Building a Chemistry and Biochemistry Targeted Learning Community: The Impact of Vertical Mentoring on STEM Student Outcomes

该项目将有助于国家需要受过良好教育的科学家，数学家，工程师和技术人员，通过支持高成就，低收入的学生在加州州立大学圣马科斯证明经济需要的保留和毕业。 这所大学是一所西班牙裔服务机构，主要为通勤学生人口提供服务。在五年的时间里，该项目将分三批为20名独特的全日制学生提供长达四年的奖学金。 奖学金获得者将被纳入一个由30名学生组成的化学和生物化学目标学习社区。该项目旨在通过将奖学金与有效的支持活动联系起来，提高学生在STEM领域的坚持性，这些活动包括课程的队列模型;同行，研究生，教师和专业指导;以及学术和专业研讨会。一些学习社区参与者将在随后的学习社区群组中成为同伴导师，以支持创建可持续的辅导社区。鉴于该大学的西班牙裔服务地位，该项目有可能扩大STEM领域的参与。 它还可以通过多层次的垂直指导经验和课外支持，对特定学科的学习社区对学生进入STEM相关职业和/或研究生课程的影响产生新的理解。该项目的总体目标是提高低收入、高成就、有经济需求的本科生的STEM学位完成率。一个强大的项目评估将使用比较组的方法来探测奖学金相对于模型的其他方面的相对重要性。 非认知因素，如社区意识，也被证明会影响STEM学生的坚持。然而，很少有人知道这些因素如何影响化学和生物化学的学生在一个西班牙裔服务机构与通勤人口。一个混合方法的研究将调查学生社区的意义和项目活动对部门和机构的变化的影响。该项目有可能促进对学生社区如何发展的理解，以及它如何与STEM职业的保留率和研究生竞争力相关。将通过调查、重点小组和机构记录收集形成性和总结性评价数据。该项目的结果将通过同行评审的出版物，会议演示和推广到其他四年制校园。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。

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 California State University San Marcos. This university is a Hispanic-serving Institution that serves a primarily commuter student population. Over its five-year duration, this project will fund scholarships of up to four years to 20 unique full-time students, in three cohorts. Scholarship recipients will be embedded in a 30-student Chemistry and Biochemistry Targeted Learning Community. The project aims to increase student persistence in STEM fields by linking scholarships with effective support activities that include a cohort model for coursework; peer, graduate student, faculty, and professional mentoring; and academic and professional workshops. Some learning community participants will become peer mentors in subsequent learning community cohorts to support the creation of a sustainable mentoring community. Given the university’s Hispanic-serving status, this project has the potential to broaden participation in STEM fields. It can also contribute new understanding about the impacts of a discipline-specific learning community with a multi-level vertical mentoring experience and co-curricular support on students’ advancement to STEM-related careers and/or graduate programs.The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. A robust project evaluation will use a comparison group approach to probe the relative importance of the scholarship relative to other aspects of the model. Non-cognitive factors, such as sense of community, have also been demonstrated to affect STEM student persistence. However, little is known about how these factors affect chemistry and biochemistry students at a Hispanic-serving Institution with a commuter population. A mixed-methods study will investigate the sense of student community and the effect of project activities on departmental and institutional change. The project has the potential to advance understanding about how student community develops and how it relates to retention rates and post-graduate competitiveness in STEM careers. Formative and summative evaluation data will be collected through surveys, focus groups, and institutional records. Results of this project will be made available through peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and outreach to other four-year campuses. 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.