Fostering Student Success and Diversity in STEM by Combining Scholarship Support with Mentoring and Research Engagement

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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 at Prairie View A&M University. Prairie View A&M University is an historically black college/university with a reputation of serving the economically disadvantaged and underserved population of Texas. Over its five-year duration, this project will fund four-year scholarships to twenty students who are pursuing bachelor's degrees in Biology, Chemistry, Physics, or Mathematics. This project aims to increase student enrollment, retention, and persistence and improve 4-year graduation rates by linking these scholarships with effective supporting activities, such as cohort-building, undergraduate research experiences, mentoring, graduate school preparation, and participation in discipline-specific conferences. In so doing, the institution is taking a holistic approach to preparing its students for entrance into the workforce as a biologist, chemist, physicist or mathematician. As Prairie View A&M University has a high population of underrepresented students, this project will broaden the participation of underrepresented minorities in STEM fields. Additionally, this project will advance understanding of effective evidence-based strategies and activities that promote student participation and success in STEM. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need at Prairie View A&M University. Three objectives guide the project. First, to increase enrollment in the STEM disciplines of Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics. Second, to improve 3-year retention/persistence figures and 4-year graduation rates by engaging students in a multidimensional mentorship program. Third, to create a cross-discipline intellectual learning community that promotes advancement of project scholars to a STEM graduate program or into the STEM workforce. This project will also examine the role(s) of cohort-building, mentoring, and research engagement in fostering STEM student retention/persistence and high graduation rates, through the use of "intersectionality" as a theoretical approach. In particular, this project will provide an empirically informed perspective on how to meet the needs of STEM students who manifest more than a single primary identity status at a time; a status that embraces multiple equally weighted markers, such as socio-economic status, gender, and ethnicity. Additionally, an empirically-based and adaptable model for promoting student success will be developed that is dynamic, generalizable, and transferable to historically black colleges and universities, and other post-secondary institutions. Evaluation of this project will be performed, using a mixed-methods approach. Qualitative assessments will determine the effectiveness of mentoring, research experiences, and cohort building on increased enrollment, retention/persistence, and improved graduation rates of STEM students. In turn these qualitative methodologies will inform subsequent quantitative assessments. Results of this project will be disseminated through a variety of media, including a project website, social media, education journal publications, conference presentations and outreach activities. 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.