Supporting the growth of STEM professionals through community, mentorship, and interdisciplinary inquiry

该项目将通过支持在朗伍德大学有经济需要的成绩优异的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。该项目的多维招生计划将重点关注弗吉尼亚州南部的农村地区，该地区迫切需要在高等教育中获得更多的STEM学位，并将为生物学、化学、环境科学和物理学领域的未来学生提供多样化的人才储备。与此相一致，该项目将包括与弗吉尼亚州南部农村高中和全国STEM专业人士的合作。朗伍德项目将在六年的时间里吸引45位学者，通过奖学金解决未满足的经济需求，并提供学生支持服务系统，包括学生群体、结构化的教师指导、以问题为重点的夏季桥梁项目、创新课程和四年的职业准备项目。通过嵌入式研究，该项目将关注学生的社交网络、教师指导和成长型思维模式对学生成功的影响。通过广泛的传播工作，该计划将有助于STEM社区了解如何最好地支持低收入，有学术天赋的STEM学生的成功。为了提高有经济需求的低收入、高成就本科生的STEM学位完成率，该项目将实现四个目标。首先是招募国内有学术才能的低收入学者，攻读生物学、化学、环境科学和物理学学士学位，并减少他们未满足的经济需求。第二是适应、实施和维持基于证据的学生支持和学术实践，以确保按时毕业。第三是测试系统支持学生成功和职业准备的新策略。第四是传播该项目关于提高低收入家庭学生成功的有效方法的发现。除了来自弗吉尼亚联邦大学大都会教育研究联盟严格评估的见解之外，项目团队将采用基于学科的教育研究方法来产生关于高影响力实践适应的新知识。特别是，该团队将绘制和分析社会情感和学术/职业支持的社会网络；探索教师导师与学生之间的对话类型（例如，“感受”与“解决问题”）；并将成长型思维模式融入学生体验和导师的努力中。这三条调查线将解决文献中的空白，并告知其他寻求为有风险的学生提供全面支持服务的高等教育专业人员，最明显的是教师指导。通过有意的传播工作，该项目将提供关于提高低收入、有学术天赋的学生的成功水平以及实施高影响力实践以加强学习环境和促进多样化、公平和包容性STEM参与的见解。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 Longwood University. The project's multidimensional recruiting plan will focus on rural southern Virginia - a region of critical need for increased STEM degree attainment in higher education, and will yield a diverse pool of prospective students in biology, chemistry, environmental science, and physics. In line with this, the project will include partnerships with rural southern Virginia high schools and STEM professionals across the nation. The Longwood program will engage forty-five (45) scholars over a duration of six years to address unmet financial need with scholarships as well as to provide a system of student-support services, including student cohorts, structured faculty mentoring, an issues-focused summer bridge program, an innovative curriculum, and a four-year arc of career preparation programming. Through embedded research, the project will pursue questions focused on the influence of students’ social networks, faculty mentoring, and growth-mindset programming on student success. Through broad dissemination efforts, the program will contribute to the STEM community’s understanding of how best to support the success of low-income, academically talented STEM students.To increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need this project will pursue four goals. First is to recruit domestic, academically talented, low-income scholars pursuing bachelor’s degrees in biology, chemistry, environmental science, and physics and reduce their unmet financial need. Second is to adapt, implement, and sustain evidence-based student-support and academic practices to ensure on-time graduation. Third is to test new strategies for systematically supporting student success and career preparation. And fourth is to disseminate the project's findings about effective means to increase success of low-income students. In addition to insights from a rigorous evaluation by Virginia Commonwealth University’s Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium, the project team will take a discipline-based educational research approach to generate new knowledge on adaptations of high-impact practices. In particular, the team will map and analyze social networks of socio-emotional and academic/career support; explore types of conversations (e.g., “feelings” vs. “fix-it”) between faculty mentors and their student mentees; and integrate growth-mindset programming into the student experience and mentor efforts. These three lines of inquiry will address gaps in the literature and inform other higher-education professionals seeking to support at-risk students with holistic support services, most notably faculty mentoring. Through intentional dissemination efforts, the project will provide its insights on improving success for low-income, academically talented students and on the implementation of high-impact practices to strengthen learning environments and promote diverse, equitable, and inclusive participation 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.