Academic Support, Career Training, and Professional Development to Improve Interdisciplinary Graduate Education for the Next Generation of Computational Scientists and Engineers

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This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, and engineers by supporting the recruitment, retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at San Diego State University (SDSU), a four-year Hispanic-serving institution. Over its 5-year duration, this project will provide two years of scholarship support ($10,000/year) to 30 graduate students who are pursing degrees in Computational Science, Engineering Sciences (Civil, Mechanical, Aerospace, Structural, Electrical and Biological), Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Geology and Biology. The project will also enable curricular improvements aimed at improving student development and engagement in interdisciplinary research teams. In particular, the principal investigators will use the educational programs and research infrastructure of the SDSU Computational Science Research Center to explore how students develop expertise and establish their identities as interdisciplinary scientists. The proposed project will generate new knowledge to advance the understanding of how to effectively train and support graduate students to facilitate development of interdisciplinary skills, experience, and identities while helping students overcome common barriers. The cornerstone of the project is to establish a cohort of graduate students in computational science and engineering and create a community of practice to explore, understand, and overcome the challenges faced by early career scientists entering interdisciplinary research. STEM education research has demonstrated the effectiveness of strategies to help students develop discipline-specific skills and science identities. However, less is known about how to optimally facilitate the career and identity development of interdisciplinary computational scientists. Through mentoring, professional development seminars, and activities for early career exploration, scholars will interact with renowned interdisciplinary researchers invited from industry, academia, and national research labs to learn about the current and emerging opportunities and challenges in interdisciplinary research. With the help of mentors, the scholars will create Individual Development Plans outlining their career goals for advancing as interdisciplinary scientists/engineers and steps and timelines toward achieving those goals. The resulting community of practice will enable the project to investigate how computational scientists develop identities as interdisciplinary scientists, and to devise tools and metrics to assess students during their formative development. The project will also advance the understanding of barriers and supports for the development of diverse students' career paths. Moreover, it will enable exploration of how mentoring and individual development plans support retention and degree attainment. The project will be evaluated by employing outcome mapping and developmental evaluation approaches using information from training assessments, participant reports, and institutional data. Results of the project will be made available by conference papers/presentation, workshops, webinars, and papers in peer-reviewed journals. Through dissemination of findings, the project plans to increase broader participation of education researchers in discussions on training interdisciplinary scientists and engineers for the future workforce. 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.