Accelerating STEM Success through Experiences for Transfer and Third-Year Students

该项目将通过支持德克萨斯大学埃尔帕索分校（UTEP）表现出经济需求的高成就低收入学生的保留和毕业，为全国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。UTEP被指定为具有很高研究活动的博士大学（卡内基分类），为24,879名学生（约85%的本科生）提供服务，其中83%的学生自认为是西班牙裔，49%的学生自认为是他们家庭中第一个上大学的人。在为期六年的时间里，该项目将为50名在UTEP理学院的十多个领域（如生物科学、地质科学、数学）中攻读学士学位的全日制学生提供奖学金。这将包括同等数量的本地UTEP大三学生和从埃尔帕索社区学院转学到UTEP的学生，他们都将获得两年的奖学金。项目参与者将参与一系列课程和课外活动，包括跨学科本科研究经验（CURE）、领导力和社区参与课程、教师指导的研究经验和专业发展研讨会。除了参与这些高影响力的实践之外，学者们还将有机会在当地和国家会议上传播他们的研究成果，并将创建一个电子作品集，记录他们在大学期间的成就。该项目旨在与各种学术和非学术利益相关者建立密切的伙伴关系，以扩大对如何最好地支持STEM专业学生实现个人和职业抱负的理解。该项目的总体目标是提高有经济需求的低收入、高成就本科生的STEM学位完成率。虽然学生参与上述高影响力的实践已被证明可以促进学生的成功，但并非所有学生都能获得这些机会，也并非所有学生都必须平等地参与这些经历。为了解决这一差异，并更好地理解高影响实践对这一人群中学生的认知、情感和社会心理结果的相对影响，采用混合方法设计了一个研究组成部分。来自先前验证的调查措施和半结构化/焦点小组访谈的数据旨在揭示项目活动如何影响学者的科学认同、领导技能发展、研究人员自我效能感、归属感和学术自我概念。社会网络分析将进行，以检查学者的个人和专业网络如何发展，如果有的话，在他们参与项目的过程中，特别是在他们获得和获得的资本类型方面。该项目旨在提供有关各种课程和课外干预措施对学生水平结果的有效性和影响的新知识，并将解决最终有助于提高具有经济需求的低收入，高成就本科生的STEM学位完成度这一更广泛目标的背景特征。该项目的成果，包括研究团队和项目学者产生的产品，将通过同行评审的出版物和演示文稿提供，并将在UTEP的网站上突出显示。该项目由美国国家科学基金会的科学、技术、工程和数学奖学金项目资助，旨在增加有经济需求的低收入学术天才学生在STEM领域获得学位的人数。它还旨在改善未来STEM工作者的教育，并为低收入学生提供有关学业成功、留校、转学、毕业和学术/职业道路的知识。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识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 The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). Designated as a Doctoral University with Very High Research Activity (Carnegie Classification), UTEP serves 24,879 students (~85% undergraduates), 83% of whom self-identify as Hispanic and 49% of whom self-identify as the first in their families to attend college. Over its six-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to 50 unique full-time students who are pursuing Bachelor’s degrees in one of more than ten fields (e.g., biological sciences, geological sciences, mathematics) represented in UTEP’s College of Science. This will include equal numbers of native UTEP juniors and students transferring to UTEP from El Paso Community College, who will each receive two-year scholarships. Project participants will be involved in a suite of curricular and co-curricular activities to include an interdisciplinary course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE), leadership and community engagement course, faculty-mentored research experiences, and professional development workshops. In addition to participating in such high impact practices, scholars will also have an opportunity to disseminate the findings of their research at local and national conferences and will create an ePortfolio documenting their accomplishments during their time at the university. The project aims to establish close partnerships with a diversity of academic and non-academic stakeholders who contribute to a broadening understanding of how to best support STEM majors in achieving their personal and professional ambitions.The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. While student engagement in high-impact practices such as those mentioned above has been shown to foster student success, these opportunities are not always accessible to all student populations, nor do all students necessarily participate equally in such experiences. To address this disparity and to better understand the relative impact of high-impact practices on the cognitive, affective, and psychosocial outcomes of students in this population, a research component has been designed using mixed methods approaches. Data from previously validated survey measures and semi-structured/focus group interviews aim to shed light on how the projects' activities influence scholars’ science identity, leadership skills development, researcher self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and academic self-concept. Social network analyses will be performed to examine how scholars’ personal and professional networks evolve, if at all, over the course of their participation in the project, especially with respect to the types of capital that they acquire and access. This project aims to contribute new knowledge regarding the efficacy and impact of various curricular and co-curricular interventions on student-level outcomes, and will also address the contextual features that ultimately contribute to the broader goal of increasing STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. Results of this project, including products generated by both the research team and project scholars, will be made available through peer-reviewed publications and presentations and will be highlighted on UTEP’s website. 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.