Supporting the Success of STEM Students Through Scholarships and Structured Professional Development

通过奖学金和结构化专业发展支持 STEM 学生的成功

• 批准号: 1930525
• 负责人: Thomas Ndolo
• 金额: $ 64.94万
• 依托单位: South Texas College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-01-01 至 2024-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1930525&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Supporting; Success; STEM; Students; Through

This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians. It will do so by supporting the retention and graduation of students at South Texas College, a two-year Hispanic Serving Institution. Over five years, the project will provide scholarships to forty undergraduate students who are pursuing Associate degrees in Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, and/or Physics. The project aims to increase the Scholars’ retention, transfer, and/or graduation by linking scholarships with structured professional development activities. These activities include faculty mentoring, tutoring, undergraduate research experiences, internships, and participation in scientific conferences. Because South Texas College has a high percentage of Hispanic students, this project is likely to broaden participation in STEM fields. In addition, results of the project’s research will produce new knowledge about how to improve the success of STEM students, particularly students at two-year institutions and from backgrounds that are underrepresented in STEM. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. This project aims to: (1) increase student awareness, skills, and sense of community for two sequential cohorts of 20 undergraduate students; (2) improve student retention; and (3) facilitate graduation or transfer of Scholars within the period of this project. Research indicates that financial support in the form of scholarships helps retain students in STEM fields; however, less is known about the impact of structured student professional development on the retention, persistence, transfer and/or graduation of low-income students majoring in a STEM discipline. Additionally, limited data are available regarding the impact of student cohorts on students' sense of belonging, especially on students from the demographic backgrounds represented at South Texas College. Research questions addressed in this project are: (1) To what extent does structured student professional development improve retention, persistence, transfer rates and degree completion of students majoring in a STEM discipline? (2) To what extent does participation in the program increase students' sense of belonging, and motivation to pursue STEM degrees and careers? To address these questions, the project will collect longitudinal data on connectedness, commitment, engagement, and student academic performance. This project will distinguish between the expected positive impact of activities on sense of belonging and student success by comparing data collected from participants to data from a non-cohort control group of STEM students with similar academic backgrounds and demographics. An independent internal evaluator will provide formative and summative evaluation of engagement and academic performance for each of the project's three objectives. Findings will be disseminated at internal professional development conferences, local and state STEM conferences, and through publications in STEM education 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.

该项目将有助于满足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。 它将通过支持南德克萨斯学院学生的保留和毕业来实现这一目标，南德克萨斯学院是一个为期两年的西班牙裔服务机构。在五年内，该项目将提供奖学金给40名正在攻读生物学、化学、计算机科学、工程学、数学和/或物理学副学士学位的本科生。该项目旨在通过将奖学金与结构化的专业发展活动联系起来，增加学者的保留，转移和/或毕业。 这些活动包括教师指导，辅导，本科生的研究经验，实习，并在科学会议的参与。由于南德克萨斯学院有很高比例的西班牙裔学生，这个项目可能会扩大在STEM领域的参与。 此外，该项目的研究结果将产生关于如何提高STEM学生的成功的新知识，特别是两年制院校的学生和来自STEM代表性不足的背景的学生。该项目的总体目标是提高低收入，高成就的本科生与证明财政需要完成STEM学位。该项目旨在：（1）提高学生的意识，技能和社区意识，为两个连续的20名本科生的队列;（2）提高学生的保留率;（3）促进毕业或转移学者在本项目期间。研究表明，以奖学金形式提供的财政支持有助于留住STEM领域的学生;然而，人们对结构化学生专业发展对STEM学科低收入学生的保留，坚持，转移和/或毕业的影响知之甚少。 此外，关于学生群体对学生归属感的影响，特别是对来自南德克萨斯大学人口背景的学生的影响，数据有限。本项目的研究问题是：（1）结构化的学生专业发展在多大程度上提高了STEM学科学生的保留率，持续性，转移率和学位完成率？(2)参与该计划在多大程度上增加了学生的归属感，以及追求STEM学位和职业的动力？为了解决这些问题，该项目将收集有关连通性，承诺，参与和学生学业成绩的纵向数据。该项目将通过比较从参与者收集的数据与来自具有相似学术背景和人口统计学特征的STEM学生的非队列对照组的数据，区分活动对归属感和学生成功的预期积极影响。一名独立的内部评估员将对项目的三个目标中的每一个目标的参与和学业成绩进行形成性和总结性评估。调查结果将在内部专业发展会议，地方和州STEM会议上传播，并通过STEM教育期刊上的出版物传播。该项目由NSF的科学，技术，工程和数学奖学金计划资助，该计划旨在增加低收入学术人才的数量，这些学生表现出经济需求，并获得STEM领域的学位。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术成功，保留，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价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。