Bridging the STEM Gap in Appalachia: Engaging with students to iteratively improve faculty practices in support of student success

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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 Fairmont State University (FSU) in West Virginia. The project will support students through a combination of financial assistance and curricular and co-curricular support. Over its six-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to eighteen (18) unique high-achieving, low-income undergraduate majors in the STEM disciplines at the University. Additional support will include a STEM bootcamp for incoming students, a first-year STEM seminar course, opportunities for research experiences, STEM living and learning community availability, and regular interactions with faculty and peer mentors. Career placement initiatives will be incorporated and will include networking seminars with local and regional industries. A professional development program will be put in place for faculty and peer mentors. Recruiting efforts will include a focus on a 15-county region in Appalachia that will be accompanied by an innovative and flexible two-tier selection process to allow for the identification of low-income, highly-talented STEM students who might not have met traditional metrics related to high school success. To increase retention and STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need, the project will pursue several goals. First is to adapt and implement evidence-based curricular and co-curricular strategies for systematically supporting student academic and career pathways to success. Second is to implement, test, and study through project evaluation an innovative model for recruiting and selecting highly-talented STEM students who might otherwise go unnoticed based on traditional metrics for high school success. Third is to contribute to the knowledge base to help guide other colleges to implement similar programs successfully. Fourth is to integrate the project with local industries to improve career preparation and job placement, directly filling needs in the region. And fifth is to incorporate a networking process with industry, high schools, and other colleges to disseminate outcomes and findings related to project challenges and successes, in particular to other institutions working to support low-income STEM students. Insights and outcomes from a mixed methods evaluation will generate new knowledge on which aspects of the project's support interventions, or combination of interventions, are most effective for retention, engagement, academic performance, and overall success of students. The lines of investigation will address gaps in the literature and inform other higher-education professionals seeking to support students with a combination of curricular and co-curricular interventions, especially for students from rural regions who are underrepresented in STEM. 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.