Graduate Student Scholarships to Advance Community Engaged Solutions to the Grand Challenge of Managing Nitrogen

该项目将通过支持南佛罗里达大学(USF)有经济需求的高成就、低收入学生的留校和毕业，为国家对受过良好教育的科学家、数学家、工程师和技术人员的需求做出贡献。USF是一所大型的、城市的、社区参与的公立大学，为不同的学生群体提供STEM教育。在为期5年的时间里，该项目将为52名攻读环境工程、地球科学和生物学硕士学位的学生提供95个年度奖学金。学生将获得1.5至2年的奖学金。该项目旨在通过将奖学金与重要的支持活动联系起来，包括指导、研究经验、社区参与以及参与特定学科的会议和研讨会，提高学生在STEM领域的坚持性。学者将被指派教师导师和学术顾问，他们将监督学生参与项目活动，并确保学者正在实现重要的过渡联系。该项目还将支持学者和校友之间以及他们所在群体中的学者之间的重要非正式互动，以改善留住学生、学生融合和专业网络。具有主要意义的是，该项目将加强将地球科学、生物学和工程学联系起来的跨学科培训，以了解和共同设计环境氮污染的解决方案，同时向学者传授让当地受影响社区参与其专业工作的重要性。由于USF的学生人数很少，而且收到了大量来自经济条件有限的学生的研究生申请，该项目有可能扩大STEM领域的参与，并增进对指导、劳动力发展和过渡联系如何促进这一学生群体的留住和毕业的理解。该项目的总体目标是增加低收入、高成就、有经济需求的研究生的STEM学位完成情况。三个主要目标将指导项目团队。首先，通过提供广泛的课程和联合课程机会、团队建设活动和专业发展举措，为研究生为STEM就业做好准备。第二，培养跨学科解决问题的能力、劳动力准备和职业社会化。第三，分析在这个项目中实施的关于招聘、留住、学生成功、学业和职业道路以及学位获得的活动的有效性。学生在STEM领域的坚持性通常被理解为受到过渡障碍的不利影响。然而，可以通过提供有针对性的干预的强有力的指导，通过激发人们对STEM的兴趣的专业发展活动和研究经验，以及通过使学生在专业上适应其学科领域并使他们保持文化特性的倡议和文化财富来加强这一点。然而，关于这些因素如何影响研究生学位课程中的低收入家庭学生，人们知之甚少。因此，该项目将调查旨在加强指导关系、专业发展和过渡联系的活动的有效性，以提高研究生的成功并过渡到STEM职业道路。这项调查将揭示成功的学生(GPA高、坚持不懈、参与会议、完成学位和毕业后就业)以及报告成就感的学生是否也报告了以各种形式的资本衡量的高水平文化财富。它还将确定具体的指导、劳动力发展和过渡联系活动，这些活动与学生的实际指标和感知的成功感受相对应。该项目有可能促进对广泛的活动范围和文化属性如何促进STEM研究生教育的持久性的理解。本项目将通过形成性和终结性方法进行评估，这些方法使用通过与教师导师和学生进行访谈和调查获得的信息。这一项目的结果将通过在参与的学术单位以及美国联邦的教育和社区外展办公室的技术和大众传播中公布，目标受众包括其他高等教育机构和该地区的公共、专业和学术组织。该项目由NSF的科学、技术、工程和数学奖学金项目资助，该项目旨在增加在STEM领域获得学位的低收入学术天才学生的数量。它还旨在改善未来STEM工作者的教育，并产生关于低收入学生的学业成功、留住、转移、毕业和学术/职业道路的知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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 at the University of South Florida (USF). USF is a large, urban, community-engaged public university that provides STEM education to a diverse student body. Over its 5-year duration, this project will fund 95 annual scholarships to 52 students who are pursuing master's degrees in environmental engineering, geosciences, and biology. Students will receive 1.5- to 2-year scholarships. The project aims to increase student persistence in STEM fields by linking scholarships with important supporting activities including mentoring, research experiences, community engagement, and participation in discipline-specific conferences and workshops. Scholars will be assigned faculty mentors and academic advisors, who will supervise student participation in project activities and assure that scholars are achieving important transition connections. The project will also support significant informal interactions between scholars and alumni, and among scholars within their cohorts, to improve retention, student integration, and professional networking. Of principal significance, this project will enhance interdisciplinary training that links geosciences, biology, and engineering to understand and co-design solutions to nitrogen pollution of the environment, while teaching scholars the importance of engaging local affected communities in their professional work. Because USF has a high population of underrepresented students and receives a large number of graduate applications from students of limited means, this project has the potential to broaden participation in STEM fields and to advance understanding of how mentoring, workforce development, and transition connections promote the retention and graduation of this student population.The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving graduate students with demonstrated financial need. Three principle objectives will guide the project team. First, to prepare graduate students for STEM employment by providing a broad scope of curricular and co-curricular opportunities, team-building activities, and professional development initiatives. Second, to foster capacity for interdisciplinary problem solving, workforce readiness, and professional socialization. Third, to analyze the effectiveness of activities implemented in this project on recruitment, retention, student success, academic and career pathways, and degree attainment. Student persistence in STEM fields is generally understood to be adversely affected by transition barriers. Yet it can be bolstered through strong mentoring that provides focused interventions, through professional development activities and research experiences that stimulate interest in STEM, and through initiatives and cultural wealth that professionally socialize students to their disciplinary areas while allowing them to maintain cultural identities. However, little is known about how these factors affect low-income students in graduate degree programs. Accordingly, this project will investigate the effectiveness of activities designed to strengthen mentoring relationships, professional development, and transition connections for improving graduate students' success and transitions into STEM career pathways. This investigation will reveal whether students who succeed (high GPAs, persistence, conference participation, degree completion, post-graduation placement) and who report feelings of accomplishment, also report high levels of cultural wealth, measured as various forms of capital. It will also identify specific mentoring, workforce-development, and transition-connection activities that correspond with actual indicators and perceived feelings of student success. This project has the potential to advance understanding of how a broad scope of activities and cultural attributes promote persistence in STEM graduate education. This project will be evaluated with formative and summative approaches that use information acquired through interviews and surveys with faculty mentors and students. Results of this project will be made available by publicizing the findings in both technical and popular communications from the participating academic units and from the education- and community-outreach offices of USF that target audiences such as other institutions of higher education, and the region's public, professional, and scholarly organizations. 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.