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

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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.