Fostering Biology Major Success and Transfer in an Urban Community College in the Silicon Valley

该项目将有助于国家需要受过良好教育的科学家，技术人员，工程师和数学家，通过支持高成就，低收入的学生在万年青谷学院（EVC）证明经济需要。EVC是一所位于加州圣何塞的社区学院，为大约10,000名学生提供服务。该项目的一个特别推动力将是增加获得和参与生物科学劳动力的机会，特别关注低收入学生的需求。社区学院的学生是生物学专业和未来生物学家的潜在来源，但他们经常面临与他们的教育目标竞争的经济和家庭需求。对于居住在硅谷的EVC学生来说尤其如此，硅谷是美国一个昂贵的地区。在六年的时间里，该项目将资助四十五（45）个2年奖学金，以帮助学者减少工作，专注于他们的学术进步。通过队列模型，有针对性的指导，实习，并在第一年的生物学为重点的研讨会招生，这些生物学学者将在他们的途径与转让程度，这将保证他们的录取与完成联营公司支持到加州公立四年制大学，他们的方式生物科学职业生涯的下一步。EVC的这个项目包括与当地四年制机构、生物技术公司和爱荷华州州立大学（ISU）的合作。为了增加STEM准学士学位的完成和低收入，高成就的社区大学学生的转移与证明财政需要，该项目将追求一个基本的项目目标，提高学生的STEM内容知识和路径导航从社区大学到生物学学士学位完成。该项目将通过对社区学院生物学学生及其课程的系统研究来实现这一目标。特别是，基本目标将通过混合方法评估和伴随的学生不断发展的科学身份发展，成就，动机和校园参与的功效反馈来实现。调查人员将利用三个互补的角度在本科科学的学习和发展;即，佩雷斯的期望值框架的STEM专业的扩展，卡尔德龙的科学身份框架，和斯坦顿萨拉查的社会化代理。项目研究结果将有助于从理论上理解动机和科学身份如何在社区学院的经验演变。 与此同时，调查方向将解决文献中的空白，并提供实用的见解社区学院应如何组织编程，以促进学术成功和转让的关系。项目调查人员将传播与项目挑战和成功相关的成果和调查结果，特别是向类似环境中的其他社区学院传播。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, technicians, engineers, and mathematicians by supporting high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at Evergreen Valley College (EVC). EVC is a community college in San Jose, California, which serves approximately 10,000 students. A particular impetus of the project will be to increase access to, and participation in, the biological sciences workforce with a particular focus on needs of low-income students. Community college students are a potential source of biology majors and future biologists, yet they often face financial and family demands that compete with their educational goals. This is particularly true for EVC students who live in the Silicon Valley, an expensive region in the country. Over its six-year duration, this project will fund forty-five (45) 2-year scholarships to help the Scholars work less and focus on their academic progress. Through a cohort model, targeted mentorship, internships, and enrollment in a first-year biology-focused seminar, these biology scholars will be supported in their pathway towards completion of an Associates with Transfer degree, which will guarantee their admission to a California public four-year university, the next step on their way to a biological science career. This project at EVC includes partnerships with local four-year institutions, biotech companies, and Iowa State University (ISU). ISU which will serve as the institution leading project research and evaluation.To increase STEM Associates degree completion and transfer of low-income, high-achieving community college students with demonstrated financial need, the project will pursue an underlying project goal of advancing students' STEM content knowledge and pathway navigation from community college to baccalaureate completion in biology. The project will pursue this goal through a systematic study of biology students and their coursework in the community college context. In particular, the underlying goal will be achieved through mixed-methods evaluation and accompanying feedback of the efficacy of students’ evolving science identity development, achievement, motivation, and campus engagement. Investigators will draw upon three complementary perspectives on learning and development in undergraduate science; namely, Perez’s extension of the Expectancy Value framework for STEM majors, Calderon’s science identity framework, and Stanton-Salazar’s agents of socialization. Project findings will contribute to the theoretical understanding of how motivation and science identity evolves over the community college experience. At the same time, directions of investigation will address gaps in the literature and provide practical insight into how community colleges should organize programming in order to foster relationships that promote academic success and transfer. Project investigators will disseminate outcomes and findings related to project challenges and successes, especially to other community colleges in a similar setting. 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.