Curricular, Co-curricular, Social, and Financial Supports for Successful Transfer and Graduation of Engineering Undergraduates from Rural/Nontraditional Backgrounds

该项目将有助于对受过良好教育的科学家，数学家，工程师和技术人员的国家需要，通过支持高成就，低收入的学生在波尔克州立大学和南佛罗里达大学证明经济需要的保留和毕业。 参与的学生将在波尔克州立学院攻读副学士学位，并转入南佛罗里达大学完成工程学士学位。 该项目为期五年，将分两批向50名全日制或非全日制学生提供四年奖学金，每批25名学生。为协助转学生过渡到大学，并支持他们取得学业成功，该项目将提供（a）工程预科学院，（B）以重大成就为重点的项目学习，（c）同侪领导的课程驱动的学习社区，以创造一个社会学习环境，（d）积极主动的咨询和指导，以及（e）职业能力培训。该项目的新颖之处在于，它作为一个渠道，确保农村非传统转学生进入大都市研究型大学的学业成功和社会融合。 该项目预计，这种支持将使学生能够获得工程学副学士学位和学士学位，从而为就业和职业成功提供更多的机会。该项目将利用和加强波尔克县农村地区高中之间的关系，并将通过大学学院高中门户招收非传统学生。经验教训和建立成功的STEM转移支持系统的指导方针将传播到其他机构打算建立两年制和四年制院校之间的有效学术和社会途径。该项目的总体目标是提高低收入，高成就的本科生与证明财政需要完成STEM学位。 具体而言，该项目旨在通过专门针对学生需求的课程、课外活动、社会和财务干预，建立一个从副学士学位到学士学位完成的桥梁。 与郊区或城市转学生相比，农村社区大学转学到四年制大学的学生面临着额外的社会文化挑战，农村学生转学到城市大学显然需要社会适应。 本研究将探讨建议的课程和课外活动对社区学院学生的保留，转移和学位获得的影响，以及这些活动对学生的工程身份发展的影响。该项目还将研究课程和课外活动对社区学院转学生从农村到大都市环境的社会适应的影响。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 Polk State College and the University of South Florida. The participating students will pursue an Associate degree at Polk State College and transfer to the University of South Florida to complete a bachelor’s degree in engineering. Over its five-year duration, the project will provide four-year scholarships to 50 full- or part-time students, in two cohorts of 25 students. To facilitate transfer students’ transition to the University and support their academic success, the project will provide (a) a Pre-Engineering Academy, (b) Grand Challenges-focused project-based learning, (c) peer-led course-driven learning communities to create a social learning environment, (d) proactive advising and mentoring, and (e) career competency training. The novel feature of this project is its role as a conduit to ensure academic success and social integration for rural, non-traditional transfer students into a metropolitan research-intensive university. The project expects that such supports will enable the students to earn an associate's degree and a bachelor’s degree in engineering, thus opening up greater opportunities for employment and career success. The project will leverage and enhance relationships between high schools in rural parts of Polk County, and will recruit non-traditional students through the Gateway to College Collegiate High School. Lessons learned and guidelines for building successful STEM transfer support systems will be disseminated to other institutions intending to build effective academic and social pathways between two-year and four-year institutions. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. Specifically, the project aims to create a bridge from associate to baccalaureate degree completion through curricular, co-curricular, social, and financial interventions specifically tailored to the students’ needs. Rural community college students transferring to a four-year institution face additional socio-cultural challenges compared to suburban or urban transfer students, with social acclimatization explicitly needed for rural students transferring to an urban university. This project will investigate the impact of the proposed curricular and co-curricular activities on community college students’ retention, transfer, and degree attainment, and the effect of those activities on students’ engineering identity development. The project will also examine the effects of curricular and co-curricular activities on community college transfer students’ social acclimatization in moving from a rural to a metropolitan environment. 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.