Community Building in Support of Undergraduate and Graduate Scholars in Mathematics, Computing Sciences, and Physics

该项目将通过支持纽约州立大学布罗克波特分校表现出经济需求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60名攻读数学、计算机科学、计算机信息系统或物理学学士或硕士学位的全日制学生提供奖学金。将为高年级本科生和硕士生提供长达三年的奖学金支持。学者将参加每月的会议，在会议上，他们将与不同专业的学者合作，为复杂的社会文化问题制定解决方案。在这项工作中，他们将使用他们共同的核心数学语言以及他们的文化和学科特定知识。我们强烈鼓励和支持学者完成实习、研究项目和/或其他STEM领域的经验。该项目旨在提高在纽约州立大学布洛克波特分校开始大学学习和从其他学校转学的学者的社区意识和信心。预计这些经历将帮助学者们继续积极追求他们所选择的学科，导致至少60名新的STEM毕业生为STEM就业或研究生学习做好准备。该计划的智力价值集中在推进关于在数学，物理和计算机科学领域内和跨领域建立社区的知识。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。有三个具体目标：使学生能够在经济上负担得起STEM领域的学习；增加同伴社区的支持，特别是在转学生和数学、计算科学和物理学科之间；并为这些学者增加实习、学生研究和其他实地体验的机会和支持。众所周知，经济支持和体验式学习机会对学生在STEM领域的成功有积极影响。然而，关于社区干预对STEM领域的转学生或从高中入学但在近一半同龄人是转学生的机构中的学生的影响，我们所知的并不多。该项目将研究学者的经验，他们将被置于与同龄人合作的角色中，特别是在使用他们的STEM背景的背景下。研究问题围绕高影响力的实践如何支持学者在有意义的问题解决方面的坚持以及由此产生的对保留和学位完成的影响。该项目将明确探讨有针对性的社会文化社区建设如何影响学者：1)数学、计算科学和物理学位的持久性；2)完成、发展和解决复杂问题的动力；3)对数学和科学本质的认识。该项目有可能促进对社区对转学和其他STEM学生的影响的理解，并为改善社区对STEM学生的支持提供战略路线图。这个项目将使用形成性和总结性评估来评估，这些评估包括财政援助、注册和记录以及教师提交的数据。该项目的成果将通过在专业期刊上发表和在会议上发表报告的方式提供。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 need at SUNY Brockport. Over its five-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to 60 unique full-time students who are pursuing bachelor’s or master’s degrees in Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Information Systems, or Physics. Up to three years of scholarship support will be provided to Upper division undergraduates and masters students. Scholars will participate in monthly meetings in which they will work collaboratively with Scholars in different majors to develop solutions to complex sociocultural problems. In this work, they will use their common language of core mathematics as well as their cultural and discipline-specific knowledge. Scholars will be strongly encouraged and supported to complete internships, research projects, and/or other STEM field experiences. The project is designed to increase the sense of community and confidence among Scholars who began college at SUNY Brockport and who transferred from other schools. It is expected that these experiences will help Scholars remain active in pursuing their chosen disciplines, leading to at least 60 new STEM graduates who are prepared for STEM employment or graduate study. The intellectual merit of the program centers upon advancing knowledge about building community within and across the fields of mathematics, physics, and computer science. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. There are three specific aims: to make studying a STEM field financially accessible to students; to increase peer community support, particularly among transfer students and across the disciplines of Mathematics, Computing Sciences, and Physics; and to increase opportunities and support for internships, student research, and other field experiences for these Scholars. Financial support and experiential learning opportunities are known to have a positive effect on student success in STEM. However, there is not a lot known about the impact of community intervention specific to transfer students in STEM fields or to students who entered from high school but are at an institution in which nearly half of their peers are transfer students. This project will study the experiences of Scholars who will be placed in roles as collaborators with their peers, specifically in the context of using their STEM backgrounds. The research questions center around how high-impact practices can support persistence of the Scholars in meaningful problem solving and the resulting impact on retention and degree completion. The project will explicitly explore how targeted sociocultural community building affects Scholars': 1) degree persistence in Mathematics, Computing Sciences, and Physics; 2) completion, development, and motivation to solve complex problems; and 3) perception of the nature of mathematics and science. This project has the potential to advance understanding of the effect of community on both transfer and other students in STEM and to provide a roadmap for a strategy to improve the community support for STEM students. This project will be evaluated using both formative and summative assessments tabulating data from financial aid, registration and records, and data submitted by faculty. Results of this project will be made available by publication in practitioner journals and presentations at conferences. 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.