Achieving STEM Persistence through Peer Assisted Learning and Leadership Development

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With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 1 project aims to increase undergraduate student retention and success in STEM. It will do so by engaging a campus peer assisted learning program to provide academic and interpersonal supports to students in introductory engineering courses. The project also plans to support STEM student success via a STEM Leadership Academy that will serve undergraduate students in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and the College of Engineering and Computer Science. The STEM Leadership Academy is expected to cultivate students' leadership, interpersonal, and workforce readiness skills. Expected student outcomes include improved academic performance, greater self-efficacy, increased persistence, reduced time to graduation, and narrowed achievement gaps. The project also expects that students will gain a suite of interpersonal and team-based attributes that will bolster their success in the workforce. Evaluation of project activities and outcomes will generate new knowledge about student engagement, degree attainment, and workforce transitions.This project aims to increase retention and decrease time to degree for students through two critical transitions: 1) lower to upper division engineering courses; and 2) through STEM degree completion to workforce entry. Specific aims include: 1) expanding the peer assisted learning collaborative to introductory engineering courses; 2) iteratively implementing the STEM Leadership Academy to provide students with three levels of leadership skill development, experiential learning, and engagement in socially-relevant activities; and 3) enhancing faculty attitudes regarding student competencies through professional development workshops. A mixed methods study will contribute new knowledge about: 1) the peer assisted learning intervention for lower division engineering courses; 2) how peer assisted learning and the STEM Leadership Academy affect student self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and intentions to persist in the degree and enter the STEM workforce; and 3) impacts on faculty expectations regarding increased student responsibility and the traditional teacher-student relationships. This project aims to increase the participation of underrepresented minority, women, and transfer students and will draw on co-curricular collaborative and socially relevant activities shown to increase self-efficacy, course performance, retention, and interest in STEM careers. Project outcomes will be disseminated through publications, presentations, and a public website. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims.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.