Scholarships and Co-Curricular Activities Leading to Excellence in the Biotechnology Workforce

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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 Texas Woman’s University (TWU). TWU is a Hispanic-Serving Institution and the nation’s largest predominantly female public institution. Over its six-year duration, the project will fund scholarships to 56 full-time students who are pursuing professional science master’s degrees in biotechnology. New graduate students will receive two years of scholarship support and continuing students may receive one year of scholarship support. The project seeks to increase graduate student enrollment, retention, and graduation in biotechnology through scholarships, co-curricular supports, and research to identify factors related to participant science identity, leadership identity, and success. Students will be placed in cohorts and have access to mentoring from peers, faculty, and industry partners, fostering an inclusive and supportive educational environment. In addition, leadership training and career guidance will be emphasized to promote development of authentic personal identities and science identities. Because TWU has a high student population of women (88% of the student body) and minorities who are underrepresented in their participation in STEM fields of study (61% of the student body), this transformative project has the potential to diversify the STEM workforce and identify factors supporting retention and graduation of these students. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving graduate students with demonstrated financial need. This will be accomplished through three specific aims. First is to increase enrollment and alleviate financial stress with scholarships. Second is to improve retention and graduation rates through co-curricular supports and activities that include cohort development, mentoring, leadership training, and career investigation/guidance. Third is to examine factors related to participant science identity, leadership identity, and success. Evidence suggests interactions with faculty and/or mentors, career education, and experiences such as work internships will increase student retention and graduation. Specifically, for women, financial resources and educational and social support help with STEM retention and graduation. However, little is known about the factors that lead to the development of a positive personal identity as a scientist and/or as a leader. This project will provide scholarships and co-curricular supports to biotechnology students while examining how the interventions impact the students’ sense of identity. The project has the potential to increase retention and graduation rates while identifying the factors contributing to building a positive science identity. In addition, the project will not only add to and diversify the STEM workforce, but it will also produce leaders, many of whom will be women. Measures of performance, deliverables, and effectiveness as related to goals and objectives will be assessed based on data collected from tracking participants’ retention, persistence, graduation, and co-curricular activities. Evaluation will follow the Context-Input-Process-Product model and will provide an independent perspective on project effectiveness. The results will be disseminated to the institutional community and beyond through presentations and publications. 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.