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

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，证明经济需要在得克萨斯大学埃尔帕索分校（UTEP）。UTEP被指定为研究活动非常高的博士大学（卡内基分类），为24，879名学生（约85%的本科生）提供服务，其中83%的人自认为是西班牙裔，49%的人自认为是家庭中第一个上大学的人。在六年的时间里，该项目将为50名正在攻读十多个领域之一的学士学位的全日制学生提供奖学金（例如，生物科学，地质科学，数学）在UTEP的理学院代表。这将包括相同数量的本地UTEP大三学生和从埃尔帕索社区学院转入UTEP的学生，他们将分别获得两年的奖学金。项目参与者将参与一套课程和课外活动，包括跨学科课程为基础的本科生研究经验（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。除了参与这种高影响力的做法，学者们也将有机会在地方和国家会议上传播他们的研究成果，并将创建一个电子文件夹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，这些利益相关者有助于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低收入，高成就的本科生的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，也不一定所有学生都能平等地参与这些体验。为了解决这一差距，并更好地了解高影响力的做法对学生的认知，情感和心理社会的结果在这一人群中的相对影响，一个研究组成部分已被设计使用混合方法的方法。从以前验证的调查措施和半结构化/焦点小组访谈的数据旨在阐明项目的活动如何影响学者的科学身份，领导技能的发展，研究人员的自我效能感，归属感和学术自我概念。将进行社会网络分析，以研究学者的个人和专业网络如何演变，如果有的话，在他们参与该项目的过程中，特别是关于他们获得和访问的资本类型。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成果的有效性和影响的新知识，并将解决最终有助于提高低收入，高成就本科生完成STEM学位的更广泛目标的背景特征。该项目的结果，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 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.