Fostering Excellence as a Means to Increase Motivation and Persistence of Undergraduates in STEM

该项目将通过支持摩根州立大学（马里兰州历史上最大的黑人学院和大学）的高成就低收入学生的保留和毕业，为全国对受过良好教育的科学家、数学家、工程师和技术人员的需求做出贡献。该项目为期五年，将为30名攻读生物学、化学、数学和/或物理学学士学位的本科生提供奖学金。一年级学生将获得长达四年的奖学金，转学生将获得长达两年的奖学金支持。该项目旨在通过将奖学金与有效的支持活动联系起来，包括指导、本科研究经历、服务学习、外展项目、研究生院准备和参加学科特定会议，提高学生在STEM领域的坚持度。在导师的帮助下，奖学金获得者将制定个人发展计划，概述他们的职业目标，并描述实现这些目标所需的步骤。该项目还将支持课程改进，旨在提高STEM一年级学生的总体保留率。该项目旨在将大学的最佳实践塑造成一个可以在全国范围内实施的模式。为此，该项目将产生关于如何使用Tinto的持久性模型来理解提高自我效能感、归属感和对STEM课程感知的各种活动的新知识，特别是对于非裔美国STEM学生。这三个因素影响学生的动机，而动机又影响学生的坚持。由于该大学的学生人口中有80%以上是非裔美国人，因此该项目有可能扩大STEM领域的参与，并揭示指导和个人发展计划如何支持非裔美国本科生在STEM领域的保留和毕业。该项目的总体目标是提高有经济需求的低收入、高成就本科生的STEM学位完成率。该项目的一个具体目标是增加对项目活动如何影响学者在STEM学科和职业中的成功、动机和坚持的理解。对非裔美国学生坚持模式的研究很少。本项目旨在通过解决三个研究问题来帮助填补这一研究空白：(a)项目活动如何影响非裔美国STEM学者的自我效能感、归属感和对STEM课程的看法？(b)项目对学者坚持STEM学科的影响是什么？(c)学者如何描述该计划中对他们在STEM学科和职业中的目标、动机和坚持产生积极影响的因素？该项目将Tinto的持久性理论模型与该大学在数学准备、主动学习、块调度和本科生研究方面的最佳实践结合起来。该项目的主要预期成果是开发一个HBCU STEM框架，利用大学经历来增强学生的动力，从而提高持久性。该项目由美国国家科学基金会的科学、技术、工程和数学奖学金项目资助，旨在增加有经济需求的低收入学术天才学生在STEM领域获得学位的人数。它还旨在改善未来STEM工作者的教育，并为低收入学生提供有关学业成功、留校、转学、毕业和学术/职业道路的知识。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识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 at Morgan State University, the largest Historically Black College and University in Maryland. Over its five-year duration, this project will provide scholarships to 30 undergraduate Scholars who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, and/or Physics. First-year students will receive up to four years and transfer students will receive up to two-years of scholarship support. The project aims to increase student persistence in STEM fields by linking scholarships with effective supporting activities, including mentoring, undergraduate research experiences, service learning, outreach projects, graduate school preparation, and participation in discipline-specific conferences. With the help of mentors, the Scholars will create Individual Development Plans outlining their career goals and describing the steps needed to achieve those goals. The project will also support curriculum improvements aimed at improving overall first-year student retention in STEM. The project seeks to shape the University’s best practices into a model that may be implemented across the nation. To this end, the project will generate new knowledge about how Tinto’s persistence model can be used to understand the kinds of activities that improve self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and perception of STEM curricula, particularly for African American STEM students. These three factors influence student motivation, which in turn influences persistence. Because the University has a student population that is more than 80% African American, this project has the potential to broaden participation in STEM fields and to reveal how mentoring and individual development plans may support retention and graduation of African American undergraduates in STEM.The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. A specific goal of the project is to increase understanding about how project activities affect Scholars’ success, motivation, and persistence in STEM disciplines and careers. Research on persistence models for African American students is scarce. This project aims to help fill this research gap by addressing three research questions: (a) How do the project activities impact African American STEM Scholars’ self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and perception of the STEM curriculum? (b) What is the impact on the project on Scholars’ persistence in STEM disciplines? and (c) How do Scholars characterize the elements of the program that positively impact their goals, motivation, and persistence in STEM disciplines and careers? This project couples Tinto’s persistence theory model with the University’s best practices in math preparation, active learning, block scheduling, and undergraduate research. The major expected outcome of the project is to develop an HBCU STEM framework that leverages university experiences to enhance student motivation, thus leading to increased persistence. 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.