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

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，低收入学生的保留和毕业，证明在纽约州立大学布罗克波特的经济需要。在五年的时间里，该项目将为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。最多三年的奖学金支持将提供给上师本科生和硕士生。学者将参加每月会议，他们将与不同专业的学者合作，制定解决复杂的社会文化问题的方案。在这项工作中，他们将使用核心数学的共同语言以及他们的文化和学科特定的知识。我们将大力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。该项目旨在增加在纽约州立大学布罗克波特开始上大学和从其他学校转学的学者的社区意识和信心。预计这些经验将有助于学者继续积极追求自己选择的学科，导致至少60名新的STEM毕业生谁是STEM就业或研究生学习准备。该计划的智力价值集中在推进有关在数学，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低收入，高成就的本科生与证明财政需要完成STEM学位。有三个具体目标：使学生能够在经济上获得STEM领域的学习;增加同行社区的支持，特别是转学生和数学，计算科学和物理学科之间的支持;并为这些学者增加实习，学生研究和其他实地经验的机会和支持。众所周知，财政支持和体验式学习机会对学生在STEM方面的成功有积极影响。然而，对于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，社区干预的影响知之甚少。该项目将研究学者的经验，这些学者将与同行合作，特别是在使用他们的STEM背景的背景下。研究问题的中心是高影响力的实践如何支持学者在有意义的问题解决中的持久性，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，计算科学和物理学的学位坚持; 2）完成，发展和解决复杂问题的动机;以及3）对数学和科学本质的看法。该项目有可能促进社区对STEM中的转学生和其他学生的影响的理解，并为改善STEM学生的社区支持战略提供路线图。该项目将使用形成性和总结性评估，从财政援助，登记和记录，以及教师提交的数据制表数据进行评估。该项目的结果将通过在从业者期刊上发表和在会议上发表来提供。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 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.