Increasing retention of part-time and full-time STEM students with scholarships, mentoring and mathematics tutoring

通过奖学金、辅导和数学辅导提高非全日制和全日制 STEM 学生的保留率

• 批准号: 2128897
• 负责人: Teresa Cutright
• 金额: $ 149.92万
• 依托单位: University of Akron
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-05-01 至 2028-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2128897&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Increasing; retention; part; time; full

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 The University of Akron (UA). UA is a commuter campus located in the center of downtown Akron, Ohio. Over its 6-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to 103 unique students who are pursuing Bachelor of Science degrees in Biomedical Engineering, Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Biology, or Chemistry. Three S-STEM scholar cohorts will receive scholarship support from their first year to graduation. Approximately half of the scholars will be directly admitted to their department of choice, half will be non-direct admit students, and approximately 10% will be enrolled part time. Inclusion of part-time students will provide financial support to a student group often overlooked and has the potential to increase retention rates of these students. In addition to scholarship support, the proposed program will provide the scholars: an S-STEM specific learning community; cohort-specific laboratories; peer and faculty mentoring; cohort-specific mathematics recitation/tutoring spanning weekends, weekdays and evening times; additional academic advising from project investigators; and research opportunities. These collective support programming activities will enable us to increase the retention and graduation rates of students from the most economically disadvantaged regions of the State of Ohio, including Appalachia. Within the framework of a case study, documenting which interventions achieved the most impact on student retention can provide tools that can be implemented at other universities to support retention and graduation of talented full-time and part-time students with financial needs, especially students from underrepresented groups, including women and persons with disabilities. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. This project will examine the increase in retention and graduation by providing students with interventions focusing on addressing financial barriers, targeted academic supports in math courses, peer and faculty mentoring and engagement in learning communities. Frequently, the lack of retention in engineering disciplines is attributed to the calculus sequence. The need to retake Pre-Calculus, Calculus I or Calculus II often leads to students taking longer to graduate. This effect is more pronounced for part-time students. This project will investigate if a dedicated math tutoring/recitation, used to specifically address retention issues associated with the calculus classes, will improve pass rates. Peer and faculty mentoring aims to increase students’ sense of belonging. The project will also examine ways that participating in the S-STEM program influences students' self-efficacy in STEM, sense of belonging and career awareness for STEM. The impact of program activities on students' retention will be investigated using a convergent mixed methods design. This project has the potential to advance understanding pertaining to student success in first-year math classes, social-cognitive factors impact the persistence and career choice of part-time and full-time students. The results of our study will be disseminated on the UA campus via Institute of Teaching and Learning (ITL) seminars. Results will also be disseminated to other urban commuter schools by presentations at the national ITL conference and articles submitted to discipline specific journals. 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.

该项目将通过支持阿克伦大学（UA）表现出经济需求的高成就，低收入学生的保留和毕业，为国家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。UA是位于俄亥俄州阿克伦市中心的通勤校园。在为期6年的时间里，该项目将为103名正在攻读生物医学工程，化学生物分子工程，土木工程，电气工程，计算机工程，生物学或化学学士学位的独特学生提供奖学金。三个S-STEM学者队列将从第一年到毕业获得奖学金支持。大约一半的学者将被直接录取到他们选择的部门，一半将是非直接录取的学生，大约10%将被兼职录取。招收非全日制学生将为经常被忽视的学生群体提供财政支持，并有可能提高这些学生的保留率。除了奖学金支持，拟议的计划将为学者提供：一个S-STEM特定的学习社区;队列特定的实验室;同行和教师指导;跨越周末，工作日和晚上的队列特定数学背诵/辅导;项目调查人员的额外学术建议;和研究机会。这些集体支持方案编制活动将使我们能够提高来自俄亥俄州经济最贫困地区的学生的保留率和毕业率，包括阿巴拉契亚。在一个案例研究框架内，记录哪些干预措施对学生保留产生了最大的影响，可以提供可在其他大学实施的工具，以支持有经济需要的有才华的全日制和非全日制学生，特别是来自代表性不足群体的学生，包括妇女和残疾人，保留和毕业。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。该项目将通过为学生提供干预措施，重点是解决财务障碍，数学课程有针对性的学术支持，同行和教师指导以及参与学习社区，来研究保留和毕业的增加。通常，缺乏保留在工程学科是由于微积分序列。需要重考微积分预科，微积分I或微积分II通常会导致学生需要更长的时间才能毕业。这种影响对非全日制学生来说更为明显。这个项目将调查，如果一个专门的数学辅导/背诵，用于专门解决与微积分类相关的保留问题，将提高通过率。同侪和教师指导旨在增加学生的归属感。该项目还将研究参与S-STEM计划如何影响学生在STEM方面的自我效能感，归属感和STEM职业意识。项目活动对学生保留率的影响将使用收敛混合方法设计进行调查。该项目有可能促进对学生在一年级数学课程中取得成功的了解，社会认知因素影响兼职和全日制学生的持久性和职业选择。我们的研究结果将通过教学研究所（ITL）研讨会在UA校园传播。研究结果还将通过在国家国际交易日志会议上的发言和向学科特定期刊提交的文章传播给其他城市通勤学校。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，并提供有关低收入学生的学术成功、保留、转学、毕业和学术/职业途径的知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并且通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响力审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。