Improving Career Readiness of STEM Students Through Worksite Visits, Job Shadowing, and Internships during Their Early College Years

在改进的本科生STEM教育：西班牙裔服务机构(HSI)计划的支持下，这个Track 1项目旨在帮助学生为STEM的职业生涯做准备。为此，该项目将通过一系列的工作场所访问、工作跟踪和实习，为社区大学生提供探索STEM职业生涯的机会。通过使学生能够与STEM专业人员互动，该项目团队预计，学生将了解成为STEM专业人员所需具备的条件以及STEM专业人员所做的广泛工作。这些互动有望帮助学生建立在STEM追求职业生涯的信心和动力。由于该项目强调吸纳西班牙裔学生和STEM中代表性不足的其他群体的学生，该项目有可能促进STEM劳动力的多样性。该项目包括一项与当地研究机构和高科技行业合作伙伴建立伙伴关系的强有力的计划。这种在学生和STEM专业人士之间建立网络的行业合作模式可能会被证明是其他机构可以用来为学生提供STEM职业探索机会的模式。该项目将让一年级和二年级的学生与STEM专业人员一起经历一系列循序渐进的经历，从工作现场访问开始，继续到工作跟踪和实习。这些职场经历将发生在社区大学学生学术之旅的早期。其目的是，在两年多的时间里，学生将参与一系列需要越来越多的努力和提供越来越高的潜在影响的工作场所暴露。混合评估方法将检验这样一种假设，即这些以职业为重点的经历将增强学生的自信，激励他们参与学术支持活动，并有助于他们成功地成为STEM专业人员。这项工作很重要，因为通过扩大和丰富包括工作场所的学习环境，该项目将研究社区大学STEM项目如何在所有学生群体中增加STEM的参与度。HSI计划旨在加强本科生STEM教育和HSI的能力建设。HSI计划支持的项目也将产生关于如何实现这些目标的新知识。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。

With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) Program, this Track 1 project seeks to prepare students for careers in STEM. To do so, the project will provide community college students with opportunities to explore STEM careers through a sequence of workplace visits, job shadowing, and internships. By enabling students to interact with STEM professionals, the project team predicts that students will gain an understanding of what it takes to be a STEM professional and the breadth of what STEM professionals do. These interactions are expected to help build students’ confidence and motivation to pursue careers in STEM. As a result of the project’s emphasis on engaging Hispanic students and students from other groups that are underrepresented in STEM, the project has the potential to contribute to the diversity of the STEM workforce. The project includes a robust plan to build partnerships with local research facilities and high-tech industry partners. This model of industry partnerships that build networks between students and STEM professionals may prove to be a model that other institutions could use to provide students with STEM career exploration opportunities.This project will engage first- and second-year students with STEM professionals in a progressive sequence of experiences beginning with work site visits, continuing to job shadowing and internships. These workplace experiences will occur early in the academic journey of community college students. The intention is that, over two years, students will participate in a sequence of workplace exposures that require increasingly greater effort and provide increasingly higher potential impact. A mixed-methods evaluation will test the hypothesis that these career-focused experiences will increase students' self-confidence, motivate them to participate in academic support activities, and contribute to their success in becoming STEM professionals. This work is important because, by expanding and enriching the learning environment to include workplaces, the project will examine how community college STEM programs can increase participation in STEM among all demographic groups of students. 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.