Recruiting,Educating, and Graduating a Diverse Community of Mathematicians Through Mentoring, Peer Support, and Undergraduate Research

通过指导、同行支持和本科生研究招募、教育和培养多元化的数学家社区

• 批准号: 2031345
• 负责人: Mike O'Leary
• 金额: $ 99.92万
• 依托单位: Towson University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-02-01 至 2026-01-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2031345&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Recruiting; Educating; Graduating; Diverse; Community

This project will contribute to the national need for skilled mathematicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at Towson University. Over its five-year duration, the project will provide scholarships to 32 unique full-time students who are pursuing undergraduate degrees in mathematics. The project will award 14 four-year scholarships to first-time, first-year students across two cohorts, and 18 two-year scholarships to transfer students across three cohorts. The project will recruit locally from Baltimore city schools and from area community colleges including Harford Community College and Howard Community College. The project will enhance Scholars’ educational experience by supporting their academic and professional development. Such supports include enhanced advising and mentoring, a course on career pathways for mathematics majors, and coding workshops and hackathons. The project will also support Scholar’s engagement in undergraduate research through a new sophomore/junior level course-based undergraduate research experience, as well as assistance in applying for a summer research experience. The project’s student support activities will be available to all mathematics majors, expanding project impact beyond the scholarship recipients.The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The project will use confirmatory analysis to assess project components and decision tree analysis to identify the factors that most impact the Scholar’s attainment of educational goals. Confirmatory analysis will examine two hypotheses. First, that components of the project represent observable and cumulative evidence of academic integration, and therefore predict graduation with a mathematics baccalaureate degree within six years. Second, the student experience of these components represents evidence of social integration of the student in the institution and predict graduation and cumulative GPA for the subset of individuals who attended/completed each element. Decision tree analysis will be performed on a data set that includes student records and demographic data, as well as all data collected as part of the confirmatory analysis. By analyzing this rich data set, the project should be able to draw more nuanced conclusions about which interventions are the most valuable for supporting the success of low-income students in mathematics. Project results will be disseminated in the Joint Mathematics Meetings, MathFest, and in refereed publications. 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.

该项目将通过支持陶森大学有经济需要的成绩优异、低收入的学生的保留和毕业，满足国家对熟练数学家的需求。在为期五年的时间内，该项目将为 32 名正在攻读数学本科学位的独特全日制学生提供奖学金。该项目将为两个批次的一年级新生提供 14 份四年期奖学金，并为三个批次的转学生提供 18 份两年期奖学金。该项目将从巴尔的摩市学校和地区社区学院（包括哈福德社区学院和霍华德社区学院）在当地招募学生。该项目将通过支持学者的学术和专业发展来增强他们的教育经验。 此类支持包括加强建议和指导、数学专业职业道路课程以及编码研讨会和黑客马拉松。该项目还将通过新的二年级/三年级基于课程的本科生研究经验以及协助申请暑期研究经验来支持学者参与本科生研究。 该项目的学生支持活动将面向所有数学专业的学生，​​将项目的影响力扩大到奖学金获得者之外。该项目的总体目标是提高有经济需求的低收入、成绩优异的本科生完成 STEM 学位的数量。该项目将使用验证性分析来评估项目组成部分，并使用决策树分析来确定对学者实现教育目标影响最大的因素。验证性分析将检验两个假设。首先，该项目的组成部分代表了学术整合的可观察和累积的证据，因此预测在六年内获得数学学士学位。其次，这些组成部分的学生体验代表了学生在机构中社会融入的证据，并预测参加/完成每个要素的个人子集的毕业和累积 GPA。决策树分析将在数据集上进行，其中包括学生记录和人口统计数据，以及作为验证性分析的一部分收集的所有数据。通过分析这一丰富的数据集，该项目应该能够得出更细致的结论，即哪些干预措施对于支持低收入学生在数学上取得成功最有价值。项目结果将在联合数学会议、MathFest 和经过评审的出版物中传播。该项目由 NSF 科学、技术、工程和数学奖学金项目资助，该项目旨在增加具有经济需求的低收入学术天才学生获得 STEM 领域学位的数量。它还旨在改善未来 STEM 工作者的教育，并产生有关低收入学生的学业成功、保留、转学、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。