the project include increased student retention in STEM programs, reduced time to graduation, increased graduation rates, and increased job placement or entry into graduate school. The results from this project will be presented locally and at professional conferences, and submitted for publication in peer reviewed journals. This project is funded by NSF's Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, which seeks to increase the number of low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need who earn degrees in STEM fields. It also aims to improve the education of future STEM workers, and to generate knowledge about academic success, retention, transfer, graduation, and academic/career pathways of low-income students.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.